During the 2024 Legislative Session in Colorado, Senate Bill 24-131 was filed to criminalize licensed carry in many locations. Section 6 of the bill, the “safety clause,” declares “that this act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety.” However, when you review the research, it’s clear that this legislation is an immediate threat to public safety.
According to a Washington Post fact-check, “86 percent of mass public shootings took place in gun-free zones from 2009 to 2016.”[1] Because 5 out of 6 mass public shooters prefer “gun-free zones,” it is almost inevitable that the drastic expansion of “gun-free zones” in SB24-131 – and similar legislation under consideration across America – will result in more mass public shootings.
Even worse, this bill erodes the state’s Concealed Carry Act, which decreased crime in Colorado by 1.2%.[2] In 2023, there were 29,984 violent crimes.[3] Thus, if Colorado’s Concealed Carry Act were repealed, violent crime would be expected to rise by about 1.2%, meaning 360 more violent crimes annually, or about one per day.
Although SB24-131 does not completely repeal the Concealed Carry Act, it partially repeals the ability of people to protect themselves in many of the places where they are most vulnerable. Thus, this legislation guarantees that violent attackers will be safe from the danger of being shot by armed citizens, if the attackers choose to attack in the locations specified in the bill.
The breadth of areas banned for licensed carry is contrary to public safety. Suppose a strip mall has a dozen businesses, one of which is a tavern. Under SB24-131, then all the patrons of any business at the strip mall would be prohibited from carrying a firearm for protection in the shared parking lot.[4] The same is true for mall parking lots if one of the businesses in the mall is a branch bank.[5]
Banks, like all other private businesses, have always had the right to prohibit licensed carry on their premises, and some do. The California Attorney General is currently litigating a challenge to California SB2, on which Colorado SB24-131 is modeled. In that litigation, Attorney General Rob Bonta has admitted that California cannot provide “evidence of ‘a single bank robbery or other crime at a bank committed by a CCW permit holder.’”[6]
Given that in the entire history of the United States, there is no instance of a licensed handgun carrier committing a crime at a bank, what is the logic of SB24-131 imposing a prohibition, overriding the decisions of many banks? What is the logic of prohibiting self-defense in every inch of a shopping mall parking lot just because the mall includes one small branch bank?
In fact, data show that in Colorado specifically, an adult with a concealed handgun permit (CHP) is about 39 times less likely to be arrested than an adult without a CHP. The reason is obvious. Concealed carry is, by its nature, virtually impossible to detect, unless a person walks through a metal detector or is frisked by the police. Obtaining a concealed carry permit requires hundreds of dollars in fees and expenses, including for training, as well as the post-training hours necessary to go through the permitting process. In Denver, applicants often must go through long waits even to schedule appointments for fingerprinting and filing an application. The only people who bother to go through the onerous process are so concerned about legal compliance that they spend significant resources just to obtain a card from the government allowing them legally to do what they could do anyway for free, and with very low risk of being caught.
If enacted, SB24-131 and other “Sensitive Spaces” legislation will certainly be challenged in court. Given the extensive data, supporters of the law will have a very difficult time arguing that the expansion of “Gun Free Zones” or disarming law-abiding concealed carry holders will keep the community safer. While psychicallyadvantageous to gun prohibition lobbies, the bill is physically dangerous to public safety.
[1] Meg Kelly, Do 98 percent of mass public shootings happen in gun-free zones?, Washington Post, May 10, 2018. As the article explains, the 86% figure is based on the following definitions: a “mass shooting” involves four or people, other than the attacker, being killed; “public” does not include private residences; shootings that are part of drug or gang activity or some other crime (e.g., a robbery) are excluded; “gun-free zone” means a place where ordinary citizens are forbidden to carry.
[2] “Colorado: Violent crime rate. Effect of 2003 RTC Law 10 Years After Adoption: -1.2%.” John J. Donohue, Abhay Aneja, & Kyle D. Weber, Right-To-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Control Analysis, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 23510, p. 86, figure I4 (June 2017, revised Nov. 2018), http://www.nber.org/papers/w23510.
[3] Colo. Dept. of Public Safety, Violent Crime – Colorado – 2023, https://coloradocrimestats.state.co.us/tops/report/violent-crimes/colorado/2023 .
[4] Id. § 18-12-105.2(1) (“in any of the following locations , including their adjacent parking areas”); (j) (“an establishment licensed pursuant to article 3 of title 44 to sell alcohol beverages to customers for consumption on the premises and that is not required have meals available for consumption”).
[6] Cal. Attorney General reply brief, at 28 in Carralero v. Bonta, Nos. 23-4354 and 23-4356 (9th Cir., Mar. 8, 2024). California is appealing from a U.S. District Court decision holding most of SB2 to be u