Colorado’s Red Flag Expansion Bill Is a Due Process Disaster

Colorado didn’t stumble into red flag laws by accident.

Back in 2019, the legislature sold “Red Flag” Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) as a narrow, temporary tool to prevent imminent harm. Critics warned at the time that the law effectively created a civil search warrant system for gun owners, one that allowed firearms to be seized without a crime, without a conviction, and often without the gun owner even being present to defend themselves.

Those warnings weren’t paranoia. They were a preview.

Now Colorado lawmakers are back with a new bill that doesn’t fix any of the due-process problems baked into the original ERPO law. Instead, SB26-004, introduced on the first day of the 2026 legislative session by Sen Tom Sullivan and Rep Meg Froelich and appropriately titled “Expand List of Petitioners for Protection Order”, expands the system, widens the net, and makes it easier for more people to initiate firearm confiscation proceedings against someone who has committed no crime.

And it should concern anyone who still believes constitutional rights are supposed to mean something.

What Red Flag Laws Already Allow in Colorado

Under current law, a judge can issue an Extreme Risk Protection Order allowing law enforcement to seize someone’s firearms and suspend their right to possess or purchase guns if the judge believes the person poses a danger to themselves or others.

That process already includes some deeply troubling features:

• No crime has to be committed

• No criminal charge is required

• No conviction is required

• Orders can be issued based on one-sided affidavits

• Firearms can be seized before the person has a full hearing

• The burden falls on the gun owner to go to court to get their rights back

In other words, the government can take your guns first and sort out whether that was justified later. That is not how due process is supposed to work.

What This New Bill Expands

This bill doesn’t correct any of that. It makes it worse in several very concrete ways.

Here are the core changes that matter:

It dramatically expands who can file a red flag petition

Under the existing ERPO framework, petitions are primarily limited to law enforcement, family or household members, and romantic partners.

This bill expands standing to include additional categories of people, including:

• Licensed health-care providers

• Mental health professionals

• School employees

• Educators

• Other government-connected professionals

That means your constitutional rights could now be put in jeopardy based on a petition filed by someone who is not law enforcement, has no intimate details about you, not a family member, and not someone who actually lives with you.

It also means the system becomes far more vulnerable to:

• Professional liability fears (“better safe than sorry”)

• Institutional pressure

• Personal bias

• Racism

• Misinterpretation of speech or behavior

• Political or ideological hostility toward gun ownership

This isn’t about imminent danger. It’s about expanding who gets to pull the trigger on a confiscation process.

It lowers the real-world threshold for firearm confiscation

Supporters of red flag laws like to talk about standards of proof. What they rarely acknowledge is the practical reality:

The more people who are allowed to file petitions, the more petitions will be filed. The more petitions that get filed, the more orders will be granted.

Judges are human. Faced with a petition claiming “risk,” most will err on the side of taking the guns first and asking questions later. The legal incentives all point in one direction: confiscate now, litigate later.

It increases the risk of abuse and retaliation

Red flag laws are already vulnerable to misuse. This bill widens that vulnerability.

Any system that allows rights to be removed without a crime will eventually be used as a weapon.

That includes situations involving:

• Angry ex-partners

• Custody disputes

• Workplace conflicts

• Neighborhood disputes

• Family feuds

• Ideological hostility toward gun owners

• Politically maligned school staff

• Anti-gun activists working in fields civilians must frequent

Expanding who can file petitions increases the number of people who can abuse the system and decreases accountability when they do.

And once your firearms are seized, the damage is already done. You are disarmed first and forced to hire a lawyer to clean up the mess later.

It does nothing to strengthen due-process protections

This bill expands government power without adding meaningful safeguards.

It does not:

• Require a criminal charge

• Require proof beyond the lowest threshold of “substantial evidence”

• Require the accused person to have a day in court before guns are seized

• Impose meaningful penalties for false or malicious petitions

It keeps the same flawed framework and simply makes it easier to use.

That should tell you everything you need to know about the legislature’s priorities.

The Part Nobody Wants to Talk About: Red Flag Raids Kill People

This isn’t just a theoretical constitutional argument.

Across the country, people have been killed during red flag warrant service when police showed up to confiscate firearms from individuals who had not committed a crime.

These encounters are:

• Highly emotional

• Highly unpredictable

• Almost always armed

• Often conducted early in the morning

• Triggered by court orders the person may not even know exist

You do not reduce violence by sending armed officers to forcibly disarm people who are already in a mental or emotional crisis. This bill guarantees more of those encounters.

The Constitutional Problem They Keep Ignoring

Red flag laws collide directly with multiple constitutional protections:

• Due process

• The presumption of innocence

• Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures

• Second Amendment protections against disarmament without crime or conviction

This bill doesn’t address those conflicts. It codifies them more deeply into law. You do not fix unconstitutional laws by expanding them.

Colorado already crossed a dangerous line in 2019 by creating a civil firearm confiscation system untethered from criminal law. This newly proposed bill pushes that system further away from constitutional norms and closer to a pre-crime punishment model where rights exist at the pleasure of judges and petitioners.

It normalizes the idea that gun ownership is a conditional privilege, one that can be suspended based on someone else’s subjective fears. That should make every civilian in this state deeply uncomfortable.

This bill’s first committee hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, January 27 at 2 pm before the Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee at the Colorado State Capitol. The hearing will be in the Old Supreme Court Chambers on the 2nd Floor.

Here’s how to make your voice count:

• Contact committee members and tell them you oppose expanding red flag laws that violate due process and constitutional rights. CLICK HERE to email the entire committee at once.

• Sign up to provide public testimony in person at the Colorado State Capitol or via Zoom. You can sign up directly HERE or if you need more information about how to testify, you can find that on our Public Testimony 101 page.

Your testimony becomes part of the permanent legislative record.

To track this and other 2A related bills, bookmark our Legislative Watch page.