Colorado gun shops fire off challenge to state’s 'warrantless' transaction search law

DENVER (CN) — Several firearms dealers sued Colorado in federal court on Monday arguing a new law’s requirement for gun shops to maintain a record of customer transactions for inspection by law enforcement violates the Fourth Amendment.

“The Fourth Amendment broadly protects businesses from warrantless searches, including businesses engaged in commerce with customers who exercise no independent constitutional rights,” the plaintiffs write in the 33-page complaint.

Democratic Governor Jared Polis signed the Requirements for Firearms Dealers Act into law on June 2, which requires dealers to retain records of all transactions, as well as a registry of gunowners that may be inspected by law enforcement.

Dealers who refuse to allow their records to be inspected can be charged with a class 2 misdemeanor.

In addition to lacking limitations on how often searches may be made, the plaintiffs argue in the complaint the searches have “no defined scope” and “no pre-compliance review."

Led by the Centennial Gun Club, five firearms dealers and organizations named Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, and Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Revenue Heidi Humphreys as defendants.

“The regime,” the gun shops write in the complaint, “also injures plaintiffs’ customers, who face the prospect that their lawful firearms purchases will be surveilled without warrant protections, chilling the exercise of constitutionally protected rights.”

In the lawsuit, the groups argue the Fourth Amendment was passed after colonists were subjected to warrantless inspections through “writs of assistance” under the guise of searches for smuggled goods.

“It was those warrantless, suspicionless searches that the patriot James Otis railed against in Paxton’s Case in 1761, ‘perhaps the most prominent event which inaugurated the resistance of the colonies to the oppressions of the mother country’ and ‘helped spark the Revolution itself,’” the groups argue in the lawsuit.

Centennial state lawmakers also passed limits on 3D-printing gun parts and serializing barrels this past legislative session, which several opponents promised to challenge in court.

A representative for the attorney general declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The gun clubs are represented by attorney Michael Francisco of the D.C. firm First & Fourteenth PLLC.

The case has been assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Cyrus Y. Chung.

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