Gun rights group asks court to pause permit-to-purchase scheme

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....