Proponents Defend Constitutionality of Colorado’s Latest Gun Control Effort

Colorado may have backed off from a potentially egregious semi-auto ban, but the truth is that what they have in place isn’t much better. This idea that you should be required to go through training and have a special permit just to exercise a constitutionally protected right isn’t just unconstitutional, it’s offensive.

Of course, I’m generally not one to get all butthurt over something being offensive, but this one is a little different. It’s not the offensive nature of the bill that bothers me, though. It’s the blatant infringement on the right to keep and bear arms.

And then, of course, we have the jackwagons trying to defend the constitutionality of this proposal.

Should this bill reach Polis’ desk and be signed into law, it would almost certainly be challenged immediately in court.

Willinger said the bill was likely on solid constitutional footing, even in a judicial system topped by a conservative U.S. Supreme Court that’s taken a more expansive view of the Second Amendment. The high court turned away recent challenges to other gun control bills — including a weapons ban and a permitting requirement — and lower courts have upheld the laws in other states, Willinger and Shih said.

Still, Shih and Willinger said they expected the Supreme Court to take up an assault weapons case at some point.

Willinger said the training and vetting requirements added in the Colorado Senate likely put the bill on even firmer ground under the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, which further expanded gun rights. (Shih said Everytown was confident the original bill would’ve been upheld, too.)

“I suspect the court will take a case like that at some point, but I think the analysis is really quite different when you think about the one Colorado is considering,” Willinger said. “You then basically have an argument that the state can make — that this is just akin to the type of objective licensing approach that states use for conceal-carry, for example. The only thing you have to do is just comply with the series of objective requirements, taking these classes and so on.”

Of course, Everytown thinks all gun control is constitutional, so I wouldn’t trust their judgment on the original bill.

Still, the question is whether this bill is constitutional.

Except, that’s not what any of that quoted section really addresses. It addresses whether it can survive judicial challenge, which is really a different question entirely.

Yes, permitting schemes have managed to survive so far, as have training requirements. However, I don’t see how they could figure that including those makes the grounds firmer under Bruen. They’ve provided no historic analog for either requirement, which is the foundation of Bruen’s history, text, and tradition test.

As for the actual constitutionality of it, I’m going to say that no, it’s not constitutional. No gun control is constitutional, though I’m willing to tolerate Bruen’s standard as harkening back to the era of the Founding Fathers makes some degree of sense.

Again, though, there were no permit-to-purchase requirements for anything protected by the Constitution in that era and there were no training requirements, either. 

I honestly believe that it’s just a matter of time before these are overturned, whether it’s Colorado’s attempt or someone else’s.

That’s because there’s no way they’re constitutional, either under my own preferred standard or the Supreme Court’s.