Colorado gun rights backers have had a good run of late, successfully blocking gun control measures passed by Boulder County communities this spring in response to the devastating mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 children and two adults.

Rulings this summer from two federal judges, who placed temporary restraining orders on the enforcement of some of the firearms restrictions approved in June by Superior and Boulder County, prompted Rocky Mountain Gun Owners’ executive director Taylor Rhodes to boast in a press release last week: “We are on fire, we just can’t stop winning in the courts.”

Louisville and Boulder, which also passed gun restrictions in the spring, have been sued by Rocky Mountain Gun Owners as well, though no rulings have come down from the court in those cases.

But those legal victories, fueled by a recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision bolstering Second Amendment protections, don’t mean the wholesale deconstruction of decades’ worth of gun control laws is nigh, constitutional scholars say.

“Many existing gun laws are secure, including bans on felons, mentally ill people and domestic abusers,” said Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at the University of California Los Angeles. “Background checks and licensing requirements for concealed carry are also likely to be upheld.”

Even Dave Kopel, research director at Colorado’s libertarian-leaning Independence Institute and a gun rights advocate, said governments retain the “discretion to regulate the mode of carry.”

“Governments can ban carrying entirely in government buildings. Governments can prohibit all forms of gun misuse, such as shooting a gun in the air inside a city or town,” he said. “More generally, laws to prevent dangerous persons from having guns are more likely to be found consistent with the American legal tradition of gun regulation than are laws that impose prohibitions on peaceable gun owners.”

However, the high court’s June 23 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which struck down a New York law requiring people to demonstrate a particular need for carrying a gun in order to get a license to carry one in public, raises serious questions about the legal soundness of other gun laws, Winkler said.

“The court said that only gun laws similar to those in place in the 1800s are permissible,” he said. “Relatively recent laws, like assault weapons bans and high-capacity magazine limits, are most at risk of being struck down under this new test.”

And that’s where Rocky Mountain Gun Owners saw an opportunity, quickly making Colorado ground zero in the fight over how far and wide the protections of the Second Amendment extend. The gun rights group filed a flurry of lawsuits this summer challenging the constitutional mettle of the Boulder County ordinances that, in part, ban assault-style weapons, limit magazine capacity and set a minimum age for firearms possession.

All four lawsuits filed by Rocky Mountain Gun Owners are expected to be consolidated into a single case at a hearing on Thursday, which could delay a decision on their merits into next year. Lafayette also passed gun control measures in June but hasn’t yet been the subject of litigation.

While the holds on enforcement of the new gun laws in Boulder County — specifically bans on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines — are temporary, gun rights enthusiasts are hopeful the conservative tilt of the nation’s high court means further favorable rulings on firearms.

“It has proven to us and gun rights activists around the country that the Bruen decision is here to stay and gives us a path to take back the rights that were stolen from us,” Rhodes said in an interview with The Denver Post. “They’ve opened the floodgates for challenges and that can’t be turned off easily. We’re already seeing the tables turn a bit.”

Kopel, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, said assault-style weapons like AR-15s have long been wrongfully vilified by gun control advocates due to their frequent use in mass shootings. They are also one of the most popular types of firearms among all gun owners in the country — the vast majority of whom never use them to commit a crime.

“There is not a historical tradition in the United States of banning common arms,” Kopel said. “Despite the misleading claims of gun ban advocates, the firearms they want to outlaw are not machine guns — they fire at the same rate as a typical handgun.”

But David Pucino, deputy chief counsel with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said the assault weapons that Boulder and its neighboring municipalities outlawed three months ago are “especially dangerous.”

Boulder was the scene of the March 2021 King Soopers mass shooting that left 10 people dead, including a responding police officer.

Pucino said the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia “recognized a historical tradition of restrictions on weapons that are ‘dangerous’ and those that are ‘unusual.’” Justice Clarence Thomas, Pucino said, “reasserted that point in his majority opinion in Bruen.”

“They’re designed to inflict catastrophic damage in a very short period of time,” he said. “And this isn’t a hypothetical for Boulder: it was a man armed with an assault weapon that murdered 10 people in a King Soopers last year. These weapons are designed to maximize destructive offensive capability, not the self-defense considerations that animate the Second Amendment.”

Boulder City Attorney Teresa Taylor Tate, immediately following the temporary suspension of the city’s gun regulations by the federal judge last week, said in a statement that “we believe these bans are both necessary and legal.”

Following the court’s suspension of the new gun laws in Superior and Boulder County, the city of Boulder announced it was voluntarily halting enforcement of its ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines to allow time to consolidate the four cases.

Taylor Tate declined an interview request from The Post.

Boulder City Councilwoman Rachel Friend wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the lawsuit against her city, but told The Post that she would continue “advocating to state and federal legislators to enact common-sense measures to curb gun violence.”

“Our kids and all of our community members deserve better than the current status quo of ever-increasing gun violence and fatality rates,” she said.

Louisville Mayor Ashley Stolzmann said she is confident the gun regulations passed by her city in June are “consistent with the U.S. Constitution as well as with state laws.” She hopes other communities will do the same, despite the immediate pushback from the courts.

“I invite other communities to join in taking action so as Coloradans we can change our course from the path we have been walking since Columbine, Aurora and Boulder and move on to a more peaceful future,” she said. “The data show that there are reasonable regulations that can reduce gun violence and they also show that most people support them when we can strip away the rhetoric.”

But Rhodes, with Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, said the recent Supreme Court decision makes it clear that local governments can only go so far with gun control before they begin to impinge on citizens’ constitutional rights. And his organization will be watching if any other Colorado communities try what was attempted in Boulder County.

“If you pass unconstitutional gun laws, we will sue you — period,” he said. “We’re ready.”