Excerpt from amicus brief:

This Court has emphasized that “[i]n construing our constitution, our primary task is to give effect to the framers’ intent.” People ex rel. Salazar v. Davidson, 79 P.3d 1221, 1238 (Colo. 2003). This involves examining “the plain meaning” of the provision and ensuring that it is supported by “custom [and] history.” Id.

When Colorado ratified the Constitution, its right to arms was the strongest of any state in the country. Its broad guarantees reflected the history and traditions of the settlers in the pre-statehood territory who had to rely on themselves for protection from a myriad of dangers, including violent crime by other settlers and conquests by Indian tribes and the Confederate army.

Colorado’s right to arms provision is stronger than the right codified in the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, as the latter has been interpreted thus far. Wherever the rights differ, Colorado’s right provides greater protections.

Colorado thus had few arms restrictions in its founding era. No arm was banned in nineteenth-century Colorado—making C.R.S. § 18-12-302 stricter than any arms regulation Colorado’s Founders ever experienced. Repeating arms capable of firing more than 15 shots predate Colorado’s Constitution by over three centuries. Colorado’s Founders were intimately familiar with such arms. At the time of ratification many of the most popular firearms in the state and country fired more than 15 rounds. Detachable magazines predate Colorado’s Constitution as well, and became common soon after.

Colorado’s Founders experienced the horrors of mass-killings committed with firearms. But they depended on firearms for selfpreservation, and in creating the Constitution, they made clear that the right of self-defense was paramount. A 15-round magazine limit violates the right they enshrined.