Imagine waking up one day and deciding, in a moment of emotional turmoil, to slam the door on your constitutional right to self-defense—permanently. That’s the dystopian reality Colorado’s new Do Not Sell law is rolling out, allowing residents to voluntarily add themselves to a no-gun-buy list, ostensibly to curb suicides. Championed by anti-gun groups and signed into law amid the usual fanfare of common-sense reform, this measure lets individuals petition a court to block their own firearm purchases for up to a year, renewable indefinitely. Proponents tout it as a suicide-prevention silver bullet, citing stats like Colorado’s 2022 firearm suicide rate of about 18 per 100,000 (per CDC data). But here’s the rub: similar red flag style laws in states like New York and California have shown negligible impact on overall suicide rates, with a 2023 RAND Corporation review finding inconclusive evidence for voluntary surrender programs reducing gun deaths. Suicides often shift methods—pills, ropes, or bridges don’t care about your NICS check.
From a 2A perspective, this isn’t just a quirky opt-in; it’s a Trojan horse for normalization. What starts as personal choice today morphs into public safety mandates tomorrow, paving the way for involuntary inclusions based on mental health check-ins, social media posts, or a neighbor’s grudge. We’ve seen it before: California’s Gun Violence Restraining Orders began voluntary-ish and ballooned into due-process nightmares, with over 10,000 orders issued in 2022 alone (per state judicial reports), often without robust hearings. Colorado’s law, effective August 2025, lacks ironclad opt-out mechanisms or sunset clauses, raising due process alarms under the Bruen standard—does the state prove a historical tradition of self-disarmament edicts? For gun owners, the implication is clear: stock up legally now, document everything, and brace for database creep where one bad day equals lifetime disarmament. It’s not protection; it’s paternalism disguised as empowerment, eroding the individual right to keep and bear arms one voluntary surrender at a time.
The broader 2A community must rally against this slippery slope. Groups like the NRA and GOA should flood Colorado with amicus briefs challenging its constitutionality, while national advocates push for federal preemption to halt this patchwork erosion. Firearms aren’t the problem—despair is—and addressing root causes like mental health access (Colorado ranks poorly, per NAMI) beats bureaucratic blacklists. If Coloradans want out, let them sell privately or surrender to authorities without state-sanctioned scarlet letters. This law doesn’t save lives; it sets precedents that could one day list you without your say-so. Stay vigilant, Second Amendment faithful—your rights aren’t self-banning.
