DENVER–The plaintiffs in a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of Colorado’s permit-to-purchase scheme for many semi-automatic firearms this week asked a federal court for a preliminary injunction against the new law.
Senate Bill 25-003 went into effect on August 1 after Gov. Jared Polis signed it into law last year. The law bans the sale or purchase of a long list of semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and handguns unless a buyer first applies for a “firearms safety course eligibility card” with their local sheriff’s office, then takes and passes a required training course.
The Colorado State Shooting Association and other plaintiffs filed the lawsuit, Del Toro v. Polis, last September.
The motion for a preliminary injunction submitted in U.S. District Court on Monday argues the law “does not merely regulate law-abiding citizens’ right to purchase these firearms—it all but eliminates it through a maze of duplicative background checks, state-level bureaucracy, local government-level bureaucracy, undefined administrative discretion, mandatory multi-day training and testing, and fees compounded into the hundreds of dollars.”
“The state’s scheme cannot be reconciled with the Supreme Court’s requirement that the government justify restrictions on conduct covered by the Second Amendment by proving they are consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” attorneys for the plaintiffs argue in the motion.
Coloradans flooded gun stores last month to get their firearm purchases in before the new law went into effect, Complete Colorado reported. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation said it saw a 195% increase in InstaCheck background checks compared to July 2025, marking “the highest volume of firearm background checks on record.”
Rocky rollout
The motion goes on to detail issues with how SB-003 has been implemented across the state. CSSA said it found less than 20 counties with “a functioning application process” in place since the law took effect.
In Montezuma County, the sheriff’s office has declined to participate in issuing eligibility cards, citing a lack of resources to implement permitting.
“This is exactly what we warned would happen,” CSSA Executive Director Huey Laugesen said in a statement. “Colorado took a constitutional right and buried it underneath permission slips, background checks, fees, government bureaucracy, a two-day training mandate and a test scored more strictly than the written examination required of Colorado police officers. Now the law is in effect, and the evidence shows the system the state spent more than a year preparing still does not function for huge numbers of Coloradans.”
CSSA, a National Rifle Association affiliate, is also suing Colorado and Denver County over their magazine capacity restrictions, Complete Colorado reported last month. The U.S. Department of Justice is also challenging the restrictions in court.
Meanwhile, key Colorado Democrats are looking to double-down on gun rights restrictions despite a looming U.S. Supreme Court decision on so-called “assault weapons” bans. At a recent panel discussion in Aurora alongside gun control advocates, Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who’s running for attorney general, pledged to pursue a “stronger” ban.
“As Attorney General, I will defend our laws against [the trump administration’s] federal overreach, and I will work with the state legislature to fight for a stronger assault weapons ban,” Griswold said on social media after the event.
