Organizers of a gun buy-up canceled it in late July at the request of Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle, who said Colorado’s new gun laws would make the Aug. 4 event nearly impossible to stage.
“The bottom line is what we anticipated doing would still be legal—but procedurally we can’t follow through with it at this time,” Pelle said, according to the Denver Post.
The new state law that went into effect July 1 requires buyers to go to a licensed firearms dealer and undergo a background check. The InstaCheck systems used in the checks are not mobile, which means they couldn’t be used on-site at the sheriff ’s compound where the buyback was planned.
For the event to work, Pelle said the group would have to find a licensed firearms dealer to host the event and then pay the dealer per transaction.
Together Colorado—a group that bills itself as a nonpartisan multi-faith organization—had planned to give gift cards or tickets to sporting events to people who turned in firearms.
After consulting Deputy County Attorney Dea Wheeler, Pelle had concluded earlier that as long as members of Together Colorado passed required background checks, it would be legal for them to purchase firearms at the August buyback.
The idea was to collect guns and hand them over to the Sheriff for destruction. The remnants of the destroyed firearms would then be passed along to metalworking artist Jessica Adams to use for a sculpture aimed at gun violence awareness.
