DENVER (CN) — A Colorado woman who paid for a shotgun on Wednesday appeared in court on Thursday to contest the state law prohibiting her from actually possessing the firearm until Friday.
“The Second Amendment is essential to my life,” said Alicia Garcia, a firearms instructor and gunfluencer from Thornton, who goes by Boomstick Babe online. Along with the advocacy group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, Garcia sued Colorado Governor Jared Polis on October 1, challenging the newly minted law mandating people wait 72 hours between purchasing and possessing a firearm from a gun dealer.
During a preliminary injunction hearing that started Thursday, Garcia expressed her frustration with the law.
“I don’t own a shot gun — well I technically own one since I paid for it and passed the background check, but I don’t have it,” Garcia said on the stand. “There is a shotgun shoot this weekend in Virginia which I booked to attend, but sadly I cannot shoot my new shotgun in Virginia since I was not able to take it home with me.”
Garcia first sued Polis, a Democrat, in April after the bill was signed into law — but Philip Brimmer, the chief judge for the U.S. District of Colorado and a George W. Bush appointee, denied her request for preliminary injunction in August since the law hadn’t yet impacted her.
Garcia dismissed the lawsuit and refiled on October 1 after the law took effect. The new case landed on the docket of Senior U.S. District Judge John Kane, a Jimmy Carter appointee.
Thursday's hearing happened against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s finding in Bruen last year, which instructed courts to ground new gun restrictions in historical law.
In a brief opening statement, State Attorney Michael Kotlarczyk pointed to colonial restrictions on gun ownership centered around alcohol. He argued those rules were passed to prevent “impulsive firearms violence" in a similar way as modern waiting periods.
“There wasn’t a waiting period law in the 18th Century because there simply wasn’t a problem of impulsive gun violence during the 18th Century,” Kotlarczy explained. “They would have been addressing a problem that just didn’t exist then.”
Garcia and the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners are represented by attorneys from the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group. They called Clayton Cramer to the stand to offer remote expert testimony on the history of gun laws in America.
Cramer, who holds a master’s degree in history and teaches as an adjunct professor at the College of Western Idaho, has performed research for the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation. His book "Firing Back" is a self-help book guiding gunowners into activism.
Appearing in court remotely, Cramer shared several colorful anecdotes and argued that rising homicide rates are driven by “good people shooting back at bad people.” As State Attorney Grant Sullivan asked about excerpts from his "Firing Back" book, Cramer smiled and said, “I am pleased to see someone bought my book.” The comment garnered laughs from the six people seated on the plaintiff side of the court.
“Oh, I didn’t buy it. I checked it out of the library,” Sullivan quipped — prompting another round of chuckles from the ten seated on the state’s side of the gallery.
To combat Cramer’s account of U.S. history, the state plans to call Randolph Roth, a historian from Ohio State, as well as Christopher Poliquin, a policy expert from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Poliquin contributed to a 2017 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that found waiting periods reduced gun deaths by 17%.
The hearing is scheduled to continue on Monday.
Follow @bright_lamp
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
Flirting with trouble April 25, 2024 -
-
Arizona House supports repeal of 1864 abortion ban April 24, 2024 -
