The DOJ is now suing Denver over its ban on weapons that can hold more than 15 bullets, and it is suing the state of Colorado over a similar ban on magazines that hold more than 15 bullets. These long-delayed federal challenges against common-sense gun laws are silly, given that both laws have already withstood numerous legal challenges and predate the common circulation in America of weapons intended for war.

Denver’s ban predates even the 1994 federal assault weapons ban that Congressmembers foolishly let expire in 2004. The state-wide ban on magazines came in 2013, just a year after the Aurora Theater shooting, where, in a matter of seconds, an assailant with a 100-round magazine was able to kill 12 people and injure 70 more. Incident reports said the attack only stopped when the gun jammed.

But we only have to go back less than a year for a reminder of why these laws exist. Just last month, police released hundreds of pages of documents from the Evergreen High School shooting.

We learned from the reports that the shooter — a disturbed teenager — was intent on killing as many people as possible when he entered Evergreen High School on Sept. 10. He roved through the school’s halls for almost 9 minutes, emptying and reloading his parents’ Smith and Wesson .38 Special revolver at least once, possibly more.

The attack was limited by the fact that the revolver only held 5 bullets and had to be reloaded one bullet at a time, as opposed to assault rifles that often have large detachable magazines that can be clipped in and out rapidly. Based on the reports, we can tell the shooter used his bullets sparingly despite having extra ammunition with him, and that reloading bought time for students and teachers to run, hide, and warn others.

First, the shooter aimed at a 14-year-old student, who survived being shot twice by fleeing up the stairwell and seeking medical aid from teachers in another part of the school campus. Bullets one and two.

Next, as teachers in one hallway urged students to take cover, the gunman hid the gun inside a pocket or bag to get closer to his targets. Once close to the teachers, he drew and fired. Mercifully, he didn’t hit anyone, and the teachers escaped to warn other students or hide in a nearby classroom. Bullet three.

Next, he fired into a classroom where the Gay-Straight Alliance club met, but didn’t strike anyone. Bullet four.

Then he targeted the band room with an unsuccessful attack through a small window on the door. Bullet five. The report says investigators found five casings outside the room, indicating this is one place the assailant stopped and reloaded. He may have reloaded earlier, using more bullets in each attack, as well, but it is unclear whether more casings were found.

All this time, the assailant was limited by his gun’s capacity and the slower rate at which it could fire compared to an assault rifle. Lives were saved because the shooter was only able to take a revolver from his parents’ gun safe. It’s unclear what other weapons were in the safe because the would-be killer’s parents refused to speak to police in the days, weeks and months following the attack.

The attack ended outside the school when Matthew Silverstone, 18, confronted the shooter. Silverstone was shot twice and critically injured, but miraculously survived. Police then encircled the shooter, who used one more bullet on himself.

The U.S. Department of Justice wants us to believe that because millions of semi-automatic, high-capacity weapons are in circulation, gun bans like the one in Denver are ineffective and unconstitutional. But we know that the type of gun used makes a drastic difference in the outcome of the mass shooting. Every time laws keep an assault rifle out of the hands of someone intent on killing as many people as possible, lives are saved.

If the U.S. Department of Justice wants to protect the Second Amendment, then it would best serve law-abiding, patriotic gun owners by aggressively rooting out the extremist pockets of activity that are fueling mass shootings. The attacker at Evergreen High School was inspired by a radical misogynist movement online that glorified the Isla Vista, Calif., shooter who went on a killing spree because he was angry at women, because he had not had sex, and called himself involuntarily celibate.

The FBI was tracking the Evergreen shooter’s online activity. Federal law enforcement said they were working to identify the anonymous user when the shooting occurred. The DOJ should be spending its time building cases against known threats, so it can move quickly with warrants when intelligence indicates an imminent attack.

Local law enforcement cannot work preventively alone, and our federal partners have a much clearer picture of online extremism. We need their help in keeping students safe, not their assault on our laws.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

The new lawsuit alleges that Colorado’s ban on ammunition magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds violates the Second Amendment’s right for citizens to keep and bear arms. It argues that such magazines are standard for many weapons.

“Law-abiding Americans own and use for lawful purposes literally hundreds of millions of magazines such as those banned by the State,” the complaint reads. “A detachable magazine is an integral part of most semi-automatic firearms, including the AR-15 rifle. As such, they are covered by the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.”

Attorney General Phil Weiser vowed to defend the ban in a statement Wednesday, reiterating a stance he and other state and local officials took when the DOJ first threatened the lawsuits against Denver and the state earlier this week.

“Using federal civil rights law to put Coloradans at greater risk of gun violence is a dangerous overreach by the Justice Department, and this lawsuit turns the mission of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division on its head,” Weiser said in the statement. “Large-capacity magazine laws are responsible policies that satisfy Second Amendment protections, decrease the deadly impacts of mass shootings, and save lives.”

The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on large-capacity magazines in 2020, finding that the prohibition did not violate residents’ right to bear arms as guaranteed by the state Constitution. The decision did not consider whether the ban violated the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

State lawmakers passed the ban in 2013 in the wake of the Aurora movie theater shooting the prior year, in which the gunman used a large-capacity magazine to fire more than 60 rounds in less than a minute, killing 12 and wounding dozens.

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

Legislators in the House voted 40-25 to pass House Bill 1144, the 3D printing bill. At roughly the same time, the state Senate voted 19-16 to advance Senate Bill 43, which would require firearm barrels to be sold or transferred only by a federally licensed firearm dealer. Each bill will now switch to the opposite chamber and restart the process; each are likely to clear their next several votes and move to Gov. Jared Polis.

Both measures were exclusively backed by Democrats, who hold nearly 2-to-1 majorities in both chambers.

HB-1144 would prohibit the manufacturing of 3D printed firearms and gun components, including large-capacity magazines, rapid-fire devices and unfinished frames or receivers. It also bans the selling or distribution of instruction manuals that could be used to produce the devices. Anyone who violates the law would face a misdemeanor charge on a first offense; subsequent violations would result in a felony charge. The bill does not apply to licensed gun manufacturers or accredited gunsmithing programs.

“The ability to access a 3D printed firearm and commit an act that nine times out of 10 is fatal is unique, and (is) something we can speak to. This bill seeks to do that,” Rep. Andy Boeseneker, a Fort Collins Democrat, said during debate Monday. He’s sponsoring the bill with Rep. Lindsay Gilchrist.

Lawmakers previously banned the possession of so-called ghost guns, which are firearms without serial numbers. Between August 2024 and December 2025, the Colorado Bureau of Investigations seized 89 ghost guns — or “personal manufactured firearms” — spokesman Rob Low said in an email last month.

Republicans argued that the bill was unconstitutional and violated the Second Amendment. Rep. Rebecca Keltie, of Colorado Springs, accused one of the bill’s sponsors of legislating because of his “emotions” related to guns. The bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Tom Sullivan, whose son was killed in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting.

Later Monday, the Senate comfortably passed SB-43 after more Republican opposition. In addition to regulating who can sell gun barrels, the bill also requires that sales are made in person and that records about each sale be kept for five years.

Sullivan, a Centennial Democrat who’s also sponsoring the barrel bill, said the proposal is a further attempt to crack down on so-called ghost guns, or unregistered firearms.

“This is not an attempt to put anyone out of business or register anything so that at a later date someone will come to confiscate those items,” Sullivan said during floor debate on Friday, ahead of Monday’s final vote. “Times are changing … (and) the ghost gun has become a new problem for law enforcement.”

Republicans, who opposed the bill, launched a lengthy debate about the legislation Monday morning, characterizing it as an infringement on Second Amendment rights and law-abiding gun owners.

“Here we have a piece of legislation that masquerades as a public safety measure but in reality strikes at the very heart of our constitutional liberties,” Sen. Lynda Zamora Wilson, a Republican who lives at the Air Force Academy, said.

The votes kicked off a day of gun-related hearings and debates in the Capitol, where gun control measures have become increasingly common as Democratic lawmakers have settled into comfortable majorities over their Republican colleagues. Elsewhere Monday, a House committee was set to debate bills to tighten regulations on gun sellers and to expand who can ask a court to temporarily take a person’s firearms away. A Republican-backed measure to repeal the ability to file those petitions was also set for its initial hearing.

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

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."

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

Starting next summer, Coloradans will have to pass a background check and a training course before they can purchase a swath of semiautomatic firearms that include most of the guns known colloquially as assault weapons. Senate Bill 3 also prohibits the sale of bump stocks and rapid-fire trigger activators, which are firearm components that can increase a gun’s rate of fire.

The bill’s sponsors said it was intended to prevent future mass shootings and enforce the state’s existing prohibition on high-capacity magazines.

“We have been able to add to the safety of each and every Coloradan, especially when it comes to gun violence,” said Sen. Tom Sullivan, a Centennial Democrat who co-sponsored the bill with Sen. Julie Gonzales and Reps. Meg Froelich and Andy Boesenecker.

SB-3, which passed the legislature late last month, becomes the most sweeping gun-control measure passed by legislative Democrats in Colorado, and its passage into law was cheered Thursday by national gun-control groups Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety.

Though the law doesn’t impose a complete ban on assault weapons or any type of firearm, it follows in the footsteps of previous attempts in the Capitol to fully prohibit the sale or purchase of those guns. A group of activists, including local students who’d repeatedly come to the state Capitol calling for tighter regulations, attended the bill signing in the governor’s office Thursday.

Before the bill was signed, Froelich referred to those students as the “lockdown generation” that has lived their “whole school lives in the shadow of gun violence.”

“Today’s victory is because of the countless students that showed up day after day to testify in support of this life-saving bill,” Grant Cramer, a gun violence survivor and the co-president of Denver East High School’s Students Demand Action chapter, said in a statement. “We refused to take no for an answer and now we’ve strengthened our gun safety laws in Colorado. This is proof that our voices hold power to create change, no matter how big or small.”

Ian Escalante, the executive director of the group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, called the bill’s passage into law “one of the most disgraceful things that’s ever been done in the state.” After the bill had drawn national attention from gun-rights advocates in recent weeks, the National Rifle Association quickly put out a blistering statement criticizing Polis’ decision to sign it.

Escalante said his group was considering legal options to challenge the bill — though they likely won’t be able to pursue litigation until the bill goes into effect next year. He also said he planned to pursue “electoral accountability” in 2026, referring to challenging Democrats in competitive districts.

“We’re not going to let this law stand,” he said outside the governor’s office, “whether it’s through litigation or whether we kick these bastards out and we replace them with people who will repeal it.”

Law doesn’t apply to common handguns

The new law goes into effect Aug. 1, 2026. It applies primarily to gas-operated semiautomatic firearms that accept detachable magazines, a definition that includes the AR-15 rifle and many guns like it. It would require people pass background checks from their county sheriff. Should they clear that, they would need to take either a four- or 12-hour training course, depending on whether they’ve passed a hunter safety class.

Polis said Thursday that he wanted to keep the cost of background checks and training to below $200 per person and that he wanted additional carveouts for people who’d previously been trained with the weapons.

The law does not prohibit the possession of the weapons. It does not apply to most common handguns or shotguns, and lawmakers included a list of other firearms that are exempt from the limitations. The law also would not require anyone to turn in their firearms.

Gun shops can also continue selling firearms covered under the law, even to people who haven’t passed background checks, so long as the weapons have been altered to have a fixed magazine — meaning that they cannot be reloaded as rapidly.

All of the legislature’s 34 Republican lawmakers — along with several Democrats — voted against the bill. Conservatives labeled it an infringement on the Second Amendment and argued it would do little to stop gun violence.

Opponents delivered thousands of petitions to Democrats and to Polis’ office requesting that the proposal be rejected, and some also left flyers at the homes of Democratic lawmakers.

A skeptic of previous proposals to ban firearms at the state level, Sullivan embraced SB-3 as a means to enforce the 2013 magazine ban passed after the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting, in which Sullivan’s son, Alex, was killed. Other advocates and supporters said the bill seeks to prevent the mass shootings that have become a common feature of American life.

The new law’s limitations would apply to the guns used in the Aurora attack as well as to the weapons used at Columbine High School in 1999, at the Boulder King Soopers in 2021, and in a shooting spree in Lakewood and Denver in late 2021.

Polis sought changes to bill

As initially drafted, the bill would’ve broadly banned the sale or purchase of any gas-operated gun that accepted detachable magazines — which simultaneously would’ve escalated the magazine ban and enacted a de facto ban on most existing assault weapons.

But Polis balked, and his staff sought to insert a loophole into the measure allowing for sales to continue under certain circumstances.

In a late-night deal, Sullivan and Gonzales eventually acquiesced to the governor’s request. They added in the training and background check requirements after a needed supporter — embattled then-Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis — was absent ahead of a key vote.

In a statement accompanying the bill signing, Polis focused largely on the changes inserted into the bill to allow the firearms to still be sold to people who complete SB-3’s training and background check requirements.

“This bill ensures that our Second Amendment rights are protected and that Coloradans can continue to purchase the gun of their choice for sport, hunting, self defense, or home defense,” he wrote.

With SB-3, Colorado joins a growing list of states that have either instituted a permitting scheme — meaning requirements that people receive some sort of approval before they can purchase certain weapons — or an outright ban on semiautomatic rifles.

The law will almost certainly be challenged in court, though legal scholars and supporters have argued it stands on solid constitutional footing.

Legislative Democrats have enacted a growing list of firearms regulations, largely in the past few years as the party’s legislative majorities have grown. Sullivan said 40 gun-violence prevention bills have been introduced in recent years, nearly half of which have passed.

Those new laws include a mandatory waiting period and age limit for purchasing firearms, new gun-storage rules and additional gun shop licensing requirements. Lawmakers have also further limited where firearms can be carried and have expanded the legal avenues for a court to temporarily confiscate a person’s weapons.

After signing SB-3 on Thursday, Polis then signed another Sullivan-backed bill intended to help bring federal funding to the state to respond to mass shootings.

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

Senate Bill 3 — which would apply the new restrictions to the gun used in the Boulder attack — passed the House 36-28 on Monday. The bill’s Senate sponsors next will move to accept changes made in the House and then send the bill to Gov. Jared Polis.

The governor is expected to sign the measure. At Polis’ behest, lawmakers agreed to weaken the bill’s initial intent of fully banning the sale or purchase of the targeted weapons, unless they were altered to have a fixed magazine — meaning that they could not be reloaded as rapidly.

Still, the measure represents the strongest gun-control legislation passed by Colorado lawmakers since they began undertaking firearm regulation in earnest more than a decade ago.

The bill, which would take effect Aug. 1, 2026, broadly would prohibit the sale, purchase or transfer of gas-operated, semiautomatic firearms that accept detachable magazines — a definition that captures most firearms colloquially known as assault weapons.

Under the bill, the guns could still be purchased by people who’ve passed a background check and completed a training course. The legislation does not ban the possession of any weapon, and it would not apply to common pistols and shotguns. It also exempts a list of common guns, some of which are used for hunting.

The restrictions would apply to the gas-operated pistol used by the King Soopers shooter in March 2021. It would also cover the weapons used in the December 2021 Lakewood and Denver shooting spree; the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting; and some of those used in the 1999 Columbine High School shooting.

The bill’s sponsors — Democratic Reps. Andy Boesenecker and Meg Froelich — said the bill regulates weapons with a “unique lethality” that have been used in mass shootings across Colorado and the United States.

“A generation after Columbine — (a time) of active shooter drills, of lived experience of mass shootings — you bet I have emotions,” Froelich, an Englewood legislator in her final term, said before the vote Monday. “I’m heartbroken. I’m also determined.”

“The core root of the issue”

Republicans uniformly opposed the bill in the House and the Senate. On Monday, House Republicans questioned the measure’s constitutionality and its usefulness, and they said the law wouldn’t be followed by the people most likely to commit violent crimes.

“Deal with violence,” said Rep. Anthony Hartsook, a Parker Republican. “… The tool that is used is an extension of that violence. Until you address the crimes and the people and the mental health that’s dealing with (violence), you’re not going to get to the core root of the issue.”

SB-3 is the product of months — and, in some ways, years — of debate, negotiation and broader political shifts, all against a backdrop of seemingly ceaseless mass shootings. After two years of failed attempts to pass assault weapons bans, lawmakers introduced the measure in early January with a different approach: banning the sale of many guns that accept detachable magazines.

It’s sponsored by Sen. Tom Sullivan, a Centennial Democrat whose son, Alex, died in the Aurora theater shooting. Sullivan had opposed the previous attempts at more explicit assault weapons bans, but he provided pivotal support for SB-3. He cast it as a way to ratchet up enforcement of the state’s high-capacity magazine ban — which lawmakers passed after the theater shooting.

When the bill was introduced, it had enough House and Senate co-sponsors to clear both chambers. But Polis sought a loophole, a desire enabled by a group of holdout Senate Democrats and the absence of a would-be supporter, then-Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, for the vote.

After acceding to the training and background check changes, Sullivan and co-sponsor Sen. Julie Gonzales shepherded the bill out of the Senate. It was then heavily amended in the House, largely to cut costs in a tight budget year.

Once the Senate’s sponsors accept the House’s changes, the bill goes to Polis. Earlier this month, Polis said he was “confident the improvements made to the bill will … protect our Second Amendment rights here in Colorado and improve the education and gun-safety knowledge of gun owners.”

Significant new gun regulation

Should Polis sign it, SB-3 would be a cornerstone of Colorado’s growing foundation of gun control legislation, and its passage shows just how far the state has moved in the last decade.

In 2013, Democratic lawmakers passed a package of gun-control bills, including the magazine ban. That prompted a successful campaign to recall two Democratic legislators, which then chilled additional gun legislation.

That attitude has changed as voters have increasingly sent Democrats to the statehouse. Those Democrats have grown more comfortable pursuing firearm regulation in a state plagued by mass shootings.

In the past several years, the state has adopted age limits, waiting periods, storage requirements, state permitting for gun sales, and a red-flag law allowing for the temporary removal of a person’s firearms.

Still, SB-3 prompted extensive and heated debate in both chambers, including for several hours before the final vote Monday.

The state’s history of mass shootings was also omnipresent: In response to Republican criticism that the bill would limit “law-abiding citizens” from purchasing firearms, Denver Democratic Rep. Jennifer Bacon read the names of people killed in schools and grocery stores.

Each of them, she said, was a law-abiding citizen who “died of the crime of mass shooting.”

“I want us to recognize,” she said, “that we can prevent the crime of mass murder by gun.”

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.”

Anne Marie Hochhalter, a 17-year-old senior at Columbine when she was shot in the spine by two deranged classmates, died this week at 43 possibly from complications with the injuriesshe sustained that tragic day. She outlived 12 of her schoolmates and a teacher who died April 20, 1999. Austin Eubanks, who was shot twice, died at 37 following a long battle with an opioid addiction that was a result of the shooting. Both are survived by Richard Castaldo, Patrick Ireland and Sean Graves who also were severely wounded and have continued to honor the legacy of those who died at Columbine.

After Columbine, there was a mass movement for change. Hope was palpable that this would never happen again. Police reviewed mistakes they made in delaying their entry into the building. Laws were changed so that the shooters would not have been able to get their guns in Colorado legally. A hotline was established for students, parents and teachers to report threats, which has prevented some plotted attacks. And Coloradans united around the survivors and their families.

Columbine High School shooting survivor dies decades after tragedy. Her tenacious spirit is remembered.

But then the mass shootings continued – at schools, at concerts, at offices, and at parades. The pace began to pick up sometime in the last decade. Some shootings were orchestrated by foreign entities as terrorist attacks, but most were home-grown Americans slaughtering their friends, neighbors, and sometimes complete strangers with a bloodthirst that is unimaginable to anyone who hasn’t seen armed combat in war.

Also, this week, street signs on C-470 were finally updated to reflect the change of Lucent Boulevard to honor Kendrick Castillo. Kendrick was killed during the 2019 Highlands Ranch school shooting. He threw himself on one of the gunmen, saving the lives of his classmates, but suffering a fatal wound in the process. Now Kendrick Castillo Way reminds us all of a teenager who shouldn't have had to be a hero in his high school classroom but sacrificed himself to save others.

His parents visited his grave every day for five years.

Sadly, these tragedies have divided the nation, and little hope remains that there will be an end to the violence.

Some survivors have dedicated their lives to preventing more ripples from forming, only to be accused of being un-American because of the politics and rights that envelop guns. In Colorado, Sen. Tom Sullivan’s son was killed in the Aurora Theater shooting. He sponsored a bill that passed the Colorado Senate that will make it harder for people to buy semi-automatic weapons with detachable magazines, like the one used to kill Sullivan’s son, Alex Sullivan, and 11 others at a midnight screening of Dark Knight Rises in 2012.

Perhaps instead of derision, Sullivan should be met with compassion as he seeks to protect others from gun violence.

Families who have lost their children at school shootings now support one another through an informal network, but part of the toll taken by these mass shootings has been the suicides that follow -- Anne Marie Hochhalter’s mother shot herself just as the family was moving into a new house that would be accessible for Anne Marie, Jeremy Richman killed himself after his son was killed at Newtown Elementary School, and two teen survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting killed themselves in 2019.

The trauma and loss was insurmountable for some.

But somehow Anne Marie Hochhalter endured. She thrived and lived her life well. She loved her animals, her friends and the ocean, which she only got to visit once.

“She was fiercely independent,” Sue Townsend told The Denver Post. “She was a fighter. She’d get knocked down -- she struggled a lot with health issues that stemmed from the shooting — but I’d watch her pull herself back up. She was her best advocate and an advocate for others who weren’t as strong in the disability community.”

Townsend's stepdaughter Lauren Townsend was killed at Columbine and said she "acquired" Anne Marie as a daughter in the aftermath of the shooting and Anne Marie's mother's suicide.

Perhaps there is still hope that Americans can unite and stop new ripples of trauma and loss from consuming so much that is good in this world.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

The measure would cover a large swath of guns that are colloquially known as assault weapons. Senate Bill 3 passed the Senate’s State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee on a party-line, 3-2 vote after eight hours of testimony in a packed room in the state Capitol.

The measure now heads to the full Senate, where its passage is virtually assured. Eighteen votes are needed to clear the 35-seat chamber, and 18 Democrats — not including a newly appointed senator who voted for the bill Tuesday night — have already signed on as co-sponsors.

From there, the bill will head to the House, where it has similar levels of support.

The bill’s sponsors, Democratic Sens. Tom Sullivan and Julie Gonzales, argued that it was the next step in enforcing Colorado’s 11-year-old ban on high-capacity magazines.

Sullivan, whose son, Alex, was killed in the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting, said the magazine ban has been ignored, thus requiring lawmakers to pursue a ban on the sale or transfer of firearms that accept the components. The measure would also ban rapid-fire trigger activators and bump stocks, which increase the fire rate of weapons.

Marking a novel approach to limiting gun sales, SB-3 would not cover common shotguns, revolvers or pistols, unless they are gas-operated. It also would not make it illegal to possess semiautomatic weapons that accept detachable magazines.

The measure would essentially require gun manufacturers to modify semiautomatic rifles to have fixed magazines that must be loaded, round by round, from the top of the weapon, rather than through magazines that can be easily swapped out when bullets run out.

“This is an enforcement of the high-capacity magazine ban,” Sullivan said before the vote. “Something that we should have been working on since 2013, but we didn’t. And it took 11 years for us to get back on it and do something about it. That’s what we’re doing today. This is the next step forward. And then we’ll see where we go from here.”

For hours Tuesday, supporters and opponents took turns defending and railing against the proposal.

East High School students recalled the shootings and lockdowns on their campus in recent years, while local and national advocates for gun control groups defended the bill’s legality and workability.

The specter of Colorado’s — and America’s — grim and steady drumbeat of mass shootings was also ever-present Tuesday: Two supporters said they were alumni of Virginia Tech, the site of a 2007 shooting that left 32 people dead. Some supporters testified about shopping at the Boulder King Soopers where 10 people were killed by a shooter in 2021.

Jane Dougherty, whose sister was killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, testified about receiving her sister’s cleaned clothing in a box.

“We sanitize it because we don’t want to see it,” said Dougherty, who has testified in favor of past Colorado bills that were attempts at more overt bans on so-called assault weapons. “But we have to see it. We have to see what high-capacity magazines will do to your family members.”

The bill was opposed by Republicans, gun-rights advocacy groups and gun store owners. Firearms dealers warned that the ban would push them out of business.

JD Murphree of Triple J Armory said it would “devastate” gun stores. Gun- rights groups pledged to sue — a threat they have pursued, to mixed results, on recent gun-control bills.

Sen. Rod Pelton, a Cheyenne Wells Republican, said the measure was unconstitutional and violated the Second Amendment. Several opponents also accused the legislature of essentially seeking to ban all semiautomatic rifles.

“A gun ban by another name is still a gun ban,” Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams told the committee.

Sullivan denied that SB-3 was an assault weapons ban, and he said he didn’t support such a policy. Indeed, he said he’d essentially killed attempts by fellow Democrats over the past two years to pass a more explicit ban.

Governor’s position unclear

A Centennial Democrat, Sullivan is largely seen as the legislature’s de facto point-person on gun legislation. His backing of this latest iteration — coupled with more overt support in both chambers — means the bill is likely to pass and reach Gov. Jared Polis’ desk.

Polis’ position on the measure is unclear; a spokeswoman did not immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday morning.

A potential snag comes from the bill’s estimated cost: The Colorado Bureau of Investigation projects that the bill would cost $4.6 million to implement — a hefty price tag in a session when the legislature faces a $700 million budget hole.

But a nonpartisan fiscal analyst working for the legislature essentially rejected that estimate and said there would be no cost to the state. Sullivan also criticized the CBI’s estimates, and he accused the agency of “fluffing” the numbers, potentially on behalf of a leery Polis, to make it easier to set the bill aside.

High financial projections are often a quiet kiss of death for legislation, and lawmakers have long griped that the estimates can be artificially inflated to sideline bills. Sullivan noted that the CBI’s estimate included the need for several $90,000 microscopes and a remodeling of one of the agency’s labs.

Shortly before the committee vote, Sullivan said he was undaunted by the opposition seated behind him, adding that he wished more firearms dealers and gunowners had sought out proactive conversations before.

“When I got myself here, I made sure that we’re going to have these kinds of conversations every single year while I am here — while people in my district vote for me and bring me here, while I beat back recalls against me for what I think is the right thing to do,” Sullivan said. “So we’ll keep having these conversations, and I welcome these conversations. Because we’re going down the right path with this.”

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

The new bill spearheaded by Democrats is aimed at building upon existing gun laws by prohibiting the sale, manufacture or purchase of semiautomatic weapons that use detachable magazines. It is set to be introduced in the early days of the legislative session, which begins Wednesday.

Detachable magazines feed ammunition into the gun and can be swapped out when empty. The measure would also ban rapid-fire trigger activators and bump stocks, which are components that increase the fire rate of semiautomatic rifles and were infamously used in America’s deadliest mass shooting, in Las Vegas in 2017.

The bill, sponsored by Centennial Democrat Sen. Tom Sullivan, would not prohibit possession of the targeted firearms, and anyone who possessed the weapons before a ban went into effect could keep them. The measure would level criminal penalties — as well as the loss of licensure — against sellers who violated it.

Sullivan cast the bill as a way to enforce the state’s 11-year-old ban on high-capacity magazines — which, he said, are still sold in Colorado despite the prohibition. The components were used in both the Boulder King Soopers shooting and the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, Sullivan said.

“So instead of walking into the King Soopers with multiple magazines that (the shooter) just switched out and kept on firing, he would either have to stop and manually reload, which gives law enforcement and the public the ability to take some kind of an action … or he would have to walk in there with multiple AR-style weapons with attached magazines,” said Sullivan, whose son, Alex,  was killed in the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting, in an interview.

The proposal is not a ban on certain semiautomatic rifles referred to as assault weapons, though its parameters would prohibit the sale of a wide swath of high-powered guns colloquially considered to be in that category. Sullivan has previously opposed efforts by Democratic lawmakers to ban assault weapons at the state level, and one such attempt passed the House before dying in the Senate last spring.

Sullivan reiterated his opposition to a state-level assault weapons ban, though he said he supported a nationwide prohibition.

Those types of firearms could still be sold under his bill, albeit in different form: If manufacturers and gun owners want to continue selling and using the weapons, Sullivan said, they would need to adjust to firearms that can only be loaded slowly, bullet by bullet, from the top of the weapon — not through detachable magazines.

Sullivan criticized firearm manufacturers and dealers for continuing to sell high-capacity magazines in the state, and he questioned why law enforcement had not done more to proactively crack down on their sale. The effort to ban bump stocks comes after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Trump administration ban on the components, which drew national scrutiny after the Las Vegas mass shooter fired more than 1,000 bullets in 11 minutes in 2017.

The proposal does not cover standard handguns or shotguns, though the prohibition would include the type of pistol used in the Boulder King Soopers shooting that left 10 people dead in March 2021.

The bill is a new approach to limiting the type of high-powered weapons frequently used in mass shootings, which have become a grimly frequent occurrence in Colorado and in America. While other states have banned certain semiautomatic rifles outright, Sullivan said a similar expansion of a magazine ban hasn’t been used elsewhere.

It also represents the latest step of years of Colorado Democrats’ attempts to better regulate gun sales. Last year, lawmakers passed a bill to require that gun dealers hold a state license, on top of the existing federal requirement. (Gun dealers who sell weapons prohibited by Sullivan’s bill could lose their state license if it becomes law.) Legislators also directed additional money to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to better investigate illegal sales of guns and gun components.

The new bill will be co-sponsored by Democratic Reps. Andrew Boesenecker and Meg Froelich. Boesenecker co-sponsored the state licensure bill last year, while Froelich and Sullivan backed the measure to increase the investigative bureau’s budget to pursue illegal gun sales.

“What we’re able to recognize pretty clearly is that particular kinds of firearms, when paired with a high-capacity magazine, have a lethality that are just unparalleled,” Boesenecker said.

The Capitol’s minority Republicans, who have uniformly opposed gun control bills in recent years, almost certainly will oppose the measure. Republican lawmakers have railed against previous legislation, including the more sweeping assault weapons ban proposals, as government overreach and infringements on the Second Amendment.

On Friday, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners executive director Ian Escalante said his group is “absolutely going to oppose this bill,” which he argued violated the U.S. Constitution. He said the organization will probably file a lawsuit challenging it, should it pass.

“Realistically, you might as well try to ban these firearms,” he said, referring to Sullivan’s bill as a de facto ban on the weapons. “All manufacturers are going to have to remanufacture these firearms and make them with fixed magazines. I don’t know how that would work.”

Sullivan noted that Colorado voters in November passed a new tax on gun and ammunition sales — which, he argued, showed voters’ priorities.

“The people of the state of Colorado have mandated that our legislators do something about the public health crisis that is gun violence, and that’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “It’d be great if we had partners in that from the minority party, from the industry. I haven’t seen that (yet), going on my seventh year down here at the General Assembly.”

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

Michael Hawkins, 55, was charged July 29 with six felony counts of sexual assault of a child by a person in a position of trust and a single count of misdemeanor child abuse in alleged incidents that spanned from 2002 to 2021, court records show.

He is accused of raping an elementary-aged girl, groping multiple children, using “arrest control tactics” that physically hurt them and, in one instance, holding a boy underwater until he nearly drowned, according to an affidavit filed against him.

The Denver Post does not identify victims of sexual abuse and is not identifying how Hawkins came in contact with the children in order to protect their privacy. The abuse is not alleged to have happened while Hawkins was on duty as an officer with the Aurora Police Department.

Hawkins “adamantly denies the accusations,” his attorney, Christopher Estoll, said Tuesday.

“Mr. Hawkins has been cooperative and in communication with the prosecution throughout the investigation, but adamantly denies the accusations,” Estoll said. “The legal process will provide him with the opportunity to present additional information related to these allegations in the future.”

Estoll declined further comment, but wrote in an Aug. 1 court filing that at least one of the people bringing accusations was “not a credible witness and is highly manipulative.”

“Mr. Hawkins is presumed innocent and should not be preemptively punished by being kept in custody,” Estoll wrote in the brief, seeking a personal recognizance bond for Hawkins. A judge granted a $50,000 bond.

The brief also notes that the criminal investigation began in 2022 but charges were not filed until July, and that Hawkins has no prior criminal history. He does not pose a threat to public safety, Estoll wrote.

A spokesman for the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, Eric Ross, said Tuesday that prosecutors did not believe they could prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt when the affidavit against Hawkins was first authored in 2022, but that further investigation changed that.

“Once we had what we needed and we felt we had a case, then charges were formally filed,” he said.

The allegations span Hawkins’ tenure in the Aurora Police Department between 2005 and 2018, and multiple witnesses and victims told investigators that Hawkins’ job as a police officer impacted his behavior.

The former police sergeant experienced post-traumatic stress disorder after he responded to the 2012 mass shooting at an Aurora movie theater in which 12 people were killed and 70 wounded, according to an affidavit filed against him. He received national attention in the wake of that attack when he testified during the shooter’s jury trial about carrying a dying 6-year-old girl out of the theater that night.

The rape of the elementary-aged girl is alleged to have happened around 2012, but it is not clear from court records whether it allegedly occurred before or after the theater shooting. One person interviewed by police said Hawkins “claimed all of his issues were related to the theater shooting,” but that, in reality, “many of the issues existed beforehand,” according to the affidavit.

Hawkins made headlines again in 2017 when a woman brought a police brutality lawsuit against him and the Aurora Police Department over a 2015 incident in which Hawkins and three other officers tackled, punched and kicked the unarmed woman, then falsely charged her with assaulting police.

Video of the incident showed Hawkins stomping on the woman’s head while she was being held on the ground by three other officers. The assault charges against her were dropped and Aurora paid $335,000 to settle the lawsuit.

Hawkins medically retired from the Aurora Police Department in January 2018.

Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.