Colorado’s New Gun-Purchase Permission Slip Is Already in Court
Colorado’s latest experiment in putting government hall monitors between citizens and the Second Amendment is already facing a federal court challenge. Sentinel Colorado, republishing reporting from Colorado Newsline, reports that the Colorado State Shooting Association and five individual plaintiffs are asking a federal judge for a preliminary injunction against the state’s new permit-to-purchase system for certain semiautomatic firearms.
The plaintiffs argue that Senate Bill 25-3 creates an unconstitutional cumulative burden on Second Amendment rights through required background checks, sheriff-issued eligibility cards, safety courses, testing, fees, travel and a state administrative system they say is incomplete and inconsistently implemented. That is their legal claim, not yet a court ruling. What is not in dispute is that the law went fully into effect at the beginning of August, meaning Coloradans now have to navigate the new state-created obstacle course while its constitutionality is being litigated.
The Bullet Point Brief
- The plaintiffs want the court to hit the brakes. The Colorado State Shooting Association is seeking a preliminary injunction that would halt the permit-to-purchase requirements while its broader constitutional challenge moves forward. Apparently “shall not be infringed” now comes with an administrative appeals process.
- Buying certain semiautomatic firearms now requires considerably more government participation. Prospective buyers must pay for a background check, apply to a sheriff for an eligibility card, complete an approved safety course and pass a written exam. Only then can they purchase covered firearms, with the eligibility lasting five years. Nothing says constitutional liberty quite like renewing permission from the state.
- The plaintiffs say the bureaucracy is not even ready for the bureaucracy. Their filing alleges confusion among sheriffs, administrative limits on issuing cards and an incomplete state infrastructure. Teller, Montezuma and Bent counties are not accepting applications, according to the filing. Colorado built the regulatory tollbooth and apparently forgot to finish paving the road to it.
- Rural Colorado gets the usual special treatment, meaning more hassle. A CSSA declaration says residents in some parts of the state could face drives of well over 100 miles to reach approved training, and that 21 counties had no approved instructor when the research was conducted. Because nothing protects public safety like making somebody burn half a tank of gas to exercise a constitutional right.
- The constitutional question is now squarely in front of the court. CSSA argues that the fees, training requirements, travel, delays and permitting process collectively violate the Second Amendment and fail the historical-tradition test established by the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision. State officials named in the case now get to defend the system they created.
My Bottom Line
Colorado politicians have developed an impressive talent for treating constitutional rights like privileges dispensed from behind a government counter. Fill this out. Pay that fee. Find this instructor. Take that test. Ask this sheriff. Wait for that card. And if your county cannot administer the program or the nearest class is somewhere over the horizon, well, congratulations on your freedom.
The state will undoubtedly frame all of this as public safety. Fine. Make the argument in court. But constitutional rights do not become less constitutional because somebody in Denver attaches the words “public safety” to another stack of forms. The very point of an enumerated right is that government does not get unlimited authority to convert it into a permission slip and then congratulate itself for making the permission difficult to obtain.
The lawsuit does not establish that Colorado’s law is unconstitutional. A judge will have to decide that. But the injunction fight exposes the problem nicely: the state imposed a complicated new barrier on lawful gun purchases, that barrier is now operating, and the people subject to it are challenging whether Colorado had the constitutional authority to erect it in the first place.
Rights are supposed to restrain government. They are not supposed to become another government program. If Colorado wants to prove this system passes constitutional muster, the state can make that case before a federal judge. Until then, Coloradans are justified in asking why exercising the Second Amendment suddenly requires something that looks suspiciously like a trip to the DMV, only with ammunition.
Source: Sentinel Colorado
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