Look, I've been selling guns in Colorado for years. I've seen plenty of bad legislation come through, but what happened here is a new low—even by anti-gun politician standards.
Colorado's SB25-003 technically takes effect August 1st. But here's the trick: because Colorado forces buyers to wait three days before taking possession of ANY firearm, the actual deadline to start a purchase was July 28th. Anyone who walked into a shop on July 29th or later got caught in the transition trap—still stuck in the waiting period when the new ban kicked in.
The state used one unconstitutional infringement (the waiting period) to speed up another (the semi-auto ban). That's not coincidence—that's by design.
Now starting August 1st, if you want to buy a covered semi-automatic firearm in Colorado, you gotta jump through hoops that would make the DMV jealous. We're talking mandatory training courses, tests you need to score 90% on, state databases, fees, and permission from the government before you can exercise a right that the Constitution says "shall not be infringed."
Here's what really gets me: they claim this isn't a ban because current owners can keep what they have. That's garbage. The right to keep and bear arms means nothing if the next generation can't acquire them. You can't "keep" an arm you're forbidden to buy. This is a gradual eradication strategy—let existing guns wear out while banning new purchases.
The Colorado State Shooting Association is fighting this in court through Del Toro v. Polis, and they're right to do so. Under the Supreme Court's text-and-history approach, Colorado has zero historical tradition of requiring ordinary citizens to get government permission, pay fees, and complete tests before buying common firearms. Founding-era militia laws assumed citizens would own arms, not ask the state for approval.
What changes on August 1st isn't the Constitution—it's the bureaucratic obstacle course Colorado put between law-abiding citizens and their rights. This is exactly the kind of overreach that makes people question whether these politicians even understand what a right is.
If you're a Colorado resident affected by this, know that the fight isn't over. The courts are going to have the final say, and the odds are better than you might think.