February 18, 2025 03:27 PM UTC

How We Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The New Gun Bill

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Summit Daily’s Robert Tann reports, the Colorado Senate passed on final third reading today a contentious but broadly misunderstood piece of gun safety legislation, much modified from its original form of a strict ban on semiautomatic weapons meeting specific criteria in common with the definition of an assault rifle into a new training requirement for anyone who wants to purchase the affected weapons:

The Colorado Senate voted 19-15 Tuesday to approve a bill restricting the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms, but only for those who don’t undergo state-mandated training.

Senate Bill 3, sponsored by Sens. Tom Sullivan, D-Centennial, and Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, sought to prohibit the sale, purchase and manufacture of high-powered guns that accept detachable magazines. Bill sponsors pitched the measure as a way of enforcing the state’s existing ban on magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

But the legislation faced a major amendment last week following a marathon debate on the Senate floor and now allows Coloradans to purchase otherwise prohibited guns so long as they complete a safety course.

As we discussed last week, the bill as amended creates a new certification program for purchasers of the restricted types of  weapons, which can include the hunter safety course hunters must already take in addition to material specific to owning machines designed to kill humans in large numbers–like ethics and information about the state’s Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) law. This compromise was reportedly brokered by Gov. Jared Polis’ office to gain his assent before putting the bill to a Senate vote. The larger progressive majority in the House is expected to pass the bill easily.

Although the gun lobby hasn’t changed its message that Senate Bill 3 is “the worst gun bill in American history” since it was amended from a prohibition into a training requirement, the bill as amended is much more difficult to rationally oppose. As we wrote previously, the original bill affected far fewer types of guns than the wild speculation about its plain language supposed, and now what was a ban is a training requirement. The training requirement in the bill can really only be opposed by hard-line Second Amendment purists who refuse to consider any limits on access to guns including the laws on the books today.

In fact, once the dust settles from the controversy over the bill’s passage, there’s a good chance the gun lobby will find a way to make it work:

Gun buyers would have two options. For those who’ve already obtained a hunter’s license through Colorado Parks and Wildlife, they would need to take an additional four-hour course. For those who haven’t, they would need to undergo a 12-hour course over two days that would be offered through a local sheriff’s office and administered by a qualified firearms instructor. [Pols emphasis]

Because what Democrats have done with Senate Bill 3 is create a whole new market for firearms instruction courses! If we were Laura Carno, longtime gun rights activist and founder of the firearms training program FASTER Colorado, we would be crying all the way to the bank. The one caveat is that the course will be obligated to provide accurate information about Colorado gun laws including the ERPO law to all new assault weapons purchasers–and telling the truth about gun safety measures steeped in misinformed controversy has proven difficult for Republicans and gun lobby activists for over a decade.

A new training requirement will slow down and rationalize firearm purchases that might otherwise end in tragedy, and for gun lovers the sky will not fall. That’s the kind of incremental progress our system is supposed to deliver.