A coalition of Colorado firearms dealers and Second Amendment organizations has filed a federal lawsuit against Gov. Jared Polis, challenging a new state law that empowers any peace officer to walk into a gun store and rifle through customer transaction records, no warrant, no probable cause, no stated reason required.
The lawsuit targets House Bill 26-1126, which Polis signed on June 2. The law requires federally licensed firearms dealers to obtain state permits, maintain detailed buyer records, including names, ages, and addresses, and open those records to law enforcement inspection "at all times." Dealers who refuse face criminal misdemeanor charges.
The plaintiffs, the Colorado State Shooting Sports Association, the Colorado Federal Firearms Licensees Association, and multiple gun dealers including the Centennial Gun Club, argue the law guts Fourth Amendment protections and creates a de facto gun registry. The case names not only Polis but also Attorney General Phil Weiser and Department of Revenue Director Heidi Humphreys as defendants, as Newsmax reported.
The lawsuit's language is blunt. The complaint, as the Daily Caller News Foundation reported, draws a sharp contrast between Colorado's new regime and the existing federal framework for inspecting gun dealers.
"The statute provides no notice of regularity, empowers an overbroad class of inspectors with no nexus to firearms regulation, imposes no temporal or frequency limitations, and places no restrictions on the manner of inspections."
Under federal law, specifically 18 U.S.C. § 923(g), compliance inspections of licensed firearms dealers may be conducted only by ATF agents, only during business hours, and no more than once every twelve months absent narrow statutory exceptions. Colorado's law imposes none of those guardrails.
The complaint makes the point explicitly:
"The contrast with the federal firearms-inspection framework could not be starker. Under 18 U.S.C. § 923(g), compliance inspections of federally licensed firearms dealers may be conducted only by the U.S. Attorney General's designated agents (in practice, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), only during business hours, and no more than once in any 12-month period, absent meeting narrow statutory exceptions."
Any peace officer, at any hour, as many times as they want, for any reason or no reason at all. That is what HB26-1126 authorizes, if the complaint's reading of the statute holds. The federal framework exists precisely to prevent that kind of open-ended government access to private commercial records. Colorado's law treats it as a suggestion.
The plaintiffs aren't just arguing for their own rights as business owners. The complaint warns that the law injures customers, too. Breitbart reported that the lawsuit states the regime "injures plaintiffs' customers, who face the prospect that their lawful firearms purchases will be surveilled without warrant protections, chilling the exercise of constitutionally protected rights."
That framing matters. The Fourth Amendment doesn't protect only people accused of crimes. It protects ordinary citizens conducting lawful business, including the constitutionally protected act of purchasing a firearm.
The complaint also argues that the law's record-keeping mandates amount to a gun registry by another name. Dealers must maintain detailed buyer information, and the state claims the right to access it without judicial oversight. The practical result is a government database of gun owners assembled through the back door, built on records the state can inspect whenever it pleases.
Colorado is hardly the only state where a Democratic governor has pushed the legal envelope on firearms restrictions. Virginia's new semiautomatic firearms ban drew immediate legal challenges from gun rights organizations and the Trump administration alike.
Daniel Fenelson, the CSSA's Director of Operations, spoke at the Friday event where the lawsuit was announced. Fenelson, who described himself as a school shooting survivor, directed sharp criticism at the state's gun-control apparatus.
"Criminals do not follow gun laws. They never have and never will. They steal firearms, obtain them on the black market and use other illegal means to obtain these weapons."
Fenelson also took aim at state Sen. Tom Sullivan, who represents Senate District 27, calling him a "Bloomberg shill" and declaring that "not a single piece of gun control legislation passed through and by" Sullivan "ever protected any Coloradans."
The CSSA posted about the lawsuit on X on June 13, writing: "This bill allows government agents to walk into gun stores and obtain the records of law-abiding citizens without a warrant, probable cause, or even a stated reason." The group said it had warned Polis against signing the bill.
Gov. Polis did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation. The CSSA also did not immediately respond to a separate request.
The pattern of Democratic governors signing aggressive firearms legislation and then facing constitutional challenges in court has become a recurring feature of state-level politics. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a semiautomatic firearms ban despite an explicit DOJ lawsuit warning, and the legal fallout was swift.
The warrantless-search lawsuit is not the only legal front Colorado faces on firearms. The U.S. Department of Justice, through its Second Amendment Section in the Civil Rights Division, filed suit in early May against the state over its ban on standard-capacity magazines holding more than fifteen rounds. The DOJ also separately challenged Denver's ban on modern semiautomatic firearms around the same time.
HB26-1126 is set to take effect on January 1, 2027. The lawsuit seeks to block its enforcement before that date, though the specific relief requested was not detailed in available reporting.
The broader context is hard to ignore. When the federal government is already suing your state over firearms restrictions, signing yet another law that strips warrant protections from gun dealers and their customers is not the act of a governor seeking common ground. It is the act of a governor daring the courts to stop him.
In other states, local prosecutors have drawn their own lines. Multiple Virginia prosecutors refused to enforce their governor's semiautomatic firearms ban, citing constitutional objections. Whether Colorado law enforcement will follow a similar path remains an open question.
The core issue here is not complicated. The Fourth Amendment exists to prevent exactly this: the government rummaging through private records without a warrant. It applies to businesses. It applies to gun stores. It applies even when politicians find the Second Amendment inconvenient.
Federal law already provides a framework for inspecting firearms dealers, one that balances regulatory oversight with constitutional limits. Colorado's new law discards that balance entirely. No warrant. No limit on frequency. No restriction on which officers can demand access. No business-hours requirement. Just an open door for the state to monitor who buys guns and when.
The complaint's language about the law creating a chilling effect on lawful gun purchases is not hypothetical. If the government can access your purchase records at will, without judicial review, the privacy that the Fourth Amendment is supposed to guarantee becomes meaningless. And when exercising a constitutional right means submitting to government surveillance, fewer people will exercise it. That may well be the point.
Connecticut recently became the third state to ban America's most popular handgun, another example of blue-state executives testing how far they can push before courts push back.
Five named gun dealers and the Centennial Gun Club joined the organizational plaintiffs in the Colorado case, putting real businesses and real livelihoods on the line. These are not abstract policy disputes. These are shop owners who face misdemeanor charges if they decline to hand over their customers' private information to any officer who walks through the door.
Polis signed the bill. He did not respond to press inquiries about the lawsuit. The law speaks for itself, and what it says is that the state of Colorado believes it can bypass the warrant requirement whenever it wants, as long as the target is a gun dealer.
The courts will have their say. But the fact that this law was signed at all, while the state is already facing federal litigation over other firearms restrictions, tells you everything about the priorities driving policy in Denver.
When your state is already in court with the DOJ over gun rights, and your response is to sign a law letting any cop search gun store records without a warrant, you're not solving a public safety problem. You're picking a fight with the Constitution.
