Colorado Gov. Jared Polis verbally declared a disaster emergency for the Elk fire burning southeast of Meeker in Rio Blanco County, according to a news release from his office.

The lightning-sparked wildfire started just after noon Saturday and had spread to roughly 600 acres by 2 p.m. Sunday, according to the Rio Blanco County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff’s officials said the fire, which is burning on a mix of private, Bureau of Land Management and state-owned land, prompted evacuations on both sides of County Road 8 between mile markers 11 and 16.

“Fire crews, along with air and ground support, are actively engaged in suppression efforts,” sheriff’s officials stated in a Sunday afternoon update. “Smoke is visible due to the hot and dry conditions contributing to active fire behavior.”

No structures are currently threatened, but residents and travelers are asked to avoid the area, officials said.

The governor’s disaster declaration allows state officials to direct more resources to fighting the wildfire.

“Fire conditions in northwest Colorado are at near record levels, and elevated fire weather and fire risk is forecast for the coming week,” Polis’ news release stated.

Another new wildfire burning about 80 miles south, near Carbondale in Garfield County, forced evacuations across the community on Sunday, according to fire officials.

The Ranch at Coulter Creek fire sparked near a subdivision with the same name Sunday morning, north of Panorama Drive, according to an 11:24 a.m. post from the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District.

The Panorama subdivision, the Ranch at Coulter Creek and areas east of County Road 100 to Upper Cattle Creek Road were under mandatory evacuation orders Sunday, according to the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office.

Those evacuation orders were lifted at 5 p.m., sheriff’s officials said.

The fire had burned roughly 115 acres with no containment by 4:30 p.m., Carbondale fire officials said.

The new wildfires are burning northeast of three other major fires still active on Colorado’s Western Slope.

The Wright Draw, Turner Gulch and South Rim fires have collectively burned 26,381 acres, according to estimates from fire officials. The Sowbelly fire, which was fully contained on Friday, consumed another 2,274 acres in western Colorado.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

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He was heading north on Colo. 93, just short of its intersection with Colo. 128, when the driver shifted partially into the oncoming lane on July 22, according to Colorado State Patrol.

It was around 5:30 p.m. that Tuesday when August, of Northglenn, and his friend crashed head-on with an SUV. The car August was in spun off before hitting another SUV. The second SUV connected with August’s side of the car.

August was sent to Boulder Community Health while unconscious, said his mother, Amy Soto. She was about to head into an Orange Theory gym to teach a class when she heard from August’s friend’s father that the boys were in a crash. She said the friend’s father told her, “It doesn’t look good.”

“It was the worst call I’ve ever gotten,” Amy said. “As a parent, that’s like the biggest nightmare you can think of.”

August’s friend was sent to a hospital with minor injuries and is OK now, Amysaid. According to CSP, the two other drivers — neither of whose cars had any passengers — suffered minor to moderate injuries and were not sent to a hospital.

Amy immediately tried to get to her son. She got stuck in traffic on Colo. 93 trying to reach him — the road had been blocked because of the very crash her son was in. She got to the hospital but had to wait for the OK to see him.

At the hospital, a medical team put August into a medically induced coma. He had suffered a traumatic brain injury, bruised his lung and endured three spinal fractures, Amy said.

He was later transported to another facility , put on a ventilator, then slowly taken off it the next day. It wasn’t until about three days after the crash that August started to wake up — for only about a minute at a time, at first, his mother said.

He was unable to retain memories yet because of the brain injury. He was paranoid and in disbelief about what happened to him that Tuesday. But he was awake and slowly becoming coherent again.

One week after the crash, August was reading again, writing again, remembering again. By this Wednesday, Amy said, “he’s doing amazing.” August would even be able to ease his way back into school this fall, she said.

That does not mean, though, that recovery will be an easy process. He may look OK, Amy said, but TBIs affect what’s underneath. August’s personality hasn’t yet come back, she added.

TBIs can be debilitating when serious. Amy said August’s medical team said his injury landed between “moderate” and “severe.” It will take a year before his full road to recovery can be assessed; it will also take that long to gauge how full the recovery can ever be, she said.

However, he’s doing better than he could have been, Amy said.

“We are very blessed,” Amy said during only the third time she’s spent more than a moment away from August since 6:30 p.m. July 22. She’d taken one meeting with medical staff, been to the gym once for about 45 minutes and spoken to the Daily Camera.

“I could barely look at my phone,” Amy said of her time up until this Wednesday. “It’s been probably one of the most traumatic experiences we’ve had as a family.”

Besides those three brief times, she has lived, eaten and slept in that hospital room with August.

August, who is the second youngest in a family of five boys. August, who is a state-qualifying wrestler for Broomfield High School. August, who has played football, rugby, and track and field. August, who spends his winter mornings before school shoveling snow out of neighbors’ driveways. August, who, just two days before the crash, went on a fishing trip in the Leadville area with the same friend who was driving him home that night.

Amy said August has built a community around him that has shown out in droves to support him. “Every teacher, every person loves him,” she said. Friends’ mothers have dropped off food — August’s friends have offered to do the Sotos’ yard work. High school students are donating their own money, Amy said, to a GoFundMe meant to help the Sotos pay August’s medical bills.

August’s best friend, Josh Hanes, started the fundraiser imploring folks to “Support August Soto’s Road to Recovery.” By Wednesday — the day the two boys were supposed to be going to Florida for vacation — it had surpassed $14,000 in donations.

To support August, Amy will have to miss work for an extended period of time, she said. The fundraiser will help the family support August through his recovery process.

“I’m honestly blown away,” Amy said of the outpouring of support she has seen. “And I’m not one to ask for help.”

Now, August is focusing on two things, Amy said: going home and wrestling again. The medical team has told the Sotos he might be able to go home in a couple of weeks — though that has not stopped August from trying to bribe his visitors to get him out of there sooner.

Wrestling, though, may not be as simple. The family doesn’t know yet how August’s TBI will affect his ability to compete, but the prospect of being unable to wrestle scares him, Amy said.

That’s been particularly hard for the teenager. It’s been “since he was literally in diapers that he was on the mat,” his mom said.

For now, though, the Sotos are trying to keep things steady and prepare for the road to recovery and rehabilitation. They are not dwelling over whose fault the crash may have been, the cause or anything else besides August.

“Our goal is just to make his life as consistent as possible right now,” Amy said.

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Daveon Javon-James Jackson was arrested shortly before 7 p.m. Saturday on suspicion of leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death, careless driving resulting in death, hit-and-run and failing to report a crash, Aurora Police Department spokesperson Joe Moylan said in an email to The Denver Post.

Aurora officers responded to the hit-and-run crash at 11:18 p.m. Friday near East Wesley Drive and South Dunkirk Street.

When officers arrived, they found a 16-year-old with serious injuries, police said. The teen had been riding a scooter in the bike lane when he was hit.

Paramedics took the unidentified 16-year-old to the hospital, where he later died from his injuries.

Numerous tips from the community helped officers identify the suspect vehicle — a blue 2014 Dodge Charger, Moylan said. From there, traffic and patrol officers were able to trace the car back to Jackson.

Jackson has not yet been charged, and no court date was available Sunday morning.

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Shots were fired near an Aurora apartment complex in the 1000 block of Cimarron Circle shortly after 3 a.m. Sunday, according to a news release from the police department.

When officers arrived, they found two women had been shot, Aurora police said in the release.

A 26-year-old woman died from her injuries at the scene, police said. Paramedics took the second victim, a 30-year-old woman, to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.

The Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office will identify the 26-year-old victim.

Investigators believe the shooting started as a domestic violence incident and that the people involved knew each other.

Police are working to identify a suspect who left the scene of the shooting before officers arrived. As of Sunday morning, no suspects had been publicly identified and no arrests had been made.

Denver police are investigating two separate shootings that wounded four.

Three people were shot near Sixth Avenue and Knox Court in the city’s Barnum neighborhood, Denver police said Sunday in a 4:23 a.m. post on social media.

All three victims are expected to survive, but no suspect information was available Sunday morning.

Another person was shot in Denver’s Union Station neighborhood, near 19th and Little Raven streets, according to a 1:40 a.m. post from the police department.

Information on the extent of the victim’s injuries was not available Sunday morning. No suspects have been publicly identified or arrested.

Anyone with information about the shootings is asked to contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.

Denver officers are also investigating an unrelated homicide in the 2200 block of Glenarm Place, according to a Saturday evening statement from the police department.

Additional information, including how and when the victim died, was not available Sunday morning.

The victim will be identified by the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner. 

This is a developing story and may be updated.

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Aurora officers responded to the crash on northbound I-225 near Parker Road at about 11:15 p.m. Saturday, according to a news release from the police department.

Paramedics took one victim, an unidentified 62-year-old man, to the hospital, where he later died from his injuries, police said.

He will be identified by the Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office.

The man was attempting to cross the highway’s northbound lanes from east to west in heavy traffic when he was hit by a vehicle and run over by a second, police said.

Both drivers remained on scene after the crash.

Investigators do not believe speed or alcohol were factors in the crash.

Northbound I-225 was closed for roughly 2 hours overnight during the crash cleanup and investigation, reopening at about 2 a.m. Sunday, police said.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

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July 20, 2012: A gunman opens fire in a movie theater in Aurora, killing a dozen people and injuring 70.

Dec. 14, 2012: A mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, kills 20 first-grade students and six educators.

More than two dozen gun laws in Colorado have reshaped firearm ownership — and added barriers

March 20, 2013: During the Colorado legislative session following those incidents, then-Gov. John Hickenlooper signs three landmark gun laws: a 15-round limit for firearm magazines, a universal background check requirement and a new fee on gun buyers to pay for the checks.

Sept. 10, 2013: Two Democratic state senators are recalled by voters in a campaign by gun-rights advocates who are furious about the gun legislation. A third resigns later in the year.

November 4, 2014: Republicans win control of the state Senate, breaking Democratic trifecta control of both legislative chambers and the governorship. The party holds the Senate through 2018.

June 12, 2016: A gunman kills 49 people at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, in what at the time is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Oct. 1, 2017: In Las Vegas, a gunman fires on a crowd of fans at an outdoor country music concert, killing 60 people and injuring hundreds.

Feb. 14, 2018: A former student kills 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook.

Nov. 6, 2018: Colorado Democrats win a majority in the state Senate and regain trifecta control of state government as Gov. Jared Polis also wins election.

April 12, 2019: Polis signs the extreme risk protection order bill into law. Commonly known as the red-flag law, it allows judges to order the temporary confiscation of firearms from people suspected to be a danger to themselves or others.

March 22, 2021: A gunman kills 10 people at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder.

2021 legislative session: Colorado lawmakers pass, and Polis signs, five new gun laws: setting storage requirements for firearms, expanding background checks and adding disqualifying misdemeanors, establishing the state Office of Gun Violence Prevention, setting requirements for reporting lost or stolen firearms, and allowing local jurisdictions to pass more restrictive gun laws than the state.

May 9, 2021: A gunman opens fire on a birthday party in Colorado Springs, killing six people and then taking his own life.

2022 legislative session: Lawmakers pass a law banning the open carrying of firearms within 100 feet of a polling place.

November 19, 2022: A shooter kills five people and wounds 22 others at Club Q, a LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs.

2023 legislative session: Lawmakers pass, and Polis signs, four new gun laws: establishing a three-day waiting period to purchase a firearm; making the minimum age 21 to purchase a firearm; expanding who can file an extreme risk protection order petition; and banning the sale, possession and creation of unserialized firearms, or so-called ghost guns.

2024 legislative session: Lawmakers and Polis enact seven new gun laws: setting new training requirements for concealed-carry permits; setting new requirements for storing firearms in a vehicle; adding a new tax on firearms, ammunition and certain parts (subsequently adopted by voters 54%-46%); adding new state licensing for firearm dealers; expanding authority for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to investigate firearm-related crimes; adding a new merchant code to track sales of guns and ammunition; and banning the carrying of firearms, including those that are concealed, in government buildings, near polling places and in educational institutions.

2025 legislative session: Lawmakers pass, and Polis signs, seven gun laws: making the theft of a firearm a felony, regardless of the weapon’s value; setting the minimum age at 21 to purchase ammunition in most circumstances; adding new requirements for gun shows; increasing enforcement capabilities for the Department of Revenue related to firearms dealers; adding permitting requirements for the purchase of certain semiautomatic firearms; creating a voluntary do-not-sell list for firearms; and establishing requirements for the Department of Public Safety to seek additional grant money for the state’s response to mass shootings.

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Two of the three PUC members voiced support in a hearing Wednesday for Xcel’s application to join the Southwest Power Pool’s Markets+, a so-called day-ahead market being formed by the Arkansas-based transmission organization and about 30 organizations.

The commission will issue a written order.

The new marketplace will allow Xcel and other utilities to buy power a day ahead, aimed at keeping electricity flowing more efficiently and cost-effectively. Xcel’s joining a day-ahead market is considered a step toward moving to an organized wholesale market, which a state law requires Colorado transmission utilities to do by 2030. The motivation is to coordinate resources across the region, get more renewable energy on the grid to cut greenhouse gas emissions and meet growing demands for electricity.

However, Megan Gilman, the commissioner who opposed Xcel’s application, contended the utility failed to show, as required by PUC rules, that the benefits of joining Markets+ outweighed the costs. She voiced concerns that the cost of joining the day-ahead market, seen as a temporary step, could delay or derail Xcel’s move to an organized wholesale market.

An organized wholesale market is a centrally managed organization that facilitates the buying and selling of electricity and other services across a region. A 2021 PUC report said utilities’ full participation in that kind of market or a regional transmission organization could produce savings of $230 million annually.

About 60% of the nation’s electric power supply is managed by regional organizations, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, most of that is in the East.

PUC Chairman Eric Blank said he is focused on the potential of saving millions of dollars per year as the purchase and transmission of power become more coordinated across the region.

“For me, incurring these small losses in the near term potentially creates an opportunity to save orders of magnitude more per year,” Blank said. “Although we’re a long, long way from realizing this level of savings, it seems worth trying to me.”

But Gilman noted the law requiring transmission utilities to eventually join a more centralized market allows for waivers. She said Xcel could cite the costs of joining the day-ahead market as a reason for seeking a waiver.

“The company expressed intent to hold that against the economics of joining a (regional transmission organization),” Gilman said.

Xcel, Colorado’s largest electricity provider, said in documents filed with the PUC that the costs of participating in Markets+ will include $2 million for the first phase of starting the organization; $14 million annually for operations for the first five years, then $10 million per year; and an estimated $13 million to $15 million for Xcel to integrate its systems with the marketplace.

The conservation group Western Resource Advocates said in a statement filed in the case that testimony showed Xcel’s costs would exceed net benefits by $30 million through 2032 and cumulative benefits wouldn’t surpass cumulative costs until 2039. For the company’s customers to reap any benefits, Xcel would have to stay in Markets+ through 2038, the group said.

“This means the company would also presumably have to delay the 2030 requirement to join an (organized wholesale market) by nine years,” Western Resource Advocates said.

The PUC staff said Xcel’s application didn’t meet the requirement that joining the marketplace is in the public interest because the company couldn’t show that the expected benefits would outweigh the costs. The staff noted that Xcel witnesses conceded during a hearing that joining Markets+ and recovering the costs for technology upgrades “will result in increased production costs through at least 2038.”

Considering the costs, staffers said it would be reasonable for the commission to deny the application. If the application is approved, the staff recommended monitoring the costs, reliability of the market and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to determine whether Xcel’s continued participation in the marketplace would be warranted.

In the public interest?

“We believe this decision was not in the best interests of ratepayers, grid reliability, or the state’s clean energy goals. And legally, the decision does not appear to be based on the law or the Commission’s own rules, and we will be asking the Commission to reconsider,” Brian Turner, regulatory director at Advanced Energy United, said in an email.

The industry group believes a better path for Xcel Energy would be to join Extended Day-Ahead Market, or EDAM, which is operated by the California Independent System Operator. The organization manages the operation of the electricity transmission grid across California and is also involved in a marketplace across 11 Western states.

The extended day-ahead market is set to launch in 2026, according to the California operator’s website. A report by the Environmental Defense Fund in June said Xcel Energy could save an average of $13.2 million a year if it joined EDAM instead of the Southwest Power Pool’s Markets+. One reason is more availability of renewable energy.

Turner said a bill is moving through the California legislature that would transfer the governing structure of the California Independent System Operator to a separate organization. The current board of directors is appointed by the California governor, but that would change if the legislation passes.

Joining forces with the California operator would give Xcel Energy broader access to cleaner forms of energy, Turner added.

Blank said the push by some parties to steer Xcel Energy to EDAM rather than the other marketplace would make integrating systems across Colorado difficult. Others suggested that Xcel forego participating in a day-ahead market altogether and plan for joining a regional organization.

Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association is Colorado’s second-largest electricity provider. The Westminster-based utility is in the process of joining the Southwest Power Pool’s regional transmission organization.

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Burnham Yard, a former train depot linked to the Broncos as a potential site for a new football stadium, is not part of the 46-year-old Denver Radium Superfund Site, but it sits across railroad tracks from at least one property with existing contamination.

And at least one nearby parcel purchased earlier this year by business entities connected to the Broncos was once part of the Superfund site, according to a 2014 report from the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment.

Santa Fe Yard, which will be the future home of the Denver Summit professional women’s soccer team, is in a similar situation. That site sits across Interstate 25 from land that has ongoing mitigation for radium contamination and is part of the Superfund site. But the former railyard does not have any known radium underground.

Environmental experts, however, say the proximity to a radium Superfund site would not be a danger to the teams or their fans. Radium is a radioactive element that is found in nature, including underground in Denver, and, if mishandled, it can cause human health problems, including cancer.

“I can say definitively people would be safe at Broncos games,” said Thomas Albrecht, a chemistry professor at the Colorado School of Mines.”No Spider-Mans or Hulks.

“If they plopped a stadium on the ground right now, even a permanent employee would be fine. I would not fear it at all.”

Radium is easy to detect and there are proven ways to remove it, Albrecht said. And multiple federal, state and local environmental agencies would be involved if any radium was detected where the Broncos might want to build.

“The beauty of radioactive elements is radiation can’t hide,” he said. “It’s extremely easy to detect and it’s easy to detect in high precision.”

Radium remediation is expensive because waste material must be hauled long distances to approved landfills. But figuring out who would be responsible for any contamination lingering around Burnham Yard is to be determined, especially since the Broncos have never confirmed they are eyeing the railyard as the team’s future home.

“They may decide they don’t want the expense,” Albrecht said. “That’s a completely different issue. They’re completely capable of putting the stadium there and cleaning it up.”

The Denver Radium Superfund Site was designated by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1979 after spoils from the National Radium Institute and other radium mining, processing and disposal sites that operated in Denver around the turn of the 20th century were found scattered around the city.

Once the EPA declares a site as a Superfund, the agency has the authority to clean up contamination and pursue reimbursement for that work.

“In the early part of the 1900s, they didn’t have environmental standards and just threw out the waste,” said Benjamin Rule, the EPA Region 8 remedial project manager for Denver Radium Superfund Site.

While those radium businesses were shuttered by the mid-1920s, their radioactive waste has lingered in the city for more than a century.

The main health risk associated with the former radium businesses is residue from radium-226, a radioactive element that breaks down to form radon gas, which causes lung cancer with long-term exposure, according to a 2023 EPA report about the Superfund site.

The Denver Radium Superfund Site is unusual in that it is not confined to one location within the city limits. Instead, it stretches from Cheesman Park near the city’s center to the Overland Golf Course in southwest Denver.

The site covers 65 individual properties that the EPA subdivided into 11 areas, known as operable units. That’s because the EPA broke the site into geographic areas that followed the South Platte River and the rail lines through Denver, Rule said.

Only one of those 11 operable units remains under direct EPA oversight — groundwater beneath the Overland Golf Course at 1801 S. Huron St., which is about a mile from Burnham Yard. It would not impact any development at the former train depot, said Branden Ingersoll, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division.

But two parcels near the potential stadium sites have designations that could limit development and land use. The EPA, as well as the city and state health departments, would be involved in any remediation and development decisions surrounding those properties with lingering contamination.

Atlas Metals & Iron, a scrap metal and recycling company at 1100 Umatilla St., sits directly west of Burnham Yard, separated by a set of railroad tracks. Between 1991 and 1993, 89,000 tons of contaminated material were removed from the property, but contaminated soil remains, Ingersoll said.

The radium in the soil is not dangerous to people as long as Atlas maintains its parking lot and its buildings’ floors, which serve as a cap to hold back the contamination, Rule said.

Atlas has a covenant with the EPA and the state health department to maintain the cap, and the site undergoes a review every five years.

In the most recent five-year report, published in 2023, the EPA noted that Atlas recorded increased radon levels in 2018 and 2020 after installing a new heating and cooling system, but those levels returned to normal after the company modified its system and repaired a radon-mitigation system.

Under the covenant, Atlas Metals must receive approval before seeking building permits or a change in land use. It also must notify the state if the property is sold to someone else, according to the covenant.

No ties have been established between the Broncos and Atlas Metals, but the scrapyard would be next door to any future stadium or entertainment district if the Broncos choose to relocate to Burnham Yard.

While Atlas Metals chief executive officer Mike Rosen declined to comment for this story, the EPA report noted that Rosen “is impressed by how his company has been able to succeed with a solid reuse of a Superfund site. He believes that there has been great collaboration with the CDPHE and the EPA throughout the cleanup process.”

The remarks illustrate how private businesses are able to work with government agencies to make land safe for people.

Patrick Smythe, a Broncos spokesman, said the team’s owners continue to study all stadium options, which include staying where Empower Field at Mile High is located and reviewing additional sites in Lone Tree and Aurora.

Another parcel acquired this year by a business entity linked to the Broncos — 1241 to 1245 Quivas St. — was part of the radium Superfund site but has been cleaned. There are no radium concerns on the property, Ingersoll said.

Burnham Yards also borders another area that was part of the Superfund cleanup — an alley between Mariposa and Lipan streets that runs from Fifth Avenue to Sixth Avenue. That site was remediated after 2,800 tons of soil were removed, according to online reports. There are no development restrictions, Ingersoll said.

There is no apparent connection between the Broncos and any addresses around that alley.

The property closest to the future National Women’s Soccer League stadium is the Home Depot at 500 S. Santa Fe Drive, which is across I-25 from where the stadium and associated entertainment venues will be built.

The Home Depot’s radium situation is almost identical to the one at Atlas Metals — as long as the parking lot remains paved and no one digs into the ground, the radium is contained, Rule said. The Home Depot also has a covenant with the EPA to contain the radium and undergoes an inspection every five years.

Still, Rule said he reached out to the new soccer team’s ownership once the stadium location was announced to explain the nearby Superfund sites and the EPA’s role.

“Santa Fe Yards are not technically on Superfund property and it’s not a direct concern,” he said. “But Home Depot is just north on I-25.”

Before a stadium can be built at either location, extensive environmental surveys will be conducted to make sure there is no radium or other contamination left behind from former industrial uses. Federal and state laws require it.

“The EPA carries a big stick,” said Andrew Ross, the Denver health department’s senior environmental administrator with environmental land use and planning.

Banks involved in financial loans tied to the properties also would want any contamination removed to avoid liability, Ross said.

“We’re here to help developers through these processes,” Ross said. “It’s on the developers to figure it out.”

The residents in the La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood next to Burnham Yard are excited about potential redevelopment that would make good use of an old railyard, but they also are aware of all the potential environmental hazards surrounding the site, said Nolan Hahn, president of the neighborhood association.

“There’s always a concern that when you disturb the soil in the area that you can release toxic materials,” Hahn said. “We just want to make sure it is done in a way that doesn’t put us in more danger and respects the people of the neighborhood.”

Denver Post staff writer Jessica Alvarado Gamez contributed to this report.

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Sure, he thought, Colorado had enacted a 15-round limit on firearm magazines earlier that decade, in response to the 2012 Aurora movie theater massacre. But the state otherwise was known at the time for its swing-state purple politics and gun laws that were not otherwise far out of step with the rest of the Mountain West.

As he settled into his new home, however — and before he could open his store — a raft of soon-to-be lawmakers with more ambitious gun-regulation agendas were launching campaigns across the state. The Democrats would take full control of state government in the 2018 blue wave election, and their legislative majorities would go on to pass a slate of laws over the next seven years that established sweeping new standards for gun sales and ownership.

“At that time, we still had the 15-round magazine capacity limit, but we did not have three-day waits — we did not have all this other bureaucratic stuff,” Collins said. “We did not have restrictions on licenses like we see now. We didn’t have SB-3. We didn’t have an excise tax.

“Over the years, just slowly, slowly, Colorado has gone the way — and I fear we’re going the way — of California.”

The sweep of new laws started relatively slowly, with 2019’s extreme risk protection order law. But the pace of new restrictions has picked up unmistakably since then, with lawmakers putting stricter and broader rules on nearly all facets of firearms. Those efforts culminated this spring with the passage of Senate Bill 3 — a law that, when it goes into effect in August 2026, will restrict the sale of many semiautomatic firearms that have detachable magazines unless the buyer has passed a safety course.

Since 2021 alone, Democrats have passed two dozen new gun laws that have affected, among other things, who can own them, sell them and buy them; how gun owners can stow them; how the state taxes and tracks firearms; which guns it allows; who can carry them and where; and who can invoke the state’s red-flag law, as part of an expansion of the 2019 extreme risk protection measure that has allowed authorities to take guns away from their owners temporarily.

Where detractors of all the Democrats’ legislation see an ever-growing list of demands on gun ownership that is eroding their fundamental freedoms, supporters see requirements aimed at fostering responsible gun ownership and rules that put a premium on gun safety.

They have been motivated to tighten gun laws, they say, by the too-common mass shootings and rising routine gun violence that included 943 firearm deaths in Colorado, largely from suicides and homicides, in 2023.

“I’m so proud of where we have come in the legislature when it comes to being true to our convictions, our commitments — to really making an impact and changing the way we look at gun safety and talking about that issue,” said House Majority Leader Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat and sponsor of nearly a third of the new gun laws. “We’ve come a long way.”

A timeline of Colorado gun laws since the Aurora movie theater shooting

But Collins, the gun store owner, says he feels like the rug was pulled out from under him after he opened Spartan Defense in 2021. The opening came after he'd weathered pandemic delays -- and right as some of the most notable legislation was being passed.

With hindsight, he's not sure he would have invested in the Colorado Springs store.

"When I got here, business was great," Collins said. "And now, they're just trying to put up all these barriers and roadblocks and red tape."

'Some of the strictest' laws

The Colorado laws passed over the last six years have had a significant real-world effect.

Customers who buy a gun must now wait three days to pick it up. They must pass more stringent background checks, both from the state and the federal government. They must be at least 21 years old to buy any type of gun or ammunition. They cannot have been convicted of a slew of crimes, including any type of assault, a bias-motivated crime, cruelty to animals or harassment.

They must pay a new 6.5% excise tax, which totals $65 on a $1,000 purchase, to generate money for services for crime victims and mental health as well as school safety.

Once a gun is purchased, the owner must store it securely enough that children and people who are ineligible to possess firearms can’t access it. If they keep the gun in a car, they must meet secure storage requirements. Failing to do either can result in a misdemeanor charge.

The owner can’t carry a gun at a polling place or inside government buildings and educational facilities, such as schools and day care centers. If the owner wants to carry the gun concealed, they must pay for and pass an eight-hour course that includes live-fire exercises and a written exam. A refresher course, required every five years for people who already have permits, is two hours and also includes an exam and a live-fire exercise.

And if the person is deemed a threat to themselves or others, their guns can be confiscated.

“The Colorado state legislature has been very busy on the gun front over the past half-dozen years or so,” said Kristin Goss, a Duke University public policy professor who studies gun politics. “Colorado is now pretty comparable to some of the strictest gun law states in the country."

Duran rejected the suggestion that any of those laws infringe on individual rights. As a concealed-carry permit holder herself, she said it’s her “duty” as a lawmaker and a gun owner to show what responsible ownership looks like.

“I don’t ever feel like anything that I have supported or run is an infringement on my rights as a gun owner,” Duran said. “I feel like it’s part of my responsibility as a gun owner to make sure that I pass legislation and support things that make our community safer.”

Gov. Jared Polis is "proud" of the gun laws and has called the state a "model for common-sense reform," his spokesperson, Shelby Wieman, said.

In the first six months of this year alone, more than 2,000 firearm transactions were denied through background checks, for reasons that include past assault convictions, restraining orders, traffic offenses and more, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

"The laws Gov. Polis has signed promote responsible gun ownership, respect Second Amendment rights, give more tools to law enforcement, help to get illegal firearms off our streets, and have undoubtedly made our state more safe," Wieman wrote in a statement to The Denver Post. "These measures, along with many others, have helped reduce crime rates in our communities and we look forward to ensuring those trends continue."

Polis was elected governor as part of the 2018 wave. But he's also shown more restraint than some Democrats when it comes to firearm laws. He balked at an initial version of SB-3 this year that would have outright banned the sale of semiautomatic weapons that have detachable magazines. His office negotiated the allowance for prospective buyers to take training courses.

'More and more restrictive'

The view from reform advocates that the laws enforce responsible gun ownership clashes against that of gun-rights advocates, who see the flurry of legislation as a fast-and-furious construction of new barriers to legal gun ownership.

Most gun owners want to comply with the law, said Ray Elliott, the president of the Colorado State Shooting Association. Gun locks, training, waiting periods and the new excise tax each add barriers -- whether it’s cost or time -- to gun ownership.

“All those rules and laws and everything going on make (gun ownership) more and more onerous, more and more restrictive,” Elliott said. “And as you put up barriers like that, (gun control advocates) know exactly what they’re doing. Less and less people are going to jump through the hoops.”

His view is shared by Collins, the gun store owner, who's also the vice president of the Colorado Federal Firearms Licensee Association. On a recent weekday afternoon, a clerk at his store was walking a potential customer through rules for transferring firearms and how to comply with the law. Collins said training is constant to keep clerks abreast of changes in law and new guidance as the store tries to stay on the right side of new regulations.

The new excise tax, in particular, has been a problem, Collins said. He called the law vague in defining which gun parts and accessories the tax applies to, putting him at risk of either overcharging customers or undercollecting the tax. The tax is also driving some customers out of state for certain items because they find them cheaper to buy online and pay a fee needed to transfer possession of the gun.

State Sen. Byron Pelton, a Sterling Republican, said he sees that problem acutely.

His sprawling northeastern Colorado district touches three other states: Nebraska, Kansas and Wyoming. All have distinctly more lenient firearm laws than Colorado. Consituents will cross the border for ammunition, in particular, to avoid the added cost of the excise tax.

"The state of Colorado is forcing more people to go out of state to buy guns, because the laws are so draconian,” Pelton said. “It's making it harder and harder and more expensive for folks in rural Colorado to buy firearms to protect themselves and their land and their livestock."

Elliott didn’t doubt that many who support the recent gun laws were sincere in trying to make people safer. But he also sees an overall movement toward disarmament. He called it “a death by a thousand cuts.”

His group sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this year highlighting the laws they find most detestable. The letter was signed by elected Republican officials across the state.

Collins' business does offer firearm training -- he said he's trained more than 15,000 students -- but he argues it should be optional. Making it a requirement infringes on gun owners' rights under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, he said.

Collins estimates that SB-3, when it goes into effect, will impact nearly 80% of his inventory, including AR-15-type rifles -- one of the most popular styles of sport-shooting rifles in the country. The weapon is also commonly associated with some of the worst mass shootings in the country, including in Colorado, though handguns are more frequently used for such attacks.

"I do see people that will want to exercise their rights and are going to stay here in Colorado," Collins said. "I do see people that are just not going to put up with it."

As the new limit on semiautomatic sales nears a year from now, barring any successful lawsuits to prevent it, “I don’t expect anything to be left on my shelves,” Collins said. He expects a surge in sales similar to ones he recalls during the COVID-19 pandemic, before he opened his brick-and-mortar store, and after President Barack Obama was elected, which prompted worries by some people about national restrictions on guns and ammo.

Collins is cautious about how he'll restock as the new law goes into effect. He doesn’t want to get left with inventory he can’t sell.

But advocates and the gun industry have long predicted doom because of new gun laws, said Sen. Tom Sullivan, a Centennial Democrat and a sponsor of many of Colorado’s new gun laws, and “none of that is true.” Sullivan's son, Alex, was one of a dozen people murdered in the Aurora theater shooting. Seventy others were injured.

Alex's murder spurred Sullivan to advocate for stricter gun laws in Colorado and nationally, and led to him running for office.

SB-3 does prohibit the sale of many semiautomatic weapons -- unless the purchaser has completed a firearm education course. The bill was heavily amended while it made its way through the legislature and Sullivan now describes it as a “permit-to-purchase” law.

People who follow the law haven’t lost access to anything in recent years -- and won’t under this law, Sullivan said. But laws need to change as society changes, he said. Sullivan likened the new gun laws to the shift toward widespread adoption of seatbelts in cars a few generations ago. It didn’t happen overnight, but the life-saving devices are now the norm.

"OK, you've got to wait a few days to get (a gun). Or you have to fill out another form. Whatever it is, you still get what you want,” Sullivan said.

But do the laws work?

One of the 2021 gun laws championed by Sullivan created the state Office of Gun Violence Prevention to, among other things, track gun deaths in Colorado. And in raw and per-capita numbers, they’ve risen overall since 2013.

In 2014, the first full year of the post-Aurora laws, the state reported 86 gun homicides, or 1.9 per 100,000 people; in 2023, the most recent year with available data, 237 people were killed with guns in homicides, or about 5 per 100,000 residents. 

In that same time frame, the number of gun suicides grew from 527 a year, or 9.9 per 100,000 people, to 673, or 11.5 per 100,000 people.

Gun-rights advocates are quick to point to such numbers, as well as the overall pandemic-era spike in violent crime, as evidence that the laws are, at best, misguided. At worst, they see the crime and violence being used as a cover to disarm law-abiding citizens.

“I don't think it's true that every single law that was passed was necessarily pointless and useless. Many are, but not all," said David B. Kopel, the research director of the Independence Institute, a libertarian-conservative think tank in Denver. He's also a senior fellow at the Firearms Research Center in the University of Wyoming's College of Law.

He said some laws have a reasonable premise, even if the data itself or their implementation leaves an open question about their efficacy and overall consequences. 

The gun issue is also so fraught and caught up in the culture wars that Kopel sees "a tremendous amount of motivated reasoning, on both sides," as those arguing seek to confirm preexisting beliefs.

Gauging the effectiveness of laws means disentangling them from broader societal changes and weighing them against the costs they impose on other people. The waiting period law, for example, may stop some suicides, but it also "makes society more dangerous," he argues, because people can't defend themselves.

Goss, the Duke University professor, likewise points out the lack of good, specific evidence on the effects of new laws on gun violence. Regional differences in history, culture and society can lead to the same laws having different effects.

But the field of study is starting to change. The Rand Corporation recently published a review of studies on gun violence that, while not drawing firm conclusions, highlighted the strength of evidence for certain laws. Broadly, the review shows that stricter laws may decrease gun violence -- but it also finds hard evidence of that may be slim. Its review of studies on waiting periods, for example, found “moderate” evidence that the laws had helped minimize suicide and violent crime.

“There’s pretty suggestive evidence that at the aggregate level, if you have a good set of laws and they’re enforced, there will be a reduction in people misusing firearms,” Goss said. “But we need much better research on that.”

Gun-rights advocates argue that root causes, not guns, should be the focus. If legislators want to address suicide, they should push for programs to support mental health; if it's crime, go after criminals. 

"Criminals, they're just going to have a little bit further to drive in order to get a firearm that they want to use in a bad way," Collins said. He added that high-end precision weapons from stores like his aren't usually the weapons used in violence. It's cheap, stolen firearms. 

He also cited the June 1 attack on demonstrators in Boulder as evidence that people intent on harming others will find a way. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the man accused of carrying out the attack with homemade firebombs, wounded more than a dozen people, including a woman who died later. He is an immigrant who was denied a gun purchase earlier in the year because he lacked proper legal status.

Duran and Sullivan both pointed out that the pandemic upended society both in terms of crime statistics and gun sales. Wieman, the governor's spokesperson, noted that violent crime and property crime both dropped by more than 13% between 2022 and 2024.

Duran says those numbers and other data are worth reexamining to determine what more needs to be done regarding gun safety and new laws.

She also remains confident that the laws have had a positive effect. In her view, even one life saved because of the laws still matters.

"There isn't a magic wand out there," Duran said. "There just isn't. What it takes is combining neighborhoods and community with the advocates and the experts -- all of us together to say, 'What does the data show us and what do we need to do next to make a difference?' "

Colorado's undeniable shift

Twelve years ago, in the wake of the Aurora shooting, it wasn’t clear if Colorado would continue to stiffen its gun laws or not.

Rhonda Fields, who sponsored the magazine limit law in 2013 and is now an Arapahoe County commissioner, said the gun laws passed that year “created shockwaves across the state.” The package also included a law requiring universal background checks and a fee to cover those checks.

Lawmakers faced recalls and threats, including by one man who was arrested for sending Fields harassing messages. Democrats lost control of the state Senate and at least one company, firearm magazine manufacturer Magpul, left the state in protest.

Democrats spent the next several years playing defense, said Sullivan, who was not a legislator then. The state had followed a similar pattern after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre: An unbearable tragedy led to a burst of energy around firearm laws, and then quiet.

The impasse on legislation started to break in 2018, along with Colorado’s purple reputation. Duran, like Sullivan, was part of a wave of incoming Democrats who won office that year to take control of state government.

She recalled walking into the Capitol intent on creating new requirements for concealed-carry laws -- and being told no by Democratic leadership. They already had plans for a new gun bill in the 2019 session, and they wouldn’t wager majority control more than that, Duran said.

That bill was the now-enacted red-flag law. Despite protests over it, Democrats would go on to keep their majorities in the 2020 election. And in the 2022 election. And in 2024.

Backers of stricter gun laws took it as a sign that the people wanted reform.

“You can’t talk about the national gun safety movement without talking about Colorado,” Everytown for Gun Safety President John Feinblatt said. “A decade ago, no one saw progress like this coming from a state known for hunting and sport shooting."

His group ranks states based on how it rates the relative strength of their gun laws.

"Colorado has the 10th-strongest gun laws in the country," Feinblatt said, "and its lawmakers aren’t just running on gun safety -- they’re winning.”

But everyday gun owners end up bearing the brunt of the new laws, said Elliott, from the shooting association.

"Responsible gun owners are not the problem," Elliott said. "(The state is) literally passing laws on people that are very, very law-abiding citizens."

Among current and former lawmakers, Fields, whose son was murdered in a shooting in 2005, said it’s “amazing” how far the state has come; she left the legislature after she was term-limited from running again in 2024. Sullivan, likewise, said he “can’t overemphasize the thankfulness” he and others in the community of people affected by gun violence feel for the new laws Colorado has passed.

But he also called for another shift in thinking. He pointed out that education, climate change, the budget and other key state priorities all have periodic check-ins to see how those laws are working. Why not gun laws?

He’s asked legislative staff to seek more information on firearm thefts to see if policy can be tailored to the problem. Rafts of thefts from cars, homes or stores could all need different solutions. He also questioned why laws against attempts to make unlawful purchases of firearms weren’t used against the alleged Boulder firebomber.

Large Democratic majorities make it relatively easy to pass splashy gun legislation and for his colleagues to collect bill signing pens, Sullivan said, but that doesn’t replace the day-to-day policy work.

He also acknowledged that his circumstances are different from others' in the legislature.

"Everyone else has the opportunity to move on from what happened on July 20,” Sullivan said, referring to the date of the Aurora theater massacre. “They get to remember the tragedy and put it back on a shelf, and then wait another year to remember it again. For me, it’s there every single day. It changes you. It gives you a different perspective on things."

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