Michael Allen was too slow in embracing Colorado’s red flag gun law
Michael Allen has seen the light regarding the utility of red flag laws in saving lives. But only after several El Paso County shooting sprees.
Republican District Attorney Allen, now running for attorney general, told Colorado Public Radio last week that if a red flag law had existed before the 2015 Halloween-morning shooting deaths of three people in downtown Colorado Springs, “it’s very likely that those innocent people were not killed.”
He’s right, but Colorado had no such law in 2015. The Club Q murderer of five people is another story. He was a walking red flag, and Colorado’s red flag law, which lets families and cops ask a judge to pry guns from dangerous people, did exist in 2021.
It just sat in El Paso County like a fire extinguisher behind glass, under a figurative sign reading “Do not use. May be unconstitutional.”
That was El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder’s command. As I wrote in my December 2022 column, Elder had long ago decided the law was unconstitutional and saw no need to use it on the Club Q killer, whose grandmother told police responding to her barricaded home that her grandson aspired to be the “next mass killer.”
Deputies found 113 pounds of ammonium nitrate in the house after being held at bay by the adult grandson with firearms who was arrested on June 18, 2021.
Then came the prosecutors. DA Michael Allen only charged kidnapping and menacing, never subpoenaed the family witnesses who predictably left the state and dropped the case on July 5, 2022. Allen defended the dismissal as proper.
Say what? Colorado bans homemade explosives. A sharp prosecutor would have brought that charge and many others.
Four months after that sad dismissal by Allen, that same dangerous defendant walked into Club Q, a gay nightclub, armed to the teeth, and shot dead as many people as he could on Nov. 20, 2022.
Colorado’s red flag law, in effect since 2020, works. Police and families filed 96 temporary petitions in 2020, and 64 were granted. In 2023, 168 were filed and 125 granted. CU researchers counted 692 petitions through 2024, and more than a third of the early ones came from Second Amendment sanctuary counties. Turns out gun-friendly places can read a court order, too.
Research on Connecticut’s law estimates one suicide averted for every 10 to 20 orders. Whether it has stopped a mass shooting is, as CPR put it, impossible to say. But a tool that saves lives is a tool you use before the funeral.
Allen says he never flip-flopped. As for his 2020 position, he told CPR it was because DAs weren’t part of the law, as if he could not have advised police in the past. What a dodge! As El Paso County’s chief law enforcement officer, Allen should have demanded that police agencies act to disarm people posing an extreme risk.
At Wednesday’s Colorado Sun debate, Allen touted using the power of prosecution to “hold the shooter in that (Club Q massacre) case fully accountable to the law.” Life in prison was the obvious, easy result. Had the 2021 case been handled properly, there would never have been a Club Q massacre.
Before leaving the subject of red flag laws, consider President Donald Trump, whom Allen said he would challenge in court if he abuses Colorado.
Since September 2025, Trump’s military has blown up small boats off Latin America and the Caribbean, killing at least 239 people, in strikes that legal experts and UN officials call extrajudicial killings. The administration says it’s hitting narco-terrorists.
In April, Trump posted that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” In September, he told the United Nations he was weighing whether to “annihilate” Iran. CNN reported that Trump has asked for new strike plans in his unlawful and catastrophic war that include potentially using the “mother of all bombs” on Iranian energy and nuclear sites. The White House says all options are on the table.
At a rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, Trump said government leakers should be shot, adding, “In the old days, we used to shoot leakers.” Reporters, he said, are almost as bad.
Trump recently posted real footage of a young man being fatally mauled by a tiger, captioned “Don’t ever mess with nature!” Then came a montage of lion attacks, some of it AI-made, set to upbeat music. Critics called it snuff videos.
Apply Colorado’s statutory test: risk to self or others plus access to firearms, and most judges would find Trump a walking red flag who possesses the most powerful weapons on Earth.
Alas, no Colorado court can stop Trump. That was tried in Anderson v. Griswold. No judge can disarm this madman who commands our military. Perhaps November’s ballot box might set things straight.
Michael Allen has evolved enough to use Colorado’s red flag law. But will he really throw penalty flags at his political party’s leader? Color me skeptical. To the detriment of the Club Q victims, Allen deferred to the no-red-flag-law edicts of Victor Marx-fan, Sheriff Elder, El Paso County’s former strongman.
Jena Griswold stands up to Donald Trump. That’s her major selling point. It is effective.
Craig Silverman is a former Denver chief deputy DA. Craig is columnist at large for The Colorado Sun and an active Colorado trial lawyer with Craig Silverman Law, LLC.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.
Follow Colorado Sun Opinion on Facebook.
