Lawsuit challenges Denver, state over gun & magazine bans.
DENVER–A Colorado gun rights groups and three Denver-area gun owners on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging Denver’s decades-old ban on so-called “assault weapons,” as well as Colorado’s statewide prohibition on standard-capacity ammunition magazines, arguing both laws violate the Second Amendment.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court by the Colorado State Shooting Association (CSSA), the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), and individual plaintiffs Ray Elliott, Trevor Alley and Michael Vitco, all Denver residents.
CSSA is the Colorado state affiliate of the National Rifle Association (NRA).
At issue is Denver’s 1989 ordinance banning the sale, manufacture and possession of firearms the city labels “assault weapons,” and Colorado’s 2013 law banning magazines that hold more than 15 rounds. The complaint argues both laws are, in practice, magazine restrictions as Denver’s ordinance defines a banned “assault weapon” chiefly by whether it accepts a magazine over 15 rounds.
Arms in ‘common use’
Plaintiffs lean heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, which put the burden on government to prove that a gun restriction is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” The complaint argues neither Denver or the state can meet that burden, noting magazine bans “were unknown in the United States before the 20th century,” while repeating firearms date back centuries.
The suit also singles out just how common the banned items are. “Magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds of ammunition—and firearms equipped with them—are normal features of firearms in the United States and are more accurately described as ‘standard capacity magazines,’” reads the complaint, pointing to Colorado’s own prior court stipulations that tens of millions of such magazines are lawfully owned nationwide.
“Arms that are in common use—as the firearms and magazines Defendants have banned unquestionably are—cannot be unusual or dangerous. Therefore, they cannot be banned,” the complaint states.
The lawsuit also takes aim at Denver’s exemption scheme, arguing that even residents who lawfully hold a permit issued under a narrow 1989 grandfather clause are barred from ever selling or transferring their firearm within the city, which plaintiffs say “denies ordinary, peaceable people who reside in the City the ability to acquire the banned firearms in conjunction with the banned magazines and to destroy the legal market for the same.”
Gun rights legal brawl
CSSA executive director Huey Laugesen said in a statement that the bans “deny law-abiding Coloradans rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.” CSSA vice president Kolby Zipperer added that “the courts — not politicians in Denver — will decide whether the Second Amendment means what it says.” FPC president Brandon Combs was more pointed, saying the groups filed suit “to end Denver and Colorado’s war on gun owners and force these tyrants to respect the Second Amendment, whether they like it or not.”.
The group is actively litigating several other Colorado gun rights restrictions as well.
As previously reported by Complete Colorado, CSAA is challenging a newly enacted state law (House Bill 26-1126) giving Colorado officials broad, random access to firearms purchase records without a warrant or even suspicion of wrongdoing.
They are also suing over Colorado’s firearm excise tax, passed at the ballot in 2024 as Proposition KK, as well as a sweeping and expensive licensing scheme (Senate Bill 25-003) for the purchase of many commonly owned firearms passed last year.