Dexter Taylor is the kind of guy most of us would hang out with. Not only is he hard-working and intelligent, working as a software engineer, but he chooses challenging hobbies. A while back, he got into building gun parts in his spare time, and was even considering going into business.
“I found out that you can actually legally buy a receiver and you can machine that receiver to completion, and you buy your parts and you put them together and you’ve got a pistol or a rifle,” Taylor said in a podcast interview. “And once I saw that I was hooked. I was like, ‘This is the coolest thing ever. This is the most cool thing you could possibly do in your machine shop.'”
Recently, after enjoying his hobby with no issues for years, his sleep was interrupted by loud voices and noises. Agents of the state and federal governments had kicked in his front door in a no-knock raid. He then spent a week in jail at Rikers Island under charges for building “ghost guns.” As part of a “Bruen response” bill, New York outlawed a slew of things, while also making it difficult to impossible to get a license.
Taylor also happens to be black, and he thinks that the state’s actions against him are a serious violation of his rights. “New York State has no more right to tell me that I may not keep and bear arms than it has to tell me I have to sit in the back of the bus,” he told RedState.
Anti-gun judges tried to deny his claim, saying that he couldn’t get standing because he didn’t apply for a license, but his lawyer leveraged the low issue rates in the post-Bruen environment to show that the state’s argument was both disingenuous and unconstitutional. So, he’s got a decent shot at winning his case and staying free.
But, getting there won’t be cheap. There’s a GiveSendGo fundraiser for his legal fees, with an aim of reaching $200,000. So far, he’s only about $16,000 into it, so lots more help will be needed.
There’s a whole lot more on the line here than just the freedom of one man. The RedState story mentions a number of other people whose cases aren’t going as well. His case could be the breakthrough case that not only frees up people’s ability to home brew firearms, but literally frees others who are rotting in “hellish, deadly conditions” at Rikers Island for the great crime of possessing a gun.