Colorado appears to be on the cusp of passing a sweeping new ban on most semi-automatic firearms after a marathon markup period.
However, that lengthy legislative session resulted in a slew of new changes. As Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman explains, one of the biggest is a new process that will allow residents to buy the banned guns. So, it’s now a pseudo-ban turned permit-to-purchase proposal.
I also take a close look at President Trump’s gun executive order and try to project what could come of it. Plus, Dave Kopel joins the podcast to give his take on the order.
Analysis: Colorado’s Sweeping Semi-Auto Ban Gets Novel Overhaul on Way to Likely Adoption [Member Exclusive]
By Jake Fogleman
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.
Podcast: What Will Trump’s Executive Order on Guns Deliver? (Ft. David Kopel) [Member Early Access]
By Stephen Gutowski
President Donald Trump issued an executive order that reviews federal gun policy with the aim of implementing some changes.
However, it’s unclear exactly what changes might come from the order. So, we’ve got Second Amendment scholar David Kopel on the show to try and give some clarity to what’s possible.
Kopel walks through each section of the order and explains what kind of actions they could lead to. He notes the ATF rules are likely to be an area of emphasis and one that may have the biggest practical impact. Similarly, the rollback of the ATF’s “zero tolerance” enforcement policy for gun dealers could be significant and happen much faster.
He also explained how the order could lead to the Department of Justice changing its stance in Second Amendment litigation or reclassifying certain guns to make them easier to import. He said it could also do smaller things like revoke and respond to reports from the seemingly defunct White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
You can listen to the show on your favorite podcasting app or by clicking here. Video of the episode is available on our YouTube channel. An auto-generated transcript is here. Reload Members get access on Sunday, as always. Everyone else can listen on Monday.
Get a 30-day free trial for a subscription to The Dispatch by clicking here.
Plus, Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman and I discuss a ruling out of the Tenth Circuit where a panel once again decided that a single mother who wrote a bad check 17 years ago can be disarmed for life. We also discuss a Trump-appointed judge out of Hawaii who ruled that the Aloha state can continue to deny adults under the age of 21 access to firearms. Finally, we wrap up with coverage of an Illinois state court ruling against the state’s FOID card law, Trump’s Second Amendment executive order, and some quick hits from around the country.
Analysis: What Trump’s Gun Executive Order Could Do [Member Exclusive]
By Stephen Gutowski
President Donald Trump has made his first move on gun policy.
Last Friday, he issued an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to undertake a 30-day review of executive branch gun actions and positions to ensure they don’t violate the Second Amendment. The order itself doesn’t tell Bondi what specific actions to take. However, it does outline a number of areas to focus her review on.
So, what might come at the end of those 30 days? Let’s break it down section by section.
First, it’s important to note that the president is fairly limited in what he can do unilaterally on federal gun policy. Without Congress, he can’t implement some of the top priorities of the gun-rights movement or undo some of the successes the gun-control movement had under former President Joe Biden–such as the reforms included in the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Instead, he
There are seven areas the executive order tells Bondi to look at, but the first one basically just encompasses the other ones. It simply directs her to review “all Presidential and agencies’ actions” during the Biden Administration that “may have impinged on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.” From there, it gets a bit more specific.
“Rules promulgated by the Department of Justice, including by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, from January 2021 through January 2025 pertaining to firearms and/or Federal firearms licensees”
This area is the one that is likely to see the most action. President Biden went to the ATF rulemaking well numerous times during his tenure. The rules his administration created also had sweeping implications, even if most of them ended up being bogged down in court.
The most expansive of the Biden-era rules was the pistol-brace ban. That impacted potentially millions of American gun owners, putting those who didn’t comply with registration or destruction requirements at risk of facing federal felony charges.
You also have the ATF rule that re-interprets what it means to be “in the business” of selling guns so that more Americans either have to obtain a federal dealer license or face potential charges.
Then there is the “ghost gun” ban, which the Supreme Court heard arguments over last October. It sought to criminalize the sale of unfinished, unserialized gun kits.
Trump promised to undo these rules during his first week in office. He didn’t complete the task on that timeline and the executive order doesn’t require all of these rules to be undone. In fact, it would likely take a long time to actually undo them since the ATF would have to go through the entire rulemaking process to reverse itself at this point. Getting the ball rolling on the “ghost gun” rule repeal before the Supreme Court weighs in will likely require swift action as well.
However, Trump’s order opens the door for that undertaking to begin if Bondi and the White House can agree on which rules should go.
Agencies’ plans, orders, and actions regarding the so-called “enhanced regulatory enforcement policy” pertaining to firearms and/or Federal firearms licensees
This area pertains to the “zero-tolerance” approach Biden ordered the ATF to take toward gun makers and dealers. That policy has led to a significant uptick in license revocations over the past few years. It has also bred substantial backlash from the gun industry, which claims many of those revocations are over minor infractions that didn’t lead to any negative outcomes.
As of today, the policy remains in place despite the change in administrations–to the chagrin of the industry.
This is an area where Trump could have a direct and immediate impact. Since this wasn’t a federal rule and just a presidential directive, he could order a similar directive restoring the previous ATF approach to overseeing gun dealers or come up with a new approach altogether.
Reports and related documents issued by the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention
The Office of Gun Violence Prevention already seems to have been shut down. Its website is offline, and former employees have claimed it is no longer active. However, the Trump Administration hasn’t responded to The Reload’s questions about the office or made any public statements confirming its end.
It’s not immediately clear what kind of action reviewing the reports and documents created by the office might result in. The Administration appears to have already taken them down from the White House website alongside everything else about the short-lived office, which was created by President Biden. It’s possible the Trump Administration could try to issue retractions or repudiations of the Biden-era reports.
The positions taken by the United States in any and all ongoing and potential litigation that affects or could affect the ability of Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights
This is another area that could have some major implications. The Attorney General is tasked with defending the laws of the United States and nearly always does exactly that. It is commonplace for the AG to defend laws the President or his party doesn’t like. However, the AG also has leeway in how they choose to defend laws or which cases they decide to appeal up the change, at what time, or in what order.
So, this review could result in the government abandoning certain defenses of federal gun laws or ATF rules. It could deprioritize certain appeals. It could do a lot on that front and Department of Justice lawyers have already started to ask for more time in pending cases to decide what they should do because of Trump’s order.
Additionally, there have been times when an AG has declined to defend a law. It’s possible, though not likely, that could happen with some federal gun laws if the Trump Administration deems there is not reasonable argument to be made that they are constitutional.
Agencies’ classifications of firearms and ammunition
The executive branch has a lot of leeway in deciding what kind of guns can be imported into the United States under federal law. Many imports have been ruled off limits for decades because they don’t fall into the “sporting purpose” exception to our gun import controls. For a very long time now, hunting has been one of the only areas recognized as a shooting sport under this exception.
The Trump Administration could broaden that exception to incorporate all of the other shooting sports out there. Whether it’s three gun or target shooting, there are many shooting sports that haven’t been traditionally classified as such under this rule. That could open up room for new imports of certain rifles, shotguns, or handguns.
There are also similar regulations when it comes to importing collectible firearms, especially those that were previously fully automatic–even if they’ve since been dismantled. That’s another area where the classification of guns and ammo could be broadened.
The processing of applications to make, manufacture, transfer, or export firearms
Long processing times have long been a thorn in the side of many firearms enthusiasts, especially those associated with guns that are regulated by the National Firearms Act (NFA). Silencers, more accurately called sound suppressors, are the most popular NFA items out there. But they are also the ones that have faced extreme backlogs that can last nine months or longer.
The ATF has managed to bring down those wait times significantly since introducing online registration and other reforms that speed up the process. But more could likely be done on that front.
Then, there are firearms export controls. Trump moved oversight of those from the State Department to the Commerce Department in his first term. Then Biden imposed a series of new rules that made exporting certain firearms for civilian use, like AR-15s, much more difficult and even forbade it altogether to certain countries–including Ukraine and Israel. That’s another place where the Trump Administration could roll policy back to a pre-Biden stance.
What will actually happen?
Of course, these are just the possibilities. It is likely some, perhaps even most, of these will come to fruition. After all, it would be pretty wild to put out an order recognizing the top priorities for executive action that the gun-rights movement has only to not follow through on any of them.
However, Bondi has drawn criticism from gun-rights activists for a reason. She has been willing to aggressively defend gun restrictions in the past and has even helped pass new ones. She appears to have a lot of leeway in deciding which of these areas deserves action.
So, we’ll have to wait and see what the Trump Administration actually delivers at the end of those 30 days.
That’s it for now.
I’ll talk to you all again soon.
Go Birds,
Stephen Gutowski
Founder
The Reload
