Senate Bill 25-003, passed by radical leftists in Colorado’s legislature — many of them unelected Democratic appointees — is a turkey that never should have landed on the governor’s desk.

This measure, cloaked in clever legalese, imposes one of the nation’s most restrictive licensing schemes on virtually all semi-automatic centerfire handguns — tools as common to rural Colorado as hay bales and pickups. This is an elitist assault on our Second Amendment rights, a slap at statewide hunters who keep our wildlife in check, and a constitutional overstep the courts won’t likely tolerate.

In Colorado’s wide-open spaces, semi-automatic handguns, rifles and shotguns — like Glocks, Rugers, and Smith & Wessons — are a way of life. They’re not just for self-defense against crime; they’re sidearms for ranchers and hunters facing bears, mountain lions and the wolves urbanites unleashed on them that kill their livestock and pets.

As explained by law professor David Kopel, Senate Bill 3’s cunning wording snares every model but the Benelli B-80 — a collector’s relic — leaving the rest under a bureaucratic chokehold. The bill’s five definitions of “gas-operated” systems, as dissected by firearms experts, blanket nearly every common gun.

Hunters, vital to Colorado’s ecological balance, get hit hardest. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife agency relies on them to manage deer, elk and bear populations — more than 200,000 licenses issued yearly, based on the agency’s 2023 data.

Semi-automatics, preferred for their accuracy and low recoil, are standard fare. Now, SB 3 saddles future buyers with uncapped fees — three new ones atop existing costs — and a licensing and training maze with no deadline for approval. It will create hoops for hunters who took appropriate training and have years of experience shooting.

This isn’t safety; it’s a buyback of constitutional rights, affordable only to elites with flexible schedules and disposable income. Low-income Coloradans, disproportionately “people of color,” will essentially lose their Second Amendment rights. The “law” will obstruct them protecting themselves when danger lurks, whether in the form of abusers, stalkers, rapists or foreign prison gangs.

The Second Amendment doesn’t bend for elitism, and neither should Colorado. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen decision (2022) demands gun laws align with historical tradition — SB 3’s labyrinthine hurdles don’t.

Since the Bill of Rights was ratified, Americans have kept arms without such nanny-state intrusion. The National Rifle Association notes no founding-era precedent for fees or delays this punitive. Even California’s restrictions pale beside this. The Colorado Constitution — Article II, Section 13 — echoes that right, yet here’s the feckless far-left legislature, thumbing its nose at state and federal law.

Democrats, holding full control of the state government since 2018, rammed this bill through deceptively, ignoring the plains and peaks where these guns aren’t a debate — they’re a lifeline. Most Coloradans choose semi-automatics for practical reasons, not fashion.

SB 3’s drafters knew this, masking their sweep with jargon about “pistons” and “gas pressure,” hoping hunters, farmers, ranchers and people desperately in need of self-defense wouldn’t notice the trap. The “guidance” list of Gov. Jared Polis — empowering him to name every targeted model — could have been a one-liner: “All but the Benelli B-80.” It’s a power grab, expandable at political whim.

Colorado’s wildlife and rural backbone deserve better. Hunters culled 45,000 deer in 2023, based on Colorado Parks and Wildlife data, staving off overgrazing, car collisions and chronic wasting disease.

SB 3 is more than unconstitutional; it’s a betrayal of the state’s heartland, forcing honest Coloradans to pay a king’s ransom to retrieve rights they were born with. At stake are public safety, hunting, constitutional rights, Colorado culture and the state’s ecological health.

The Gazette Editorial Board