Federal Judge Says Gun Owners Failed to Prove AR-15s Are Protected ‘Arms,’ Refuses to Block Colorado’s Semiauto Permit-to-Purchase Scheme

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

DENVER, CO — A federal judge on Wednesday, Nov. 4, refused to block Colorado’s permit-to-purchase scheme for semiautomatic firearms. Along the way, he found that the gun owners challenging it had not shown that the rifles, shotguns, and handguns it covers are “arms” protected by the Second Amendment at all. Senior U.S. District Judge William J. Martínez denied the motion for a preliminary injunction in Del Toro v. Polis. That is the order that would have frozen enforcement of the law while the lawsuit plays out. The requirements stay in force.

The plaintiffs are Israel Del Toro, Luke Sorensen, Nathanael Skiver, Jason Reeves, and Garrett Flicker. They are joined by the Colorado State Shooting Association, which the order describes as the official state association of the NRA. They sued Gov. Jared Polis, Attorney General Philip Weiser, Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael J. Allen, and Laura Clellan, acting director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The target is Senate Bill 25-003, which Polis signed on April 10, 2025. The law also contains provisions banning possession of “rapid-fire devices,” but those were not part of this motion. The plaintiffs asked the court to block only Sections Two and Three, the permit-to-purchase pieces that took effect Aug. 1, 2026.

Here is how the scheme works, per the order’s summary of C.R.S. § 18-12-116. It is now unlawful to buy or sell a “specified semiautomatic firearm” unless you have completed state-approved training. That covers semiautomatic rifles and shotguns with detachable magazines, plus “gas-operated” semiautomatic handguns with detachable magazines. Excluded are guns that only fire .22 or smaller rimfire, bolt, pump, lever, and slide actions, certain recoil-operated handguns, and a list of enumerated models.

Before you can even enroll in a class, you need a firearms safety course eligibility card from your county sheriff. The application requires several pieces:

• Attestations that you are not prohibited from owning a gun.
• A government ID.
• Results of a third-party background check.
• A non-refundable fee.

The card is good for five years. Then comes the class, in person, taught by a sheriff-verified instructor. You can take a basic course of at least four hours paired with hunter education, or an extended course of at least 12 hours over two days. The curriculum covers safe handling, storage, child safety, firearm deaths associated with mental illness, extreme risk protection orders, and “victim awareness and empathy.” There is an exam, and the basic course requires a score of at least 90%. The instructor reports your completion to a statewide database run by Parks and Wildlife, which dealers use to verify you before the sale.

The sheriff “shall” issue the card to an applicant who submits the required paperwork and fee. The sheriff “may” deny it on a “reasonable belief that the documented previous behavior by the applicant makes it likely the applicant will present a danger to themselves or others.” A denied applicant can go to court. For a reasonable-belief denial, the sheriff must prove the danger by clear and convincing evidence, a higher bar than the usual civil standard.

The plaintiffs described a rollout that was not ready. They said Parks and Wildlife did not release the training curriculum until the second half of July 2026, two weeks before the law took effect. They also pointed to these problems:

• A short supply of instructors, and some counties with no classes at all.
• No apparent accommodations for applicants with disabilities.
• The legislature handed administration to Colorado’s 64 county sheriffs without adequate funding or guidance, and some sheriffs refused to process applications.
• One declarant calculated a potential total cost of nearly $600 in fees and training.

The ruling turns on the Supreme Court’s Bruen framework, which works in two steps. First, the challenger has to show the Second Amendment’s text covers what they want to do. If they clear that, the burden shifts to the government to show the law fits the nation’s historical tradition of gun regulation. Martínez agreed the plaintiffs are part of “the people” and that buying a gun is protected conduct, since the right to bear arms includes a right to acquire them. He stopped them on the third element, whether the guns themselves count as protected “arms.”

The plaintiffs argued Colorado’s definition sweeps in more than 800 models, including the AR-15. They cited the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2025 opinion in Smith & Wesson v. Mexico calling it the most popular rifle in America. Martínez said they had the logic backward and wrote that common use is a necessary condition for protection but not a sufficient one. “In other words, if a gun is not in common use, then it is not protected by the Second Amendment; but the reverse is not also true,” the order states.

From there, the court leaned on the state’s experts:

• Professor Robert J. Spitzer testified that multi-shot firearms were historically experimental, military, or too rare for wide civilian circulation.
• James Yurgealitis testified that today’s semiautomatics have not changed since their origins as military weapons.
• Lucy P. Allen testified it is “extremely rare” for someone to fire more than 10 to 15 rounds in self-defense.

The judge quoted the Fourth Circuit’s Bianchi decision calling the AR-15 “a combat rifle that is both ill-suited and disproportionate to self-defense.” He found the plaintiffs failed to carry their burden at step one, and said that ends the inquiry.

This is the part of the order that reaches past Colorado. Under the Tenth Circuit’s approach, the gun owner has to prove the rifle is an “arm” before the state ever has to defend its law with history. Here, a judge looked at the most popular rifle in the country and found that popularity alone did not get it through the door. The order itself acknowledges that the federal appeals courts are split on this question. It notes the Third Circuit has held semiautomatic rifles are “arms,” while the Fourth and Seventh Circuits have held the opposite. The judge wrote that the Supreme Court is likely to resolve it this term in Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238. That case may matter more for this lawsuit than anything argued in Denver.

Martínez also gave a second, independent reason. Even if the guns were protected, he found the scheme is a “shall-issue” licensing system, which Bruen and Heller treat as presumptively constitutional. Shall-issue is the model most readers know from carry permits: meet the objective criteria and the official must issue. The order notes 43 states ran carry licensing that way when Bruen was decided, and you can see how each state handles it in my concealed carry permit information by state. Bruen’s footnote specifically mentioned background checks and firearms safety courses as acceptable parts of such a system.

The plaintiffs argued that the shall-issue presumption only applies to carrying in public, not buying. The judge called that “a distinction without a difference.” They argued the sheriff’s reasonable-belief power turns the law into a discretionary “may-issue” system. He disagreed, writing that “discretion under SB25-003 is the exception, not the rule.” He compared it to a Connecticut “suitable person” standard that Bruen treated as operating like shall-issue.

A shall-issue law can still be struck down if it is “put toward abusive ends,” like long waits or exorbitant fees. The plaintiffs brought two kinds of challenges. A facial challenge says the law is unconstitutional in virtually every application. An as-applied challenge says it is unconstitutional in the plaintiffs’ particular circumstances. The court rejected both on this record. The state’s numbers as of Sept. 1, 2026, carried weight:

• 3,574 applications submitted to sheriffs.
• 1,125 eligibility cards issued by 39 county sheriffs.
• An average of 10.9 days from application to card.
• An average of 11 more days from card to course completion.
• 502 people who finished the course, with none failing the exam.

The actual fees declarants reported were $30 or $35 for a background check and a $52 record-system fee.

The judge noted most of the plaintiffs’ declarations were filed only ten days after the Aug. 1 start date and described what the law would require. “At the very worst, these declarations reflect ordinary administrative challenges that may accompany the initial implementation of a new regulatory program in the very first days of its existence,” he wrote. The Teller County sheriff described uncertainty about how to judge whether an applicant is dangerous. The Custer County sheriff said he planned to approve applicants unless they were felons or had been adjudicated mentally incompetent. The court said that evidence “may support a request for clearer administrative guidance” but does not show abuse. The disability and non-English speaker arguments were thrown out because they were not in the amended complaint.

The state’s own figures cut both ways. Fewer than a third of the applications filed by Sept. 1 had produced a card, and 39 sheriffs had issued them out of the 64 the plaintiffs say administer the program. The court read that as a working system in its first weeks. On a fuller record later in the case, that same gap is the kind of evidence an as-applied challenge would be built on.

I push training and mindset harder than gear on this site, and a good class makes anyone a safer, more capable gun owner. That is not what this case is about. The question is whether the state can make a sheriff’s card and a state-written classroom curriculum the price of buying a common rifle. For now, this court says it can.

On the last two factors, the court weighed the harm to the state and the public interest together, as courts do when the government is the defendant. Martínez relied on a friend-of-the-court brief from the Brady Center and Giffords Law Center. The brief said Colorado had 77 mass shootings from 2014 to 2023, with 103 killed and 299 injured.

More from USA Carry:

• Fifth Circuit Strikes Down the 1958 Federal Switchblade Act’s Interstate Ban, Holding Switchblades Are Protected Arms and the Right to Keep Them Includes the Right to Make, Ship, and Sell Them
• GOA: Federal Judge Rules Biden’s Ghost Gun Rule Unconstitutional and Too Vague to Enforce
• Federal Judge Lets Out-of-State Gun Owners’ Challenge to Massachusetts Carry Permit Delays Proceed, Tosses Facial Claim
• Federal Judge Strikes Down New York’s First-of-Its-Kind Body Armor Ban, Rules Body Armor Is an ‘Arm’ Protected by the Second Amendment
• Federal Judge Refuses to Block Maryland’s Glock Ban, Ruling the State Can Regulate ‘Excessively Dangerous Weapons’

This was a ruling on a preliminary injunction, not a final judgment on the merits. The state’s motion to dismiss the case is still pending, and the court said it will address that, along with the shooting association’s standing to sue, in separate forthcoming orders.

I will continue tracking Del Toro v. Polis in the District of Colorado, along with Viramontes v. Cook County at the Supreme Court.

Read the original story: Federal Judge Says Gun Owners Failed to Prove AR-15s Are Protected ‘Arms,’ Refuses to Block Colorado’s Semiauto Permit-to-Purchase Scheme