More Sheriffs Are Opting Out of Colorado’s New Permit-To-Purchase Law

Montezuma County, Colorado Sheriff Steven Nowlin isn’t the only sheriff in the state who’s refusing to issue the new Firearms Safety Course Eligibility Card that’s now required in order to purchase AR-15s and many other semi-automatic firearms in the state. 

According to a new filing by the Colorado Shooting Sports Association, the sheriffs in Teller and Bent counties are also declining to participate, with Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell attesting that the burden imposed by the state on his small department is too great. 

I believe that, in order to cover the cost of the permit-to-purchase scheme, I would have to charge a fee amounting to approximately $400 per application. I do not believe that I can charge applicants $400 and cover the cost of the program because it will be too expensive for many residents to pay, and I expect it would unconstitutionally burden their Second Amendment rights.

That’s exactly what the law is meant to do: impose so many burdens on gun owners (and local law enforcement) that it becomes nearly impossible to actually buy some of the most popular arms in the country. 

As the plaintiffs argue in their motion for a preliminary injunction that would halt enforcement of the new permit-to-purchase scheme: 

Even applicants in counties with participating sheriffs face basic uncertainty about the process, including which third-party vendors may be used for the required background check, who makes the request, whether results are transmitted to the applicant or held by the sheriff’s office, and whether the applicant must appear in person to apply, submit to screening, and receive the card. That in-person requirement is significant for many Coloradans: it requires travel, sometimes over significant distances in rural counties, and scheduling to simply begin the process. 

Even where a sheriff is participating, neither statute nor CPW specifies what a background check must contain or how it must be conducted, leaving sheriffs’ offices to guess. The Act also leaves to each sheriff unguided discretion in determining whether to deny an application because an applicant “present[s] a danger to themselves or others”—a standard with obvious constitutional weight and no statutory or regulatory content to cabin it, applied inconsistently from county to county, applicant to applicant.

Once a sheriff has issued a Firearms Safety Course Eligibility Card, a Colorado resident can then sign up for the training course that’s now required under state law before they can lawfully purchase a restricted firearm. CSSA notes that there are plenty of problems there as well. 

The training side of the scheme is no better. CPW maintains a list of approved trainers, but that list does not reflect reality. Many counties have no listed trainer at all. Of the trainers listed, some are not offering the course, some were included in error, some have not been able to begin offering training because CPW did not deliver the curriculum in time, some have no available course dates for the foreseeable future, and none appear to offer accommodations for applicants with disabilities. 

And this training isn’t free. In fact, one Colorado resident says they paid approximately $30 for an initial background check, $52 for a Colorado Parks and Wildlife database fee, $132 for the Denver sheriff’s processing and records fee, and $375 for the required training course. That’s nearly $600, which is more than some AR-15s cost. 

Cost is only part of the burden. The mandatory course requires 12 hours of in-person instruction over two days, forcing many applicants to take time off work. Applicants in rural counties with no local trainer must also travel—in some cases considerable distances—to attend the training, compounding the time and expense already required simply to sit for the course. 

And applicants who clear every prior obstacle—cost, availability, travel, and time away from work—must then pass a written examination with a 90% score to receive their eligibility card. That threshold exceeds the score Colorado requires of its own police officers: the minimum passing score on the Colorado POST written certification examination is 70%. That means SB25-003 imposes a higher testing standard on ordinary, law-abiding civilians seeking to exercise a fundamental right protected by the Second Amendment than the state imposes on candidates to achieve state law enforcement certification.

There’s a reason why Democrat Sen. Tom Sullivan recently said that the new permit-to-purchase law was essentially a ban on so-called assault weapons. Colorado Democrats wanted to get as close as they could to an outright ban, and this is the scheme that they came up with. The goal isn’t to ensure that gun buyers know the basic rules of gun safety. It’s to make it so cost prohibitive to purchase an AR-15 or other semi-automatic firearm restricted by the state that would-be gun buyers will throw up their hands in disgust and defeat. 

The Tenth Circuit has already recognized that acquiring a firearm is an inherent part of our right to keep and bear them, which means that Colorado has to justify these restrictions by pointing to analogous laws at the time of the Founding. They will be unable to meet that burden because no such laws existed. 

Colorado has tried to justify the new scheme by comparing to a “shall issue” concealed carry system. The differences, though, are enormous. First, this isn’t about obtaining a license to carry in public. It’s about requiring a permit to simply purchase and keep a firearm. Colorado’s law also gives sheriffs broad discretion to deny someone a permit, or even to opt out of issuing permits altogether, which is hardly “shall issue.” 

Virginia’s new ban on so-called assault firearms has already been put on hold, and Colorado’s ban by another name will hopefully soon follow suit. There is no constitutional or historical justification for these restrictions, and under any fair reading of the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence a judge should grant CSSA’s request for an injunction. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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