The progressive press in Colorado like to label places where some resource or service is scarce as a “desert”. A quick online search brings up multiple examples such as transit deserts, news deserts, food deserts, and education deserts, among plenty of others.
There is one kind of desert I didn’t find, however, a shortage of places where you could legally purchase firearms. But this doesn’t mean such a thing doesn’t exist. In a recent edition of my newsletter, I dug through federal records on firearms dealers, and sure enough, as I have heard more than once, Colorado has several Second Amendment deserts, places in the state where there are few firearms dealers. And the desert keeps getting drier.
Squeezing out gun sellers
To sell firearms commercially, you must register with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and get a Federal Firearms License (FFL). The ATF then maintains searchable public records of these dealers. I was able to pull these records for Colorado FFLs between the years of 2021 and 2026. Using this data, I created a searchable map showing FFL’s in Colorado. I also focused on three of Colorado’s largest cities which, at least partly, span the state’s geography and politics–Denver, Colorado Springs, and Grand Junction.
The pattern was easy to see. There are numerous regions of Colorado where FFL’s are sparse–the northwestern corner of the state and the Eastern Plains being the thinnest. If you zoom in on the map, and have a sense of geography, it’s not hard to see that for some Coloradans, the nearest gun dealer can be upwards of an hour away. Compounding the problem, this nearest dealer might be a private individual, not a store keeping regular hours.
It isn’t just that there are places in Colorado where you’d struggle to find an FFL. If you look at their numbers across time, you’ll see that Colorado is also losing FFL’s. Statewide, FFL’s fell by 18 percent from 2021 to 2026, with Denver (hardly a gun rights friendly city) leading the three cities I checked with an astounding 58% drop in FFL’s over that same time period. If the arrow continues to point this way, it will at the very least get even harder for law-abiding Coloradans to find a dealer.
Businesses spring into and out of existence all the time, especially in Colorado where the regulatory and legal environment has been pushing companies away for some time now. Nor is it new that the rural parts of the state have fewer service providers. Moving from Denver to Sterling taught me that lesson. I found out the hard way what it’s like if you need a locksmith and, instead of pages of them like in the Front Range, you have one. Only one.
As such, I don’t think you can blame the entire problem with FFL’s on state gun control and regulatory policy, but they’re both highly relevant. After my newsletter went up, I had a lot of comments from people saying they let their license go because they were tired of dealing with burdens on the firearm business in Colorado.
FFL’s occupy a unique niche. On the one hand they are businesses like any other. On the other, they sell products and provide services that intersect with constitutional rights. The Second Amendment, and what it protects, were deemed important enough to have been spelled out explicitly both in our state and federal constitutions. You have a right to keep and bear arms (the ability to purchase same being an integral part of that right), but no right to keep and bear fresh produce, or get on a bus.
Restricting rights
This unique role stands out in even bolder relief when you note the legislature forces more and more gun-related commerce under the auspices of an FFL, and will likely continue the practice. Since 2013, any new commercial purchases, private transfers, or sales of a firearm require a background check done by an FFL. A bill passed this year gives state officials unlimited access on demand to records kept by FFLs without a warrant or even suspicion of wrongdoing, further burdening dealers. There has also been talk at the capitol of requiring a background check for ammunition to the list of gun control regulations passed over the last 8 or so years (this talk even extends to those wanting to be at the capitol such as gubernatorial hopeful Phil Weiser who has openly supported a background check requirement for purchasing ammunition).
When I read gun rights sites or listen to testimony against gun control bills at the state capitol, there is a repeated refrain. Law-abiding citizens (the only ones, let’s be honest, that are saddled with the burden) face an undue hardship when trying to exercise their rights because for many the nearest FFL is miles away. Witnesses and advocates also talk about how continued over-regulation of FFL’s is driving them to quit the business, to let their licenses drop. The numbers don’t lie. Both of these things are happening. Colorado is quickly drying up into a Second Amendment desert, and it’s not by accident.
Politicians are silent, and the progressive media, ever-vigilant about things such food deserts, are as well. Let me repeat that one more time so it sinks in: a fundamental right mentioned in both state and federal constitutions is becoming harder and harder to exercise in this state, to the profound silence of our media and elected officials.
Whether they are silent or not, whether you want to own a gun or not, you should not be silent. The fact that it’s harder and harder to exercise a fundamental right ought to worry you; you might not want or need a gun today, but perhaps you will tomorrow. And, if the government gets away with nibbling a right out of existence, you might find they migrate to others when they’re done.
Cory Gaines teaches college physics and is a regular contributor to Complete Colorado. He lives in Sterling on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. He also writes at the Colorado Accountability Project substack.
