A federal lawsuit filed this week by the Firearms Policy Coalition and several out-of-state plaintiffs is taking direct aim at Colorado’s and Denver’s reciprocal-carry regime, arguing that the patchwork of statutes and municipal ordinances effectively disarms law-abiding visitors the moment they cross the state line. The complaint zeroes in on the fact that Colorado will only honor permits from states whose own issuance standards are, in the eyes of state officials, “comparable,” a test so malleable that permits from nineteen states—including shall-issue giants like Texas and Florida—are treated as legal nullities inside the Centennial State. Denver piles on an additional layer of prohibition by refusing to recognize any non-resident permit at all, creating what plaintiffs call a “Second Amendment Bermuda Triangle” for the millions of travelers who pass through Denver International Airport or ski-country highways each year.
What makes the case especially potent is its timing and its framing. The Supreme Court’s Bruen decision has already gutted the old two-step interest-balancing test that Colorado and Denver rely on; under Bruen’s history-and-tradition standard, discretionary “may-issue” policies and novel permitting regimes are on life support. By spotlighting how non-residents are singled out for disarmament while residents with far less training can carry freely, the plaintiffs are forcing courts to confront an uncomfortable reality: if the Second Amendment is truly a fundamental right, its protections cannot evaporate at the border of a single state or city. The optics are equally powerful—imagine a Texas mother driving her family to a Colorado ski trip who becomes a felon the moment she crosses Raton Pass because her state permit is deemed “incomparable.”
For the broader 2A community, the litigation is both a warning shot and a strategic template. If successful, it will not only restore carry rights for millions of travelers but also set precedent that could topple similar non-resident bans in California, New York, and Hawaii. More importantly, it reframes reciprocity fights from parochial “shall-issue versus may-issue” squabbles into a national question of equality under the Constitution: either the right to bear arms travels with the citizen or it does not exist at all.
