About 25% of Colorado gun deaths since 2016 involved someone shooting in “justifiable self-defense,” based on data from the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. Each incident means someone survived a rape, murder, armed robbery or another life-threatening crime.

Going forward, teachers and students in schools — and anyone in a “sensitive” space where conflicts and tensions run high — won’t have the option of self-defense with a gun. They won’t have the chance of a trained, vetted person — licensed by a sheriff — saving them from a deadly attack.

We hope to be wrong, but public safety probably took a hit the moment Gov. Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 131 into law this month.

The bill was among eight gun-control bills the governor signed but is far worse than the others. One bill, which increases standards for obtaining a concealed carry permit, makes sense. Anyone licensed by law enforcement to secretly carry a gun should be held to a reasonably high standard.

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Concealed-carry permit holders are adults who subject themselves to training and background checks when seeking a sheriff’s imprimatur. They pay money in an expressed effort to prove themselves stable, law-abiding adults essentially deputized to carry for the defense of themselves and others.

Data show that concealed carry permit holders commit crimes at rates substantially lower than others. Studies show the country’s 30 million concealed-carry permit holders commit misdemeanors and felonies at a lower rate than law enforcement officers, as documented in a 2021 amicus for the Supreme Court of the United States.

None of Colorado’s horrific mass shootings have involved predation by a concealed-carry permit holder. All of Colorado’s mass killers in modern times have benefited from the lack of a trained, licensed shooter to stop the killing in its tracks.

A survey of empirical academic literature for the amicus footnotes 25 studies that show right-to-carry concealed laws reduce violent crime. We don’t see it in headlines, because a crime stopped in its tracks has the news value of a plane that lands without crashing.

The new law, effective Jan. 4 of 2025, prohibits concealed carry in courthouses, K-12 schools, college campuses, polling locations, childcare facilities and any government building which may contain elected politicians.

“Twenty-five years after the mass shooting at Columbine High School, Colorado lawmakers continue to honor all the victims and survivors of gun violence by taking action to prevent future tragedies,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, after Polis signed the bills into law.

He and other could only say SB 131 “honors” victims, who are dead. What the students and teachers at Columbine needed — like the victims in other mass shootings — was someone on site licensed to carry a gun, not desperate adults using fire extinguishers in futile attempts to save lives.

“Colorado ranks 11th in gun-law strength in the nation,” said a statement from Moms Demand Action, celebrating the signing of SB 131 and other gun laws enacted over the years.

In the wake of a slate of new gun regulation, Colorado’s gun-death rate has steadily climbed, and put the state among the 20 most dangerous for gun deaths. That means these laws aren’t working. If anything, they may have contributed to making Colorado the third-most dangerous state in the country, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report this year.

We need reasonable regulation of guns to ensure they are in the hands of stable, law-abiding adults. SB 131 does exactly the opposite, and Polis should have vetoed it. The law will keep people licensed to save lives out of “sensitive” spaces, while doing nothing to stop cold-blooded killers who pay no attention to gun laws.

Coloradans are left to hope and pray this law does not get more people killed.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board