Colorado’s Semi-Auto Ban Says August 1–But Gun Buyers Were Cut Off July 28
Colorado’s sweeping restrictions on purchasing common semi-automatic firearms formally take effect on August 1, 2026. For law-abiding Coloradans, however, the real deadline arrived three days earlier.
Because Colorado already forces firearm purchasers to endure a mandatory three-day waiting period before taking possession, Tuesday, July 28, was the final practical day to begin an ordinary purchase of a firearm covered by Senate Bill 25-003.
A transaction initiated on July 29 could not be completed until August 1—the same day Colorado begins prohibiting the purchase, sale, or transfer of covered semi-automatic firearms unless the buyer first navigates the state’s new permission process. Colorado has therefore used one infringement on the right to keep and bear arms to accelerate another.
The three-day waiting period did not merely inconvenience prospective gun buyers. It erased the final three days during which Coloradans were supposedly still free to acquire some of America’s most common firearms without first obtaining government approval.
Colorado’s Real Deadline Was July 28
Colorado law prohibits a dealer from delivering a firearm until the later of three days after initiating the required background check or final approval of that background check. Delivering the firearm before that waiting period expires can subject a seller to civil penalties. SB25-003 separately prohibits knowingly manufacturing, distributing, transferring, selling, or purchasing a “specified semiautomatic firearm” beginning August 1.
Put those two laws together, and the practical result is straightforward.
A buyer who began a transaction on July 28 could potentially complete the waiting period and take possession on July 31. A buyer who began the same lawful transaction on July 29 would remain trapped in Colorado’s mandatory waiting period when SB25-003 took effect.
The firearm was lawful to purchase when the transaction began. The purchaser may have passed the required background check and paid the dealer. Yet Colorado itself prevented delivery long enough for a second law to attach and prohibit completion of the transaction.
One Infringement Accelerates Another
Waiting-period advocates commonly dismiss a mandatory delay as a minor inconvenience. A citizen, they argue, can still obtain the firearm eventually. That position misunderstands the nature of a constitutional right.
A person who lawfully purchased and is legally entitled to possess a firearm should not be forced to wait three days before taking possession of his own property. The Second Amendment contains no waiting period, cooling-off period, or exception allowing the government to postpone the right until officials decide enough time has passed.
A constitutional right does not cease being infringed simply because the infringement has a scheduled expiration.
Colorado’s latest maneuver exposes the danger more clearly. Here, the waiting period does not end with the delayed buyer taking possession. Instead, the delay carries the buyer across the effective date of an additional prohibition that may prevent the transaction from being completed at all.
Colorado created a three-day legal barrier and then used that barrier to make its new acquisition ban effective three days early.
Today, CSSA demanded that CBI immediately fix firearm background-check delays now approaching two days.
With SB25-003 taking effect Aug. 1, these delays could block lawful purchases and force Coloradans into the unconstitutional permitting scheme.
We’re already fighting to… pic.twitter.com/RUMyZpcjEf
— Colorado State Shooting Association (@CSSA1926) July 27, 2026
Acquisition Is Protected by the Second Amendment
Anti-gun politicians will claim it is not a firearms ban because Coloradans who already own covered firearms are generally not required to surrender them. That argument is constitutionally hollow.
The right to keep and bear arms necessarily includes the right to acquire them. A citizen cannot keep an arm he is legally forbidden to obtain. He cannot bear an arm that the government prohibits him from purchasing, receiving, or replacing.
A government could destroy the Second Amendment without confiscating a single firearm if it were permitted to outlaw all future acquisition. Existing firearms would eventually break, wear out, become unavailable, or pass out of private hands. Current owners would grow old and die while the next generation remained legally prohibited from acquiring the same arms.
Grandfathering current owners does not transform an acquisition ban into something constitutionally benign. It simply imposes the ban prospectively.
The Second Amendment does not protect only those fortunate enough to own a firearm before a government-selected cutoff date. It protects “the right of the people”—including new gun owners, young adults entering the firearms community, and future generations of Americans.
A Government Permission Slip for Common Arms
Beginning August 1, Coloradans seeking to purchase firearms covered by SB25-003 must first navigate a state-controlled approval system.
The law broadly reaches specified semi-automatic rifles and shotguns with detachable magazines, along with certain gas-operated semi-automatic handguns, such as AR-style pistols.
A prospective buyer must obtain eligibility to participate in the required training process, submit to additional checks and fees, complete state-approved instruction, pass an examination, and have the results entered into a state-maintained record system before a dealer may complete the transaction.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife states that applicants without qualifying hunter education must complete a 12-hour extended firearms course conducted over at least two days. Students must score at least 90 percent on the final examination, after which the instructor has up to three business days to enter the results into the state database.
That is not simply firearm-safety education. It is a permit-to-purchase structure in which the default rule is prohibition and the citizen must obtain the government’s approval to escape it.
For generations, Americans understood that their rights belonged to them—not that those rights were privileges distributed by state officials after payment, instruction, testing, and recordkeeping.
SB25-003 turns that principle upside down.
Where Is the Historical Tradition?
Under the Supreme Court’s text-and-history framework, Colorado bears the burden of demonstrating that its restriction is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
The relevant question is not whether governments historically regulated commercial activity in some general sense. Nor is it enough to find an isolated law involving gunpowder storage, militia inspections, or the misuse of weapons.
Colorado must identify a relevant historical tradition of forcing ordinary, peaceable citizens to obtain government permission, pay government-imposed costs, complete mandatory instruction, pass an examination, and enter a state recordkeeping system before acquiring commonly possessed arms. The historical record points in the opposite direction.
Founding-era militia laws frequently required citizens to acquire arms and appear equipped for service. The law presumed that responsible citizens would possess weapons suitable for lawful defense and the common defense.
Colorado now presumes that citizens may not acquire covered firearms unless they first prove themselves to the government. That is not a historical analogue. It is a reversal of the founding principle.
The Fight Moves to Federal Court
The Colorado State Shooting Association is challenging SB25-003 in federal court in Del Toro v. Polis. The lawsuit argues that the state’s restrictions burden the Second Amendment through delays, costs, training mandates, testing, recordkeeping, and a prohibition on acquiring protected firearms without prior government approval.
CSSA Executive Director Huey Laugesen correctly identified what remains unchanged when the calendar reaches August 1.
“Tomorrow, the Constitution will say exactly what it says today,” Laugesen said. “What changes on August 1 is that the State of Colorado will place a bureaucratic obstacle course between law-abiding citizens and the exercise of a constitutional right.”
Colorado lawmakers may pretend that SB25-003 merely regulates the process of buying a firearm. In reality, the law prohibits acquisition unless a citizen successfully navigates that obstacle course. And because Colorado’s existing waiting period prevented immediate delivery of otherwise lawful purchases, the state began closing that gate on July 29. Three days before the new restriction was officially scheduled to take effect.
About Duncan Johnson:
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor to AmmoLand News and serves as part of the editorial team responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.