Do private gun sales need a background check in Colorado?

Last verified against primary sources: 2026-07-20 · Updated 2026-07-20

The rule: route the transfer through a dealer

An unlicensed person selling or giving a firearm to another private party cannot simply hand it over. The statute puts the duty on the seller to arrange the check:

The buyer, in turn, may not take the gun until CBI has cleared the transfer:

How it works in practice

• The two parties bring the firearm to a licensed dealer, who runs the same CBI background check used for a retail sale and must "record the transfer and retain the records in the same manner as when conducting a sale, rental, or exchange at retail."
• The dealer gives both parties a copy of the results, "including the bureau's approval or disapproval of the transfer."
• An approved transfer is "valid for thirty calendar days."
• A dealer may charge up to a $10 statutory fee for facilitating a private transfer under § 18-12-112; CBI separately charges its own background-check fee (raised to $15 effective March 1, 2025).
• The same statute bars an unlicensed seller from making or facilitating "the sale of a firearm to a person who is less than twenty-one years of age" — the private-sale companion to Colorado's age-21 purchase rule.

Exemptions: sales that do not require a check

Colorado's statute lists specific transfers that are exempt from the private-transfer background-check requirement:

• Immediate family — transfers between "spouses, parents, children, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, first cousins, aunts, and uncles."
• Antiques and collectibles — transfer of an "antique firearm" or a "curio or relic," as those terms are federally defined.
• Temporary, supervised transfers — at a shooting range, in an organized competition, or while hunting or fishing, where the person receiving the gun is not prohibited from possessing firearms.
• Repair or gunsmithing — where everyone who handles the firearm may legally possess one.
• Brief loans — a "temporary transfer for not more than seventy-two hours."
• Continuous presence — a temporary transfer that happens while the gun stays in the continuous presence of its owner.
• Military deployment — a transfer to immediate family by a service member deploying overseas within 30 days.

Penalty

Violating the private-transfer background-check requirement is a class 2 misdemeanor, and a conviction carries a two-year firearm-possession prohibition.