Colorado hunters have five months to navigate a new firearms permitting process before buying certain semi-automatic rifles and shotguns becomes a criminal offense. The state isn’t ready, and the law’s opponents are in federal court trying to stop it.
Senate Bill 25-003, signed by Governor Jared Polis on April 10, 2025, prohibits the purchase or transfer of what the law calls a “specified semiautomatic firearm” without first completing a state-mandated safety course. That requirement takes effect August 1, 2026. A hunter who skips the process and buys a covered firearm faces a class 2 misdemeanor. A second offense is a class 6 felony — and a lifetime ban on possessing firearms.
The bill didn’t start as a permit scheme. As introduced January 8, 2025, it was a flat ban on purchasing covered firearms, full stop. The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, the NRA, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, and scores of Coloradans who showed up to testify forced amendments in the Senate that converted the ban into a permit-to-purchase requirement. Ninety-five thousand petition signatures were gathered. Opponents rallied at the Capitol on March 11. None of it stopped passage. Polis signed the bill behind closed doors, off his public calendar, invite only, with no press statement.
The Mountain States Legal Foundation filed suit in U.S. District Court for Colorado on September 2, 2025, on behalf of the Colorado State Shooting Association and six individual plaintiffs. The lead plaintiff, Israel Del Toro, is a decorated Air Force veteran burned over 80 percent of his body by an IED in Afghanistan. He requires force-reset triggers and AR-platform pistols to use firearms at all. The law provides no accommodation for disabled persons. The lawsuit names Governor Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, and 4th Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen as defendants. It argues the permit-to-purchase scheme violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments under the standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Heller and Bruen — that no historical tradition of this type of permitting requirement existed at the founding. The complaint cites a Tenth Circuit ruling from August 19, 2025 that enjoined a similar New Mexico waiting-period law on the same grounds. As of late February 2026, no injunction has been issued. The August 1 deadline stands.
The Department of Revenue is required by statute to publish and maintain the list of covered firearms. That list does not exist. Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s own website says DOR “will provide” the list — future tense, five months before the deadline.
The law defines a covered firearm as any semi-automatic rifle or shotgun with a detachable magazine, or a gas-operated semi-automatic handgun with a detachable magazine. Several common hunting rifles are exempt by name in the statute — the Ruger Mini-14, Ruger Mini Thirty, M1 Carbine, and Springfield M1A among them. Most semi-automatic handgons that cycle by recoil, including virtually all common pistols, are also exempt. What isn’t exempt is the standard semi-automatic hunting rifle or shotgun fed by a removable box magazine.
The application portal hunters need to start the process won’t open until July, CPW confirmed. That leaves 30 days to apply, complete a course, and receive clearance before August 1.
The process to legally buy a covered firearm after that date runs through four steps. First, a hunter applies to their county sheriff for a Firearms Safety Course Eligibility Card, submitting government-issued ID and results of a private background check, along with a fee. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission sets the CPW portion of that fee — proposed at $52 — at its March 4 meeting. Each county sheriff sets an additional processing fee on top of that. Second, the approved applicant enrolls in a course. Hunters who hold a CPW-certified hunter education credential qualify for the four-hour basic course. That course requires a 90 percent passing score on a final exam. Everyone else takes the extended course, which provides a minimum of 12 hours of instruction. It must be completed across at least two separate days. No online option exists for either course. Third, the instructor reports completion to CPW’s new statewide database within three business days. Fourth, the buyer presents at a federally licensed dealer, who queries the CPW database and runs a separate CBI background check before completing the sale.
Concealed carry permits do not count. Out-of-state hunter education credentials require an in-person visit to a CPW office for verification before they qualify.
CPW has been assigned to build and operate the statewide eligibility database, create the application forms, establish course curricula, train instructors, and coordinate with all 64 county sheriffs and every licensed firearms dealer in Colorado. The agency required a $1.5 million transfer from the Parks and Outdoor Recreation Cash Fund to cover startup costs. That money must be repaid, with interest, by June 30, 2030. CPW projects 25,000 applicants annually once the program is running.
Buried in the same bill, the penalty for possessing a large-capacity magazine was quietly upgraded from a class 2 to a class 1 misdemeanor.
The legislature handed CPW a gun permit office to run. The list of firearms that require a permit doesn’t exist, the application portal opens 30 days before the deadline, and the federal court challenge hasn’t produced an injunction. A hunter who buys the wrong rifle in August won’t be the first person charged under a law the government itself hasn’t finished building.
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