Colorado is a prime example of what happens when you let too many Californians move into a state. They take over and start wanting the same terrible laws they left California over. If only there was some way to stop them.
One issue in Colorado that predates the current sorry state of affairs is that if you're a nonresident, you can't carry a firearm at all unless your state recognizes Colorado's permits. Luckily, open carry is still legal...unless you're in Denver.
That's why Denver is being sued, and why the Firearms Policy Coalition has made an important ask of the court.
From a press release:
Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today that it filed a motion for preliminary injunction in Hoffman v. City and County of Denver, asking the federal court to immediately block enforcement of the Colorado and Denver gun carry ban regime as to Plaintiff Gene Hoffman and similarly situated peaceable nonresidents, and require Colorado to allow them to obtain carry licenses on the same terms as Colorado residents.
The State of Colorado generally requires a permit to carry a concealed handgun but refuses to issue those permits to nonresidents. Instead, the State recognizes permits from another state only when that state recognizes Colorado permits. Denver separately bans open carry, so peaceable people from outside those states can be left with no lawful way to carry a handgun at all while in Denver. And because federal law generally prohibits firearm possession within 1,000 feet of a school unless the person has a license issued by the state where the school is located, Colorado’s refusal to issue permits to nonresidents creates a massive labyrinth of prohibited areas throughout the State where affected travelers can be effectively disarmed—or risk federal prosecution and imprisonment simply for carrying a firearm. Colorado law also reserves certain carry privileges in public university and government-building parking areas for permit holders.
“Colorado and Denver cannot turn their borders into a police-state checkpoint where peaceable people are forced to surrender their rights. The right to bear arms throughout the United States belongs to the People—not only Colorado residents. Colorado and Denver have created an insane regime that completely disarms peaceable Americans simply because they live somewhere else, and we’re asking the court to put an end to it now. FPC and our Grassroots Army will continue to Fight Forward and eliminate all of these unconstitutional and immoral residency-based bans,” said FPC President Brandon Combs.
FPC’s motion argues that the case should be straightforward under the Supreme Court’s binding precedents—the Second Amendment protects the People’s right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, and that protection does not disappear when someone crosses a state line. As the filing explains, “the Second Amendment, like every guarantee in the Bill of Rights, ‘has the same meaning in all parts of the United States.’”
The historical record makes Colorado’s position even worse. Far from supporting residency-based disarmament, early American laws often gave travelers more protection to carry arms, not less. The motion identifies colonial laws requiring people traveling away from home to carry arms and later laws expressly exempting travelers from carry restrictions. The motion also argues that Colorado’s discrimination against nonresidents violates the Constitution’s Privileges and Immunities Clause, which protects Americans from being denied fundamental privileges simply because they come from another state.
I mean, they ain't wrong.
About any of it.
The Bruen decision makes it pretty clear what can and cannot clear the hurdle of a gun control law being constitutional. They need a historical precedent for such a ban, and I know I haven't found a lot of evidence of such being the case. Even if Denver's ban is constitutional somehow, the state's refusal to recognize a state-issued license from somewhere else in the United States runs explicitly in violation of the Constitution.
There's really just no way to explain that away, especially in light of Bruen also noting that you'd need an analog for it, which definitely doesn't exist.
The closest you could probably get are some terrible laws that were later found to be unconstitutional. Since you can't use an unconstitutional law to defend another unconstitutional law and make it seem constitutional, they're kind of screwed.
So now it's up to the court to decide whether these restrictions can remain in place while the lawsuit proceeds. FPC is asking for a preliminary injunction, which means it must convince the judge that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits and meet the other requirements to suspend enforcement of the law while the litigation continues.
There's a strong argument in FPC's favor. Under Bruen, Colorado can impose objective licensing requirements on those who want to carry concealed, but it can't simply deny some Americans any practical means of exercising their Second Amendment rights because live on the other side of the state line. Denver's open-carry ban makes the problem even worse by eliminating the alternative that might otherwise be available to non-residents.
Whether the judge agrees at this stage remains to be seen. A denial of the preliminary injunction wouldn't end the lawsuit or mean that FPC's arguments are doomed. But if the judge follows the Supreme Court's Second Amendment guidance, Colorado and Denver should have an impossible time explaining why the right to bear arms disappears for some Americans the moment they cross into the state.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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