A federal judge in Denver has denied a request to block a new Colorado law mandating a three-day wait to acquire a firearm after purchase.

U.S. District Court Judge John Kane turned down the request for a preliminary injunction filed by Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and firearms instructor Alicia Garcia. 

The plaintiffs said they will appeal the decision.

The law at issue imposes a three-day waiting period after the purchase of a firearm before the new owner possess it. It was part of a package of gun control measures the Democrats in the Colorado General Assembly passed in the 2023 session. Backers claimed it would help prevent suicides. Critics said it infringes on their Second Amendment rights and take away people’s ability to defend themselves.   

During a hearing two weeks ago, Garcia testified that she purchased a shotgun in Colorado Springs on Oct. 1, the day the law went into effect, to use at a shooting event in Virginia. She purchased the shotgun shortly before she was due to fly to Virginia. Because of the state’s 3-day waiting period, a law Democrats passed during the 2023 session, she couldn’t take possession of the shotgun, she said, testifying she did not own a shotgun before that, although, as a firearms instructor, she estimated she owned “10 to 20” other firearms. 

In his ruling, Kane rejected the gun rights’ group interpretation of the Second Amendment, particularly the words “keep” and “bear.” He pointed to the court’s 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which, while upholding the right to keep and bear arms, concluded that right is not unlimited.

Kane also pointed to the more recent 2022 Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which overturned a century-old law on concealed carry that instructed courts to use a historical analysis on firearms regulations. 

Kane wrote that he has reservations about “turning to a particular historical era” in order to “dispositively determine how we conceive of and defend certain rights.”

“The first is practical; I am a judge and not an historian,” he said. “The second is that this approach can be self-defeating. Since Bruen instructs me to consider the historical evidence the parties present and argue, it is not inconceivable that the parties would present historical accounts inconsistent with the holdings of Bruen, Heller” or other cases. 

Kane also noted the plaintiffs argued the waiting period could affect their ability to defend themselves but that no such evidence was presented.

“Undoubtedly, this is a bump in the road, but we won’t stop fighting for our members until this disastrous waiting period scheme is off the books,” said Taylor Rhodes, the executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners. “RMGO members shouldn’t lose faith; we still have one more chance at a preliminary injunction via a Tenth Circuit panel, where we have already had success earlier this year.”