The Gazette reports that Colorado gun stores were slammed with buyers racing to purchase certain semiautomatic rifles and shotguns with detachable magazines before the state’s new restrictions take effect Saturday. Several stores reported record sales, lines out the door, exhausted inventories and business levels that doubled or tripled.
The law requires buyers of covered firearms to complete either a four-hour or 12-hour safety course through an approved third-party provider overseen by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Buyers also face an additional sheriff-level background check and a mandatory $52 fee to the wildlife agency. Because Colorado already imposes a three-day waiting period, Tuesday became the practical deadline for avoiding the new process.
Lawmakers sold this as public safety. The immediate result was a deadline-driven buying frenzy, a backlog of thousands of background checks and a statewide reminder that people do not trust Denver to stop at one more “reasonable” restriction.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Shootist Gun Range reported more than 100 customers a day, broke its June sales record and then broke that record again during the first week of July. Nothing says “reducing demand” like accidentally launching the firearm equivalent of Black Friday.
- Bighorn Firearms said business tripled as customers rushed to buy semiautomatic rifles and shotguns with detachable magazines. Lawmakers lit a match in a room full of gasoline and announced they had invented fire prevention.
- As of midday Tuesday, 6,504 background-check applications were waiting to be accepted by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. The state created a bottleneck, watched people pile into it and will probably hold a hearing about the mysterious existence of bottlenecks.
- The new process includes state-approved training, another background check through county sheriffs and a $52 payment to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Your elk-tag bureaucracy is now part of the gun-permission funnel. Peak Colorado has been achieved.
- Supporters argue the restrictions are a necessary response to gun violence. Critics say the law burdens lawful buyers and is being challenged in federal court. What nobody can dispute is the immediate practical result: record sales before the gate came down.
My Bottom Line
This was stupidly predictable. Tell Coloradans that buying a commonly owned firearm will soon require more classes, more fees, more background checks and more government approval, and they will buy before the deadline. That is not panic. That is learned behavior.
People do not rush gun counters because they believe the state is competent, fair or finished regulating. They rush because Denver keeps proving that today’s inconvenience becomes tomorrow’s hurdle and next year’s permission slip. The ruling class calls each step “commonsense” right up until the common sense belongs to the people trying to get ahead of it.
The arrogance is the real problem. Colorado’s Democratic policy machine keeps pretending it can regulate human behavior by making ordinary citizens beg the government for access to rights they already had. Then, when people react exactly as expected, the same crowd will likely point to the surge in sales as evidence that even more restrictions are necessary. Government creates the panic, studies the panic and then bills you for the cure.
Maybe the new process eventually changes buying patterns. Maybe the courts uphold it. Maybe they do not. The Gazette article does not settle those questions. What it does show is that the first measurable outcome was not calm, confidence or reduced anxiety. It was a deadline, a backlog and a distrust-fueled run on inventory. Government-by-bullshit, Colorado edition.
Source: The Gazette
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