Colorado’s ‘do not sell’ firearms registry on pace to go live by end of year

DENVER — Last year, Colorado legislators passed a law to create a voluntary “do not sell” registry in an effort to prevent gun suicides.

The registry allows people to ban themselves from purchasing firearms. Colorado became the fifth state to enact “Donna’s Law,” named after Donna Nathan, a New Orleans woman who died from a gun suicide in 2018. Nathan’s death, and the advocacy of her daughter, Katrina Brees, inspired the passage of suicide prevention legislation in Delaware, Utah, Washington, Virginia and now Colorado.

The law comes at a time when a rising number of older Coloradans are dying from gun suicides, which some experts have called a “hidden public health crisis.” Colorado has one of the highest suicide rates in the country, and firearms are the most common means of suicide in the state. More than 950 people in Colorado died in a shooting in 2023; 710 of those deaths were suicides, according to the latest state data.

Brees sees Donna’s Law as a tool to save lives and destigmatize conversations about mental illness.

“When I started doing this work, the media essentially wouldn't even say ‘suicide’ and they definitely wouldn't say ‘gun suicide,’” Brees said. “So even our ability to communicate is changing.”

Colorado is currently developing an online portal where people can sign themselves up for the “do not sell” registry.

Colorado’s version of Donna’s Law tasked the Colorado Bureau of Investigation with building out the portal, but state lawmakers did not allocate any funds to CBI to do so. A spokesperson for CBI told Rocky Mountain PBS that the agency received a grant for about $192,000 from the Colorado Statewide Internet Portal Authority to build out the “do not sell” database. State Sen. Cathy Kipp, a Larimer County Democrat who was the bill’s primary sponsor, raised more than $22,000 to contribute to the project.    

The CBI spokesperson told Rocky Mountain PBS that the online registry should be live by the end of the year. 

Advocates say Colorado’s “do not sell” registry will be more accessible compared to other states. Delaware and Utah require people to submit a form in person to join the registry. Virginia requires a written application. Washington initially made people register at a county clerk’s office in person before eventually implementing an online option.

Colorado’s online system is aexpected to lead to a higher rate of sign-ups. Once Washington state added its online option, the number of registrations increased more than 50%.

“The idea that someone can sign up, I assume, from their phone is leaps and bounds further than where we've started,” Brees said of the Colorado legislation. “Because even when we pass this law, the opposition is trying to make it extremely difficult for people to sign up. So we're very proud of Colorado for making it easier on these vulnerable people.”

Brees credits the law’s passage in Colorado to Virginia Mack, a psychiatric nurse practitioner in Fort Collins who lost a student patient to gun suicide in 2016. Mack heard about Donna’s Law passing in Washington state and felt that similar legislation could have saved the student’s life. She approached Sen. Kipp with the idea for the bill in 2024.

“We know that people have these kinds of ebbs and flows with their depression … and that there’s really a place for folks to be proactive to protect themselves from their future self in crisis,” Mack said. “That's really the idea with Donna’s Law, is that folks are in a place to really just be proactive to take care of themselves.”

As of 2024, at least 130 people across three states suspended their ability to purchase a gun. Fredrick Vars, a University of Alabama law professor who developed the idea for Donna’s Law, told The Trace that he expects that number to increase as awareness grows.

But Brees doesn’t measure the legislation’s success by how many people use the registry. Instead, she thinks about how many people across the country now have the opportunity to do so.

“Something like 20 million people now have that tool and they get to use it how they want when they want, totally confidentially,” she said.