Today, MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms has filed our opening brief to stop the unconstitutional action of Colorado’s 3-day waiting period on firearm purchases.
In November 2023 the district court denied MSLF’s request for a preliminary injunction, in our Garcia v. Polis case, to halt the implementation of the 3-day waiting period. We have now appealed our preliminary injunction to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. We will never stop fighting to protect the Second Amendment rights of American citizens.
In our brief, MSLF’s Center to Keep & Bear Arms argues that the new waiting period demonstrates Colorado’s clear hostility towards the Second Amendment and firearm ownership in general. At the preliminary injunction hearing, state attorneys and their expert witnesses admitted there is no historical tradition of waiting periods on firearms purchases—something they must be able to demonstrate under the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision. Bruen insists the government “affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.” By the state’s own admission there is no such tradition for waiting periods.
The question in this case is whether the meaning of the Second Amendment is consistent with a statute prohibiting lawful, peaceable Americans who have passed all background checks from obtaining a firearm they have legally purchased until the completion of a 3-day period. Mountain States strongly believes it does not. The Second Amendment is the protection of the right to keep and bear arms, and a waiting period violates the right to bear arms by hindering your ability to obtain a firearm.
According to the Supreme Court the Second Amendment receives the same protection as all other constitutional rights, “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules.” A three-day waiting period sure feels like the second amendment is being treated as a second-class right. No court would ever find a three-day waiting period to speak or worship to be constitutional. Colorado does not have the right to treat your self-defense and protection as second class. This waiting period is a violation of the Constitution because it has no historical tradition and delays and therefore denies American citizens their Second Amendment rights.
To read the full brief, click below:
