Guess What Happened to Colorado Gun Sales Ahead of New Restrictions

When Ben Franklin wrote “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except for death and taxes,” he had no inkling that 237 years later there would be another certainty to be had: increased gun sales as a result of Democrats passing new restrictions. 

The same phenomenon that we recently witnessed ahead of Virginia’s now-paused ban on the sale of “assault firearms” hit Colorado last month, as buyers flocked to gun shops before the state’s new permit-to-purchase law on AR-15s and other specified semi-automatic firearms took effect on August 1. 

According to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, background checks on gun purchases climbed by about 300 percent compared to July 2025. 

CBI reported 59,452 background checks in July 2026, up from about 20,000 in July 2025. Toward the end of the month, the agency was running as many as 3,700 background checks in a day. In July 2025, the agency barely cracked 1,000 a day at the highest points of that month. The background checks are a required part of buying a gun.

The surge in background checks preceded Senate Bill 25-3 going into full effect on Saturday. The new law applies to people looking to buy semiautomatic rifles and shotguns that have detachable magazines or gas-operated pistols — weapons popularly conceived of as assault-style rifles.

The Denver Post got the “popular” part right, but these firearms are not “popularly conceived of” as assault-style rifles,… unless you’re a huge fan of government oppression and treating a fundamental civil right like it’s a privilege that should be carefully doled out by the state.

Colorado’s new law doesn’t ban the sale of these popular guns, but it does make it a much more expensive and time-consuming process. As I outlined over the weekend as the new law took effect:

Under the new law, anyone who’s taken a hunter safety course within the past five years will have to take an additional four hours of training before they can provide proof of their training with their local sheriff, who is tasked with issuing the Firearms Safety Course Eligibility Card to applicants. Those who haven’t already taken a hunter safety course will have to undergo 12 hours of training before they can go any further. 

I’ve seen 4-hour courses offered for around $125 and the 12-hour course for $249, so this training mandate imposes an additional financial burden to gun owners, even before the state’s 11 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition kicks in when the gun is actually purchased. Applicants are also responsible for paying for a background check conducted by a third party, the results of which must be handed over to the sheriff as part of the application for an eligibility card. 

Counties can also charge a fee for issuing the Firearms Safety Course Eligibility Card, though some sheriffs have decided to issue the cards without charge. 

How long will it take to obtain the eligibility card is an open question, because the Colorado law imposes no deadline at all on the sheriffs. Another issue is that sheriffs “may deny an application for a firearms course card if the sheriff has a reasonable belief that documented previous behavior by the applicant makes it likely the applicant will present a danger to themself or others if the applicant holds a card.”

While many anti-gun activists will argue that this is a “shall issue” permitting law no different than a shall-issue carry license, but if sheriffs can deny someone a Firearms Safety Course Eligibility Card even though they’ve passed a background check and provided proof of training, I’d say the new law is one of those “may issue” schemes that the Supreme Court said was a no-no in Bruen. 

That case was also about the right to carry, not the right to keep an arm at home or to acquire one from a gun store. We don’t know what SCOTUS might say about a licensing regime to simply possess or purchase a firearm, but even if they were to sign off on the broad contours of such a scheme, I can’t imagine that they would bless a system that allows someone to purchase a semi-automatic handgun, lever-action rifle, and a pump-action shotgun while denying them the ability to purchase a semi-automatic rifle or other arm that falls under the state’s new restrictions. 

Second Amendment advocates also got a gift from Colorado State Sen. Tom Sullivan, who told the Colorado Sun that the new law is “effectively a ban” on the regulated firearms.

“In essence, we have it,” Sullivan said.

That quote will come in handy in the ongoing litigation, especially if/when the Supreme Court strikes down bans on so-called assault firearms. Sullivan has admitted that the intent of his legislation is to block people from buying and possessing commonly owned arms. We all knew this, of course, but it’s still surprising to see him admit it. 

I was wrong about one thing in my weekend post, though. I wrote that as of July 31 there were 2,500 background checks that had yet to be completed, and I would be surprised if the CBI managed to get through them all before August 1. According to the agency, they did it. 

In an interview, CBI Director Armando Saldate III praised his staff for completing all background checks within the 72-hour waiting period for buying guns.

CBI added 20 people to its background check team, doubling the staff. He said they were still stretched about as far as they could go. He expected the demand for the InstaCheck background checks to drop in August and look closer to historic averages in coming months.

“We understand that with this new law, and with the new parameters, with the training, with the permitting requirements, that by Aug. 1, all of the transactions had to be completed,” Saldate said. “We were really trying to do our part to make sure we weren’t part of a problem that reared its head once this implementation started.”

That’s actually really good to see. CBI could have hosed thousands of gun buyers if they didn’t complete those checks by August 1, which would have required those purchasers to go through the additional steps imposed by Democrat lawmakers. Sadly, I think that Saldate is right about the demand dropping in August, and I suspect that sales will be artificially depressed so long as the new law remains in enforceable. 

Hopefully that won’t be too long. There’s already a lawsuit challenging the new restrictions, and even if the district court judge assigned to the case denies the request for an injunction, the Tenth Circuit may very well overturn that decision. The appellate court has already ruled New Mexico’s week-long “cooling off” period on gun sales to be a violation of the Second Amendment, and Colorado’s new restrictions on commonly-owned arms are just as ahistorical as waiting periods are. So long as the appellate court abides by the Supreme Court’s “text, history, and tradition” test, Colorado’s newest gun control law may be a thing of the past in the near future. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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