Plain-language guides to Colorado firearm rules, requirements, and state guidance—what they mean and what firearm owners should know.
We wrote last month about the relationship between Colorado's pending firearms litigation and two Supreme Court cases that had not yet been scheduled. The Court has now set an argument da…
Read articleWe've covered the Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF ruling when it came down and again when the stay expired. Two updates are worth flagging now: the government's ordinary appeal window on…
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Everything we've written about the SSF eligibility-card process has been about how it's supposed to work. Now, for the first time, we have real numbers on how it's actually going — becaus…
Read articleWe wrote recently about Howeth v. City and County of Denver — the lawsuit arguing that Colorado's resident-only concealed-permit rule, combined with Denver's open-carry ban, leaves certai…
Read articleThis is a federal question, not a Colorado one, but it's exactly the kind of federal rule that shapes what Colorado buyers can and can't do when they want to buy a handgun from a dealer o…
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If you're a Colorado gun owner who occasionally sells a firearm from a personal collection, this federal development is worth knowing about. A federal district court vacated ATF's 2024 ru…
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This part of SB25-003 receives less attention than the eligibility-card provisions, largely because it took effect more than a year earlier. It has no express grandfather clause, and we h…
Read articleThis is a strange enough gap in the law that it took a lawsuit to lay it out clearly, so here's the mechanics of it — and the case now challenging it.
Read articleWe wrote recently about how Colorado's 15-round magazine cap actually works — the statute, the definition, the July 2013 grandfather date. What we didn't get into is that the law itself,…
Read articleWe've spent most of this site on SB25-003. It's a different, older Colorado gun law that just had oral arguments in federal court this week — and if you've been asking "what's the status…
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This is a high-stakes question worth addressing from the current statutory text rather than shorthand. Colorado uses different rules for firearms and other deadly weapons on school proper…
Read articleThis is one of the most-asked questions we see, and it makes sense why: Colorado has a large legal marijuana market, plenty of medical and recreational users also own firearms, and the an…
Read articleShort answer: Colorado does not have a general firearm-signage statute that automatically turns entry into a weapons offense at every private business. But a sign can communicate a proper…
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This question comes up constantly, and the honest answer is that most people asking it are actually asking two different questions at once without realizing it — one about handguns, one a…
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This rule predates SB25-003 by more than a decade, but it remains one of the most common questions we see—especially from people who moved here after it took effect. Colorado generally re…
Read articleEvery other Colorado firearms bill from the last two sessions gets argued about constantly—SB25-003, the ammunition rules, the magazine cap. SB25-205 is different. It received less attent…
Read articleThe injunction in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF is now in effect. The federal government did not seek an emergency stay or file an appeal before the district court’s seven-day pause exp…
Read articleShort answer: Colorado does not separately prohibit stabilizing braces, and attaching something marketed as a brace does not automatically turn every pistol into a federally regulated sho…
Read articleSince August 1, Colorado sheriffs have continued criticizing SB25-003. That kind of opposition tends to produce two reactions: relief if it comes from your sheriff, or curiosity about whe…
Read articleWe've mentioned the film-prop exception in passing in a couple of other posts without ever unpacking it. It's a narrow provision, but Colorado has an active film industry, so it's worth l…
Read articleA federal judge has blocked enforcement of major parts of the National Firearms Act for certain plaintiffs, members, and customers. For people covered by the ruling, that could eventually…
Read articleAlmost everything written about legal challenges to SB25-003 — including our own coverage of Del Toro v. Polis — is really coverage of one thing: a federal Second Amendment claim. That's…
Read articleBy now you've likely seen the news out of Twin Falls, Idaho: a mass shooting at an In-N-Out Burger on August 1, 2026, that left three victims dead and seven people injured before the gunm…
Read articleThis one isn't SB25-003. It's a separate bill — HB25-1133, "Requirements for Sale of Firearms Ammunition" — and it took full effect on July 1, 2026. We're covering it here because we keep…
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We've written about the Wildey Survivor as an obscure gas-operated pistol that lands on Colorado's SSF list almost by accident of engineering. The Desert Eagle is the opposite case: a gen…
Read articleOf all the questions we get, this might be the easiest one to answer with a flat no: revolvers have nothing to do with SB25-003. Not the recoil-operated exception, not the gas-operated de…
Read articleWe already covered why a Ruger 10/22 isn't a specified semiautomatic firearm despite some early rumors. The same question comes up for .22LR pistols — a Ruger Mark IV, a Browning Buckmark…
Read articleBetween the eligibility card, the safety course, and the guidance list, it's easy to come away from all of this thinking every gun purchase in Colorado just got harder. If you're buying a…
Read articleWe've written a lot about this law from the buyer's side. If you're the one behind the counter, the operational changes are just as real — and the stakes for getting them wrong are higher…
Read articleColorado's SSF guidance list isn't a one-time snapshot. The state built ongoing revision into the process from the start, and that matters for how much weight you should put on today's ve…
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With every Colorado resident who wants to buy an SSF after August 1 needing to complete a Basic or Extended course, verified instructors are suddenly in real demand. Here's what the path…
Read articleColorado's SSF guidance list clearly has AR- and AK-pattern pistols in mind for its "gas-operated semiautomatic handgun" category — that's the overwhelming majority of what's in that sect…
Read articleYou can purchase an SSF like normal until August 1, 2026. After that, the process is quite a bit longer and more expensive. Everything below assumes you're a Colorado resident who can oth…
Read articleColorado's guidance list is long, but it isn't the final word — and the state built a formal process for resolving disagreements about it, right into the same document.
Read articleWe've seen the theory floated online: buy a stripped lower receiver from one place and an upper from another, never buy a "complete SSF" in one transaction, and skip the eligibility card…
Read articleIt's tempting to treat Colorado's new ~900-model SSF guidance list as a checklist: find your rifle, and if it's not there, you're fine. That's not how it actually works, and the state's o…
Read articleOn July 1, 2026, the Firearms Dealer Division (FDD) — the part of the Colorado Department of Revenue tasked with implementing SB25-003 — published its official guidance on which specific…
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We flagged this as something we needed to dig into further when we first covered grandfathering, and after spending more time with it, "open question" is still the honest answer — but we…
Read articleIn our grandfathering post, we flagged this as an open question rather than a settled one, and it comes up often enough to deserve its own look: what happens if you move to Colorado alrea…
Read article"Grandfathered" gets thrown around a lot in conversations about this law, often doing more work than it can actually support. Here's a precise breakdown of what it does and doesn't cover.
Read articleWe've seen this claim circulating since the draft guidance came out in May: that rimfire rifles, including something as common as a Ruger 10/22, got swept into Colorado's new semiautomati…
Read articleGiven how much national controversy pistol braces have generated over the past several years, it's a reasonable assumption that they'd get special treatment in Colorado's new law. They do…
Read articleSB25-003 gets most of the attention, but it isn't the only significant firearms bill Colorado passed heading into 2026. Governor Polis signed HB26-1144 on May 4, 2026, and it takes effect…
Read articleThis is probably the single most common point of confusion about who's affected by Colorado's new SSF rules on the handgun side. The short version: it's not about how scary a pistol looks…
Read articleOne of the less-discussed exceptions in SB25-003 is also one of the more actionable: a semiautomatic rifle or shotgun with a permanently fixed magazine that can't hold more than 15 rounds…
Read articleBuilding a rifle from an unfinished ("80%") receiver has been a legal, if regulated, hobby in Colorado for years — subject to the state's existing unserialized-firearm law (C.R.S. 18-12-1…
Read articleBuried in the exceptions to the "specified semiautomatic firearm" definition is a list most casual readers of SB25-003 miss entirely: 35 specific rifle models, named individually, that ar…
Read articleEverything we've written about SB25-003's eligibility card and safety course requirement comes with an asterisk: it's being challenged in federal court, and a ruling against the state cou…
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Most coverage of SB25-003 focuses on the process — the eligibility card, the safety course, the purchase steps. Less gets said about what actually happens if someone violates the law, and…
Read articleAlong with the rapid-fire device definition change we cover in Rapid Fire Devices, SB25-003 also adds a definition of "semiautomatic firearm" to C.R.S. 18-12-101. This is the part of the…
Read articleSB25-003 repeals the existing "machine gun conversion device" definition in C.R.S. 18-12-101 (Peace officer affirmative defense – definitions) and replaces it with a new term: "rapid-fire…
Read articleSB25-003 was signed into law by Colorado’s governor on April 10, 2025. Most of the act took effect immediately, but its central provision — a ban on purchasing, selling, or transferring c…
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