DENVER — People in Colorado will soon have to pass a background check and complete a state-sanctioned safety course to buy most semiautomatic guns with detachable magazines under a bill signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday.
Colorado, which has seen some of the country’s worst mass shootings — including the 2022 killings at the LGBTQ+ nightspot Club Q in Colorado Springs and the 1999 Columbine High School massacre — joins nearly a dozen other states in requiring some level of safety training or an exam to purchase a firearm.
One of the most restrictive gun control measures to be passed in the state as part of a long-running Democratic campaign to curtail gun violence, the law takes full effect in August 2026.
“We can’t afford not to do all we can to change the continuing impact of gun violence,” said bill sponsor and state Sen. Tom Sullivan, whose son, Alex, was killed in a 2013 shooting at a theater in Aurora. Speaking at the bill signing, he added that the measure is “just the next step we have undertaken on that effort.”
Republicans and other opponents contend that the measure violates the Second Amendment, and at last one organization, Rocky Mountain Gun owners, was considering a legal challenge.
The several layers of hurdles that the law requires to purchase these guns, and the accompanying costs and potential backlogs, make “it a more or less administrative ban,” said Ian Escalante, executive director of the gun rights group.
Previous attempts at securing an all-out ban on certain semiautomatic guns, as has been done in deeply Democratic states including New York and California, floundered in more purple Colorado where many including the governor have something of a libertarian streak.
“I really think this bill will make Colorado communities safer and prevent both accidents as well as reduce gun violence, and ultimately that means saving lives while protecting our Second Amendment rights,” Polis said.
The proposal was watered down from a flat ban on sale of most semiautomatics with detachable magazines, including rifles and some pistols. Proponents argued that allowing only permanently attached magazines would force a would-be shooter to reload bullet by bullet.
The final bill as signed is a concession to Polis and other Democrats wary of going too far.
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Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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