Key Takeaways
- The NRA has joined the litigation against Colorado’s permit-to-purchase law for semiautomatic firearms.
- Gun Owners of America tracked Senate Bill 25-003, which they claim effectively bans semiautomatic firearms in Colorado.
- The bill requires buyers to pay fees, complete training, and enter a state registry before purchasing semiautomatic firearms.
- GOA linked this bill to other measures, including restrictions on gun shows and age limits for ammunition sales.
- The author will continue to follow the legal challenge to Colorado’s permit-to-purchase law and provide updates.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
DENVER, CO — The National Rifle Association has entered the litigation over Colorado’s permit-to-purchase requirement for semiautomatic firearms, according to an August 12 announcement from NRA-ILA headlined “NRA Joins Legal Fight Against Colorado’s Permit-to-Purchase Law for Semiautomatic Firearms.”
Gun Owners of America tracked the measure through the Colorado legislature as Senate Bill 25-003, and in a March 25, 2025 state alert GOA reported that the bill had cleared the Colorado House of Representatives the previous day by a vote of 36 to 2, and that because it had been amended repeatedly on its way through the House it had to go back to the Senate for a concurrence vote on those amendments. GOA described the bill as a semiautomatic firearms ban that “morphed into a permit-to-purchase FOID scheme.”
That morphing is the whole story of how these bills get sold. GOA characterized SB 25-003 as a nearly full semiautomatic firearms ban with a compliance door cut into it, and described the door this way: pay fees, take state-approved tests, and enter what GOA calls a registry. Under GOA’s account of the bill, a buyer either completes hunter safety education or holds a Colorado concealed handgun permit and then takes an additional four hours of coursework before entering the registry. A buyer with neither is looking at twelve hours of coursework first.
Strip away the acronyms and permit-to-purchase means one thing. The default answer is no. You do not walk in as a law-abiding adult, pass the background check, and walk out. You apply, you pay, you sit through state-approved instruction, you get entered into a state-held list, and then the state decides you may exercise a right you already had. Understand that I am about as pro-training as a person can be. Training is the entire point of a serious carry mindset, and I would rather every gun owner in America put in more hours than the law would ever ask of them. Training you choose is a discipline. Training the state converts into a gate you must pass before you may buy is something else, and calling it safety education does not change which one it is.
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SB 25-003 also did not travel alone. In that same alert, GOA flagged House Bill 25-1238, which it said would heavily restrict gun shows and gun show participants, and House Bill 25-1133, which it said would prohibit ammunition sales to anyone under 21, both of which GOA reported were still moving through the Senate at the time. I could not verify the final disposition of either measure from the sources available to me, so I am reporting only that GOA identified them as part of the same 2025 package.
I will continue tracking the challenge to Colorado’s permit-to-purchase law and will update this article once the court filings are available.
