Following a week of gun violence that included the public assassination of a conservative activist and a shooting at Evergreen High School that injured two students, gun enthusiasts took part in the “33rd Annual Front Range Freedom Shoot” at Dragonman’s range complex east of Colorado Springs. The two-day event was described as a “next-level range day focused on keeping the 2A [Second Amendment] community in Colorado alive.”
Attendees were promised “access to vendors and a variety of activities, including pistol and rifle ranges, a full auto experience, giveaways, food trucks, Top Shot style shooting contest.”
Following the 2013 Aurora theater shooting, Colorado has passed a series of laws aimed at restricting access to firearms and reducing gun violence, such as the red flag law, repealing the state’s legal liability protections for the firearm industry, and, most recently, Senate Bill 25-003, which restricts access to semi-automatic firearms.
“The original bill 003 was meant to literally take away 95% of firearms from the people who own them,” said Rep. Rebecca Keltie (R-Colorado Springs) at the Freedom Shoot. “It got whittled down, but the intent was still there, and if allowing a bill like 003 to continue to go on, honestly that just opens that doorway for them to tack on what they took off last time, and continue to chip away at an individual’s Second Amendment right. Any infringement, it’s a violation. Whether you like the Constitution or not, it’s still the Constitution of the United States. We have to follow it, and that means the First and Second Amendment, are the First and Second Amendment for a reason.”
The bill, which was signed into law this year, is currently facing a legal challenge from the Colorado State Shooting Association, which is arguing the bill is unconstitutional on Second Amendment grounds and will not hold up under recent judicial precedent related to firearm laws.
“We had a huge victory in the 10th circuit on the New Mexico waiting period that’s a binding precedent,” said Ian Escalante, the executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, Colorado’s pre-eminent gun rights advocacy group. “Our attorneys are currently trying to force the Colorado District Court to comply with the 10th Circuit and strike down the three-day waiting period here in Colorado.”
Last month, in its 2-1 split decision, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a previous ruling on New Mexico’s seven-day waiting period. “Cooling-off periods infringe on the Second Amendment by preventing the lawful acquisition of firearms,” the decision reads. “Cooling-off periods do not fit into any historically grounded exceptions to the right to keep and bear arms, and burden conduct within the Second Amendment’s scope. In this preliminary posture, we conclude that New Mexico’s Waiting Period Act is likely an unconstitutional burden on the Second Amendment rights of its citizens.”
Despite efforts to regulate firearms, gun violence persists. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Colorado’s gun death rate increased by 36% from 2014 to 2023, and Colorado had the 14th highest gun suicide rate in the country in 2023.
“I am heartbroken by the news of the shooting at Evergreen High School and angered at another senseless act of gun violence in our state,” said Sen. Lisa Cutter (D-Jefferson County) in a news release following the Evergreen shooting. “Schools need to be safe places, and this tragedy is yet another reminder that we must do better to protect our kids. I am grateful for the rapid response by first responders, medical teams, school staff, and the students of Evergreen High School. My prayers are with the victims, their friends and families, and the entire Evergreen community. I am hopeful for a quick and full recovery for all those injured.”
At the Freedom Shoot, Keltie said more restrictions on firearms aren’t the answer. “The common denominator is mental illness,” she said. “The common denominator is a lot of hate rhetoric. The common denominator is pushing agendas that are not looking at the true problem, and it’s the person behind it. I have weapons, and they just sit there. Until someone with a mental illness or the capacity for violence gets their hand on a weapon, whether it’s a gun, a knife, a car, you know, anything like that, then that’s the problem. It’s not the tool. It’s the person. It is the evil behind it. We had that stabbing on the subway in North Carolina with that young lady, the immigrant from Ukraine. That was with a three-inch pocket knife. Within seconds she was dead, from an individual who was suffering from mental illness. It’s soft on crime legislation that’s being passed in these states.”
Escalante agrees with Keltie, and argues that the answer is actually more guns. “The way to stop [gun violence] is not to strip away the rights of Coloradans,” he said. “What needs to happen is that when this stuff happens, there has to be punishment. There has to be very brutal, severe punishment for the people who carry out these acts, and until that happens, I don’t see this stopping. We also need to make sure that we have armed guards in schools who can prevent this stuff from happening. Biggest issue with the Minneapolis shooter is that that individual said that they targeted Annunciation [Catholic School] specifically because they knew there was gonna be no armed guards there, there was going to be nobody there to stop them from doing what they did. That’s spelled out in black and white in their deranged manifesto of why they specifically chose that school. The problem is not the guns, the problem is the people, and the problem is that we have a criminal justice system that doesn’t do its job.”
Laura Carno, a 2011 Leadership Program of the Rockies alum and the executive director of FASTER Colorado, which supports arming teachers, staff, and administrators and offers firearm and emergency response training, has long been an advocate for guns in schools.
“This is a very parent-driven policy,” said Carno during a Sept. 11 appearance on the Mandy Connell Show. “Parents, get together with 10 or 100 of your fellow parent friends in your school district, go to school board meetings and talk about this. Meet with your superintendent and talk about this. We have, for years since the Gunfree School Zones Act, we have had these sitting ducks situations. We’ve tried it their way. We keep having these school shootings. Let’s try it our way. Let’s have somebody armed in every single school so bad guys know they cannot go in there and kill with impunity and kill without being able to be stopped. It’ll be a dramatic change in our country.”
