It’s not just legislators and county sheriffs who are urging Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Second Amendment Task Force she helms to take a closer look at the semi-auto ban/permit-to-purchase bill recently signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis. A group of Colorado congresscritters, including Reps. Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank, Jeff Hurt, and Gabe Evans, have also signed on to a letter to Bondi authorerd by the Colorado Shooting Sports Association asking her to give gun owners in the state some relief.
“Over the past few years, the State of Colorado and some of its larger cities and political subdivisions have, through a progression of increasingly oppressive and burdensome statutes and ordinances, engaged in a systematic and unrelenting campaign designed to restrict, impair, impede and ultimately extinguish Coloradans’ right to keep and bear arms in violation of our Constitution,” the letter states.
The letter goes on to list off several state laws and municipal codes, with Senate Bill 25-003 at the top of the list. The bill, which Gov. Jared Polis signed into law April 10 but goes into effect in August 2026, bans the manufacture, sale or purchase of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that take detachable magazines. The law makes an exception for individuals who get a “firearms safety course eligibility card” from local law enforcement and then complete a state-approved firearm education course.
SB 25-003 “impermissibly burdens law-abiding gun owners, erodes self-defense rights, and restricts access to firearms in common use,” the letter says. “It clearly fails to meet the constitutional benchmarks set by the Supreme Court in these cases.”
As much as I believe that SB 3 is clearly unconstitutional, it’s a bit of a stretch to say it doesn’t meet the benchmarks set by SCOTUS in cases like Heller and Bruen. On the one hand, the Court has said that the Second Amendment protects, prima facie, all bearable arms that are in common use for lawful purposes such as (but not limited to) self-defense. That, in my mind, means that AR-15s and other semi-automatic long guns are indeed protected by the Second Amendment.
But the Court also held in Bruen that a state-required license doesn’t violate the right to bear arms, and lower courts have around the country have upheld permit-to-purchase laws like SB 3; including the Fourth Circuit, which declared Maryland’s Handgun Qualification License did not violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court declined take up that case when it had the opportunity, so I’m not sure where they’d come down on Colorado’s “firearm safety course eligibility card”.
The letter to Bondi references several other gun control laws in Colorado, including the state’s ban on adults under 21 purchasing firearms and ammunition, magazine ban, three-day waiting period, and its “red flag” law. The signatories urge Bondi to evaluate the constitutionality of these laws, assess the impact they’ve had or will have on gun owners, identify federal “remedies” including litigation and enforcement of civil rights protections, and collaborate with local enforcement to “document the real-world consequences of these policies and ensure federal support for constitutional enforcement.”
I’m not sure what that last request even means. If the letter is suggesting that Bondi back any sheriff who declines to enforce measures they believe are unconstitutional, I don’t think there’s much she can do beyond offering moral support. Police and prosecutors have some discretion in enforcement, so if a county sheriff decides they’re not going to go out looking for violations of SB 3 or any other gun law they’re free to do so. It’s also unlikely that Bondi and the DOJ would sue Colorado directly over any of these laws, but the AG could provide support for litigation against SB 3 and other statutes, most likely through the use of amicus briefs filed to augment the legal arguments made by gun owners.
Bondi can’t overturn any of these laws on her own, even if the Second Amendment Task Force does decide to put Colorado’s gun control laws under the microscope. Ultimately, it’s still going to be up to groups like the Colorado Shooting Sports Association and individual gun owners in the state to sue over these infringements, and it will be the Supreme Court who’ll ultimately decide of the state’s gun laws will survive or fail to pass constitutional muster.
Read the full article here
