By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project
I hesitate to be too strong in my contention, and I hesitate to use the phrase “deep state,” but I am beginning to get an intuition that employees at the Colorado Department of Revenue (DOR) are letting their values on gun control mix in with their jobs.
Even this scaled-down wording is a pretty big accusation, so let me defend why I’m starting to feel this way.
The first and most obvious is their list of weapons you’ll need a government permission slip to buy under SB25-003 (something I’ve covered multiple times in the past, but if you’d like to see a recent discussion between Jon Caldara and Ray Elliott of the Colorado State Shooting Association on the topic, see “Related” below).
The second part goes all the way back to late May and a press release that hit my inbox. The relevant bit of text is attached as screenshot 1. I highlighted the phrase that caught my eye.
The contention that SB25-003 “promotes public safety” is one, not proven, and, two, not something that everyone believes. It’s perfectly reasonable to see it as not promoting public safety, in fact.
Chasing down which state agency made this contention (the email had three different agencies listed: DOR, CPW, and the Colorado Bureau of Investigations) and what they based it on is the reason an email from May 22 is showing up in something posted at the end of June.
This was not a quick or easy answer to get, but the answer is that the contention that SB25-003 “promotes public safety,” as opposed to a more neutral statement such as “is intended to promote…,” was made by someone at DOR.
When I finally figured that out and wrote DOR’s spokespeople with my questions about the basis for this contention, I got the following back (quoting from my email to the spokesperson, with embedded links and formatting left intact):
“The Department of Revenue, Firearms Dealers Division is working to implement the law as it was written. The Department of Revenue cannot speculate on what the public safety component was based, and encourages you to reach out to the bill’s sponsors to discuss public safety. Please let us know if we can help further. For SB 25-003, the following measures are outlined:
- Training eligibility: In order to be eligible to enroll in training, a person must submit an application to their county sheriff’s office and pass a name-based background check.
- Safety training: Once an individual’s eligibility application has been approved by their Sheriff, the individual will take and pass a firearm safety class.
- Seller Verification: Once an individual has completed the class, firearm instructors will provide proof of completion via the digital system so that sellers are able to verify that an individual purchasing a covered firearm has met the requirements of the legislation prior to sale.”
I followed up by asking if DOR was aware of where such a statement was made because I couldn’t find any of it in the law; i.e. there was no language in the bill about promoting public safety. I was told (copied here with link intact):
“Regarding your question about public safety, the Semiautomatic Firearms & Rapid-Fire Devices Act of 2025 (SB 25-003) mentions safety specifically in Section 13. I’ve included a direct quote below for ease of reference. ‘SECTION 13. Safety clause. The general assembly finds, determines, and declares that this act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety for appropriations for the support and maintenance of departments of state and state institutions.’”
Ah, the safety declaration. This is a common bit of boilerplate appearing on many bills and is there mainly to prevent citizens from petitioning to repeal a law. If DOR put out press releases quoting this on every bill that had it, there’d be so much promotion of public safety we couldn’t stand it!
Lastly, I point you to an email response I got from DOR when I sent in public comment on developing rules for gun dealers. That was in an earlier newsletter, but if you missed it and want the context, see the first link below.
To save space, I copied over the public comment I’d sent as screenshot 2.
In response, I got the following back from DOR:
“Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective on the 2026 legislation that initiated this year’s rulemaking session. Your feedback has been noted. Please be aware that this input would be most effectively shared with the General Assembly during legislative sessions, where such policy discussions are directly addressed.”
This response, besides being somewhat insulting of my intelligence since I’m quite familiar with the difference between legislation and rulemaking, left me with some questions. Was this just for me, or is it common for DOR to reply in such a way to public comment? Also, perhaps more importantly, the wording and the tone of the response left me wondering if public comment is being managed at DOR. Are citizens’ comments, regardless of where DOR thinks they ought to go, getting forwarded along?
In response to questions like these, I got the following semi-answer from DOR’s spokesperson:
“The response you received was a standard response from our rulemaking team, which typically does not respond to follow-up questions [my questions were originally directed as a reply to the address that sent me this missive]. The Department of Revenue and its divisions regularly host rulemaking sessions, where further public comments are accepted. Information about the Firearms Dealers Division’s upcoming rulemaking sessions can be found at SBG.Colorado.gov/2026-Firearms-Dealer-Rulemaking-Working-Groups. Thanks again and have a great day!”
I put all this together and I can’t help but get the gut feeling that someone, or someones, at DOR is injecting their politics into their jobs.
I suppose there are other explanations you could come up with; certainly it would be easy to do if these were separate topics and incidents. The list of guns could be explained by the lack of familiarity with firearms by people at DOR. The “promotes public safety” characterization could be a typo or a misunderstanding of what the safety clause of a bill does. The response I got to feedback about gun dealer rulemaking could be someone quickly reading the email and not taking the time to understand what was written.
But put them together. They’re not that widely separated after all, either in time or in space between humans working at the government. A wide dragnet of guns that fall under the auspices of a bill that (at least initially) their spokesperson was unable to tell me why they said it promoted public safety, and a response that seems to be mildly argumentative and suggestive of gatekeeping.
I hope I’m wrong. It is not the job of a government employee to bring their thoughts on policy to work with them. If you see or hear of similar from DOR or some other state agency, please add to the comments or message me. I’d love to start a collection and ask uncomfortable questions (where warranted).
https://coloradoaccountabilityproject.substack.com/p/colorado-department-of-revenue-seeks
READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT
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