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 — because both sides in the Del Toro/CSSA lawsuit put them into a public court filing.

Where the numbers came from

CSSA's preliminary injunction motion — the one asking the court to block SB25-003's permit requirement while the underlying case proceeds — got a formal response from the state on September 1, 2026. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser's office, representing Governor Polis, Colorado Parks and Wildlife director Laura Clellan, and Weiser himself, filed declarations from two CPW officials: Kirk Teklits, the agency's manager of business operations, and Dan Coil, CPW's firearm safety program manager.

The numbers themselves

In August 2026 — the program's first month — more than 3,500 people submitted eligibility card applications. Of those, 1,125 cards were actually issued, across 39 different sheriff's offices statewide. From there, 502 people went on to complete a safety course and pass the required exam: 409 through the basic four-hour course (available to people with existing hunter education), and 93 through the full 12-hour extended course. Separately, 330 firearm instructors have set up accounts in CPW's tracking database, which the industry uses to verify who's completed what.

On timing, Teklits's declaration put the average gap between a completed application and card issuance at 10.9 days, and the average gap between getting the card and completing the course at another 11 days — call it roughly three weeks total for someone moving through the process without delay.

Two very different readings of the same data

CSSA's own operations director, Daniel Fenlason, characterized the 502 course completions against the roughly 3,500 initial applications as a "14% completion rate" that he says demonstrates a system that isn't functioning. The state's filing draws the opposite conclusion from the same underlying numbers, noting that eligibility cards remain valid for five years and cardholders do not have to take a course immediately.

The different stages should not be collapsed into one number. Subtracting 1,125 issued cards from roughly 3,500 applications leaves about 2,375 applicants who had not yet been issued a card—not 2,375 cardholders who had failed to complete training. Among the 1,125 issued cards, 502 course completions were reported, leaving 623 issued-card holders who had not yet completed a course at that snapshot in time. Coil's declaration called the number who had already finished "a testament to the fact that the courses are widely available" and noted he'd received unsolicited positive feedback from participants.

The state's filing also pushed back specifically on CSSA's supporting evidence, arguing that the declarations CSSA submitted from prospective buyers were "mostly supported by anecdotal evidence and speculation over wait times and costs" rather than data — pointing out that CSSA's own declarants reported application timelines under two weeks and costs around $82, numbers the state says undercut rather than support the claim that the system is unworkable.

The sheriff non-participation issue resurfaces

CSSA's motion leaned in part on a declaration from Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell, describing his office's refusal to participate in processing eligibility cards on cost and constitutional grounds — the same pattern of sheriff non-participation we covered in our piece on county-by-county enforcement, just a different county than Montezuma. The state's response argues this doesn't help CSSA's case: if a specific sheriff won't do their part, that's a potential claim against that sheriff in a separate suit, not evidence that the statute itself is unconstitutional.

The argument buried in the filing that goes further than the numbers

Separate from the rollout statistics, the state's filing makes a legal argument worth flagging on its own: beyond defending the permit scheme as a constitutional "shall-issue" licensing system under Bruen, the state argued in the alternative that Colorado could lawfully ban specified semiautomatic firearms outright, since roughly ten other states already prohibit them and "all but one circuit to consider assault weapons bans since Bruen have upheld those laws' constitutionality." The filing goes as far as arguing that SSFs covered by SB25-003 "are not arms protected by the Second Amendment" at all. That's a considerably more aggressive position than simply defending the permit process, and it's a live preview of exactly the argument now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court in a separate, unrelated case — a connection significant enough that we're covering it as its own post.

Bottom line

No ruling has come out of this filing yet — it's the state's response to CSSA's request for a preliminary injunction, not a decision. But it's the first real data anyone has put in front of a court about how the eligibility-card system is actually functioning a month in, and predictably, both sides read the same numbers as proving their point.

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