Colorado Democrats’ first-of-its-kind semi-automatic firearm ban advanced after a marathon session in its first floor debate, but not before being fundamentally altered.

The Colorado Senate passed SB 25-003 on second reading at 2 a.m. Friday morning. It did so just barely, by an 18-15 vote, and only after the bill’s sponsors made significant concessions at the behest of Governor Jared Polis’ (D.) office. The bill’s core provisions banning the manufacture and sale of semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and pistols with detachable magazines remain intact, but five pages worth of new language now provide an avenue for civilians to continue obtaining them under a complex permit-to-purchase regime.

With the amendments approved, SB 003 now appears well on its way to final approval in the Senate later this week and should glide through the much more progressive Colorado House. With Governor Polis’s concerns now ostensibly addressed, the bill has a clear path to becoming law.

Here’s a look at what the new amendments would mean for Colorado gun owners.

Permit-to-Purchase Changes

The most significant amendment to the bill came in the addition of a new pathway for Coloradans to continue purchasing semi-automatic firearms with detachable magazines.

Colorado does not currently have, nor has it ever required, a permit system for purchasing or possessing common firearms. That would change under SB-003. Coloradans would, by default, be prohibited from acquiring any new semi-automatic rifle, shotgun, or gas-operated handgun that does not have a permanently affixed magazine capable of holding 15 or fewer rounds if the bill becomes law. They would be forced to undergo a multi-step vetting process that includes background checks and state-sanctioned training to buy those firearms.

According to the bill, a prospective buyer would first have to obtain a newly established “firearms safety course eligibility card” from their local sheriff. They would have to provide two sets of fingerprints, conduct a “fingerprint-based criminal history record check,” and pay an unspecified application fee to the sheriff and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. The bill allows each sheriff to establish their own processing fee to cover the “actual direct and indirect” costs of issuing the eligibility card. It doesn’t set a deadline for how long the sheriff’s office has to conduct the background check or issue a card.

Sheriffs would have the discretion to deny or revoke the eligibility card under the same grounds that state law currently allows for concealed handgun permits. That includes revocations or denials based on a permit holder’s criminal history or a “reasonable belief” that an applicant would present a danger to themselves or others if given a card.

Once issued, a firearms safety course eligibility card would be valid for five years. The issuing sheriff is required to submit a new cardholder’s data to a newly created “Firearms Safety and Training Course Record System” administered by the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife.

Once they hold an eligibility card, a prospective buyer would be permitted to enroll in either a “basic firearms safety course” or an “extended firearm safety course.” The basic firearms safety course requires four hours of in-person instruction and is open to eligibility cardholders with a hunter education certification. Those who do not would be required to attend the extended firearm course, which must be at least 12 hours of in-person instruction spread across at least two days.

The bill requires both courses to include curricula on safe weapons handling, secure storage and child access prevention, firearms deaths and mental illness, extreme risk protection orders, and “victim awareness and empathy.” Completing each course would be contingent on receiving a score of at least 90% on a test administered at the end. Course instructors, who must meet the state’s criteria for firearms instructors and would be contracted by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, would have three business days to submit documentation of a passed course to the Firearms Safety and Training Course Record System.

Federal Firearms Licensees would have access to the record system to verify that prospective buyers of semi-automatic firearms have completed the required course.

The bill allows Colorado Parks and Wildlife to establish its own fee for administering the courses and allows it to increase the costs once a year.

After an initial firearms safety course eligibility card expires (five years), a prospective buyer would need to go through the same process again to continue purchasing new semi-automatic firearms. Under the bill, previous cardholders would be permitted to go through the basic safety course, even if they don’t have a hunter education certification.

Weapons Carve-Outs and Other Changes

Despite meeting the bill’s definition of banned semi-automatics, the new amendments also carve out 37 different firearms by specific make and model. The exempted weapons primarily include common hunting rifles and historical military firearms, such as the Benelli R1 Big-Game Rifle, M1 Carbine, Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle, Ruger Mini Thirty, Springfield Armory M1A, Remington 7400, and more.

Another amendment increases the criminal penalties for violating the state’s twelve-year-old ammunition magazine ban to a class 1 misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. Selling or possessing a non-grandfathered magazine capable of holding more than 15 rounds is currently a class 2 misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum of 120 days in jail.

Legal and Political Takeaways 

By and large, the amendments to SB-003 seem to undermine the rationale for bringing it forward in the first place. The bill’s proponents dubiously claimed that a blanket ban on most semi-automatic firearms was necessary to enforce the state’s existing magazine ban when it was first introduced. That premise becomes even shakier once there’s a pathway to continue purchasing weapons that accept those magazines.

The amendments do, however, appear to have accomplished their primary goal: shoring up the opposition from swing-district Democrats and Governor Polis that had been building as awareness of SB-003 grew.

They may also be enough to help ward off the legal vulnerabilities of the first draft. While gun-rights groups will no doubt sue over the new provisions as well, blanket sweeping bans on common firearms were much more likely to get struck down. Now, the state can claim that nothing is technically banned (like they did for the first version) so long as people go through the permit-to-purchase-like hoops first.

Though gun-rights advocates will likely claim that permit-to-purchase schemes are just as ahistorical and unconstitutional as blanket arms bans, they have tended to survive in post-Bruen litigation—though not universally.

Additionally, the Supreme Court in dicta seems to have blessed shall-issue permitting for gun carry, despite not explaining how that fits under its own Second Amendment test. Presumably, then, the Court may also be okay with permitting for gun acquisition. That bodes poorly for Colorado gun-rights advocates hoping for judicial relief from SB-003, though it’s impossible to say precisely how litigation will play out.

In the same dicta, the Court did issue a warning about the legality of permitting systems that officials put toward abusive ends.

“That said, because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends, we do not rule out constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in Bruen.

A new, convoluted process involving repeatedly getting training eligibility certificates from a sheriff, a state-approved training course, unspecified fees, and deadlines could create legal vulnerabilities once the scheme is implemented.