Revenue Agents Eye Gun Buyers’ Data

A new Colorado law lets state officials dig through gun-shop sales records without a warrant, and gun owners are fighting back in federal court.

Story Snapshot

Colorado’s new HB26-1126 lets state revenue officials demand gun dealer records without a warrant or suspicion of a crime.
Gun owners, led by the Colorado State Shooting Association, have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit to block the law.
The law forces dealers to keep detailed records on every firearm sale, putting all lawful gun owners under a cloud of suspicion.
Supporters claim the law is about “safety” and dealer rules, but critics say it opens the door to mass surveillance of gun owners.

New Colorado Law Opens the Door to Warrantless Record Grabs

Colorado House Bill 26-1126 was signed by Democrat Governor Jared Polis and sold as a simple update to state rules for gun dealers, but buried in the legal text is a sweeping new power for the Colorado Department of Revenue to walk into gun shops and demand sales records without a warrant, probable cause, or any real limit on when or why those records can be taken.^[3]^[8] The law also sharply expands what must be tracked, requiring dealers to keep detailed records for every firearm, not just handguns.^[3]^[8]

Under earlier Colorado law, dealers already had to log retail sales of pistols and revolvers, but HB26-1126 extends these record duties to all firearms, including long guns, and requires that each record list the buyer’s name, age, address, and details about the firearm.^[2]^[8] Those expanded records now sit on the shelf, ready for revenue agents and other empowered officials who can demand access without going to a judge first, which critics say treats the private information of every lawful gun buyer as state property.^[1]^[2]

Gun Owners Launch Federal Civil Rights Challenge

The Colorado State Shooting Association, the state arm of the National Rifle Association, warned the governor that signing HB26-1126 would trigger an immediate court fight, and they followed through by filing a federal civil rights lawsuit targeting the warrantless inspection scheme.^[8]^[9] Their complaint argues that allowing state agents to seize gun purchase records with no warrant and no probable cause violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches, and also helps build a system of surveillance aimed at people who did nothing wrong.^[8]^[9]

CSSA leaders and their attorney have been clear in public statements that they see this law as a direct threat to both the Second Amendment and the Fourth Amendment, because government access to detailed purchase records can chill lawful gun ownership when people fear they are being tracked.^[1]^[8] The group is asking the federal court to block the record access rules while the case moves forward and to declare the statute unconstitutional, which would send a warning to other states looking at similar “inspection” schemes that bypass judges and treat paperwork as an easy backdoor around the Bill of Rights.^[9]

Supporters Cite Safety and Oversight, but Limits Are Thin

Backers of HB26-1126 describe it as a dealer permitting and oversight law aimed at tightening security at gun shops and closing supposed loopholes in record keeping, not as a new police search power, and the statute even includes language that forbids the Department of Revenue or any other state agency from using dealer records to build a registry of who owns which guns.^[3] The same act also raises fines on noncompliant dealers, with possible penalties reaching into six figures, which supporters say will push shops to follow the rules and keep firearms away from criminals.^[3]^[5]

.@CSSA1926 has officially filed our lawsuit challenging House Bill 26-1126, which allows state agents to obtain firearm purchase records without a warrant or probable cause.

These kinds of tyrannical policies by the British are exactly what sparked the American Revolution, and… pic.twitter.com/3aTC4orJcK

— Huey Laugesen (@HueyLaugesen) June 13, 2026

Critics answer that these talking points do not change the core problem: the law still lets state agents demand customer records “virtually without limit,” as CSSA’s lawyer put it, with no need to show a judge any evidence of a crime, no requirement to name a suspect, and no duty to explain the purpose of the search.^[1]^[2] They warn that even if a formal statewide registry is banned on paper, bulk access to dealer records lets officials quietly assemble lists of gun owners and their purchases in practice, turning routine commerce into a permanent file on every buyer.^[1]