By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
In less than a month, Colorado will join a handful of other states where citizens wanting to own certain firearms will have to first obtain a “permit-to-purchase” in a process which includes completing a training course.
Beginning Aug. 1, Colorado law SB25-003 takes effect. Semiautomatic firearms to which this law applies are identified in a 150-page document published by the Colorado Department of Revenue. The overwhelming majority of these guns are AR-15 or SKS-types, but a couple stand out. They are Desert Eagle handguns produced by Magnum Research.
According to the Kiwa County Press, this purchase permit process “will include an eligibility review by a county sheriff, lengthy safety training with a firearm instructor and a written exam. Today someone can walk into a gun shop and buy the guns covered by the law without any training.”
Opponents to the new law, which is being challenged in a case known as DelToro v. Polis, contend it violates the constitution.
“Because the Act attempts to govern and regulate arms-bearing conduct,” the 28-page complaint says, “the text of the Second Amendment is implicated, and there is no relevantly similar historical analogue from the time of the Founding that can be used to justify the Act’s provisions. Consequently, the Act is violative of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, as made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Supporters of purchase permit restrictions argue that research into gun-related violent crime supports their position. The 30-page study they offer as evidence was done by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention and the Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy, with funding provided by the anti-gun Joyce Foundation.
Their document declares in its introduction, “In the United States someone is killed by a gun every 11 minutes,” completely ignoring the fact that these guns do not discharge by themselves. It requires the action of a person to do any of this killing. The report says “46,728 people died from firearm injuries in the United States in 2023, the third highest total number ever recorded, with a mortality rate of 13.7 per 100,000…In 2023 firearms were used in 7 out of 10 homicides and in 55% of all suicides in the country.”
But it lumps these numbers together as if to suggest all of these deaths are criminal acts.
Elsewhere in the report, it says “Firearm purchaser licensing (FPL) is a policy that enables states to require individuals to obtain a license before purchasing a firearm. The goal of such laws is to enhance public safety by ensuring that only eligible and responsible individuals can legally purchase firearms.”
Opponents argue this turns a constitutionally-protected right into a government-regulated privilege.
On Page 7 of the report, there is reference to opinion polls which argues, “The 2023 Johns Hopkins National Survey of Gun Policy shows that nationally, over 70% of adults support FPL laws, including over 60% of gun owners. Interestingly, support for FPL laws among gun owners is 18% higher in states with firearm licensing requirements than in states without these laws. This finding suggests that gun owners who have gone through the FPL process do not consider these laws to be particularly burdensome or onerous.”
Constitutional rights, say Second Amendment activists, cannot be subject to the whims of public opinion polls.
This law will be enacted against the backdrop of last month’s announcement by the U.S. Supreme Court that it will take up two cases challenging the constitutionality of semi-auto bans in Cook County, Illinois and the state of Connecticut.
