This session’s most significant gun bill went before the Senate’s State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee, where witnesses spoke for over eight hours about mass shootings, the Second Amendment, and gun safety. 

Senate Bill 003, sponsored by Sen. Tom Sullivan, D-Centennial, and Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, and Reps. Andrew Boesenecker, D-Fort Collins, and Meg Froelich, D-Englewood, would prohibit the manufacturing, distribution, transfer, and sale of semiautomatic firearms with detachable magazines and gas-operated semiautomatic handguns with detachable magazines. 

After hours of testimony the measure was passed in a 3-2 vote along party lines.

Exceptions would be made for inherited firearms, transfers to individuals in other states, firearms with attached tubular magazines, federally licensed firearm dealers, prop guns used in movies, and firearms purchased by law enforcement officers.

Violations would result in a Class 2 misdemeanor charge, with subsequent offenses constituting Class 6 felonies.

The bill also allows the Department of Revenue to revoke the permits of firearms dealers who violate the law and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to deny firearm transfer to individuals convicted of violating the law within five years before the transfer.

Colorado moves into top 10 for strongest gun laws

Several major pieces of gun legislation have put Colorado on the map among gun safety advocacy groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, which moved the state up from 12th to 10th on its annual rankings of states with the strongest gun laws. 

According to Allison Shih, Everytown’s senior counsel, three bills passed during the 2024 legislative session helped boost Colorado into the top 10: one requiring firearms dealers to obtain a state permit, one requiring concealed carry permit applicants to attend a training class, and a ballot measure imposing an excise tax on the sale of firearms and ammunition

“That’s huge, and that’s a whole lot in one year,” said Shih. “It was a really big year for Colorado after a number of really big years, particularly in the last decade.”

While the state already has a 15-round magazine capacity cap, Shih says it’s easy for someone to purchase a higher-capacity magazine from another state and bring it back to Colorado, which is what the perpetrators of the 2021 Boulder King Soopers shooting the 2022 Club Q shooting did. 

Shih dismissed arguments that SB 003 could be considered unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen ruling, which recognized for the first time an individual’s right to carry a loaded gun in public for self-defense.

Similar laws in other states have been challenged in federal circuit courts numerous times, and the courts have always ruled they were constitutional. “These laws are not new, and they’re not novel,” Shih said, adding that California’s “assault weapons” ban has been in effect since 1989. 

“At this point, the opposition saying this is unconstitutional under Bruen sort of strains credulity when you have more than a dozen federal courts and three federal circuit courts saying that this is consistent with the history and tradition of firearm regulations in the United States,” Shih said. “They have all said that these firearms are not in common use for self-defense.”

“The most restrictive piece of gun control ever filed in Colorado history”

At a rally outside the Capitol before the hearing, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners executive director Ian Escalante called the bill “the most restrictive piece of gun control ever filed in Colorado history.”

“We have probably the most beautiful state and what used to be the most free state in the nation, and they have ruined it,” he said of Democratic lawmakers. “They have destroyed it.”

Escalante promised rallygoers he’d make sure Democratic lawmakers who voted in favor of gun control measures “pay retribution,” adding that he has launched websites demanding several Democratic lawmakers be recalled.

“I don’t care that they’re up for reelection next year. We will go after them,” he said.

Ava Flanell, a firearms instructor from Colorado Springs, said fixed magazines are more dangerous than detachable ones, as unloading them is more complicated.

Many gun owners use cable locks on their firearms to prevent accidental discharges, but that’s only possible with detachable magazine weapons.

“The intent of this legislation is to promote safety, but statistics show it will create more accidents and take more lives,” she said. “It’s a de facto ban that will make compliant versions of firearms unsafe.”

El Paso County undersheriff Jeff Kramer called the bill an unconstitutional overreach of government, adding that none of the gun bills passed in recent years have had much of an effect on public safety.

“This bill is no different,” he said. “It is a politically-driven, unconstitutional gun control bill. Even if a specific set of firearms are banned, many other types of weapons can still be used to commit crimes.”

Ray Elliott, president of the Colorado State Shooting Association, said the bill was the equivalent of last session’s assault weapons ban, which failed to pass and would ban the most sold gun in the country and the most popular self-defense weapons.

“All these bills are an attempt to ban law-abiding citizens from owning any firearms and do nothing to stop violent crime,” he said. “I understand that some of you may be in favor of this, and believe it will result in safer communities. Let me assure you, the exact opposite is true.”

The bill passed on party lines, with Sens. Mike Weissman, D-Aurora, Matt Ball, D-Denver, and Sullivan voting in favor and Sens. Rod Pelton, R-Cheyenne Wells, and Byron Pelton, R-Sterling, voting against it.

“A pathway forward”

Sen. Sullivan, whose son Alex was killed in the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting, spoke of his first time at the Capitol in 2013 testifying in favor of the state’s magazine limit. 

According to Sullivan, because there had been no enforcement mechanism for that bill, firearms dealers around the state have continued to sell high-capacity magazines. Now that the Colorado Bureau of Investigation has the authority to enforce the magazine limit through a recently enacted permit requirement for firearms dealers, Sullivan argued the next logical step was to enact a ban on semiautomatic firearms commonly used in mass shootings. 

Sullivan clarified that the bill would not affect firearms people already owned, just ones purchased after Sept. 1. 

“I will never be the firearms expert that many of you claim to be, and I don’t ever want to be,” he said. “I can say that I have heard it all on this matter, and I believe Senate Bill 003 is a pathway forward. It will not impact a single firearm you presently own. This will be about the next one, possibly the first one for the next mass shooter in our state.”

Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said his city adopted an ordinance banning the sale or possession of certain types of firearms, including semiautomatic weapons 2018. However, a district court ruled that state law preempts municipal ordinances, overturning the ban. Three years later, the gunman in the King Soopers shooting used a semiautomatic pistol to kill 10 people.

“That weapon that was used in the King Soopers shooting would’ve been illegal to purchase, possess, or use in Boulder just 10 days before this grievous atrocity,” Brockett said.

Later that year, the General Assembly became the first in the nation to overturn most of its firearm preemption statute, allowing the City of Boulder to reenact its assault weapons ban.