One of the modern tenets of the gun-control playbook is: Make war on youth participation. This is the long game—if they can suppress youth participation in hunting and the shooting sports, then they will have a better chance of convincing majorities to vote away this freedom in the future.
This reasoning must be the anti-gun motivation behind a gun-control law in Colorado that goes into effect on January 1, 2026, barring anyone under 18 from attending a gun show without a parent or guardian.
To even put on a show, organizers in Colorado must now prepare and submit a security plan to local law enforcement (including vendor lists, attendee estimates, camera coverage and more) and have liability insurance for the event.
But, in particular, this exclusion of unaccompanied minors—despite the gun-control activists’ already articulated rationale—is dumb. First, minors typically come with family members, so after they are subjected to declaring they are indeed so accompanied, anyone under 18 is going to walk in wondering why a constitutional right is being so treated as a bad thing. This certainly would have made me, when I was a teen, become even more suspicious of government authority.
It should then, for this and other reasons, also make it seem more counter-culture and therefore “cool.” This is where the “dumb” designation really comes in. Being prudish has countereffects as far as rebellious teens are concerned. Meanwhile, getting around this restriction (say, with an 18-year-old friend) should not be difficult, so again, they’ll walk in with that viewpoint (indeed, any adult working for a show and tasked with enforcing this provision, will likely tell such youth and their parents what they think of this treatment).
On the other hand, different new requirements imposed on gun shows are designed to make them more expensive and difficult to put on. A higher cover charge for entering such shows, as a result of the costs, will certainly dissuade youth and families from attending.
Later this year, Colorado also has other restrictions scheduled to become law, such as permit-to-purchase and training requirements for certain semi-automatic firearms.
Last September, the Colorado State Shooting Association, the official state affiliate of NRA, filed a lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 25-003, the state’s “Polis Permission Slip” permit-to-purchase scheme.
We’ll keep you posted on any future developments.
