The Firearm Policy Coalition has a lot of legal actions currently in progress. And on Friday afternoon, they won an important round in a significant case. US District Court Judge Maryellen Norieka issued and order blocking enforcement of Delaware’s ban on ownership and possession of unserialized homemade firearms and unfinished 80% receivers.
No doubt this news will cause Delaware’s big gun control shills to go into vapor lock. At the same time, good guy gun owners will breathe a sigh of relief.
Here’s the FPC press release.
WILMINGTON, DE (September 23, 2022) – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced that United States District Judge Maryellen Noreika issued an order enjoining Delaware’s bans on self-manufacturing and possession of home-built firearms in its Rigby v. Jennings lawsuit. The opinion and order can be viewed at FPCLaw.org.
“These statutes burden constitutionally protected conduct because possession of firearms and firearm frames and receivers is within the scope of the Second Amendment’s right to ‘keep and bear Arms’ and Defendant has not shown that these firearms and components are not commonly owned by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,” wrote Judge Noreika in her opinion. “Further, Defendant has offered no evidence that these statutes are consistent with the nation’s history of firearm regulation.”
The Court went on to hold that “the right to keep and bear arms implies a corresponding right to manufacture arms. Indeed, the right to keep and bear arms would be meaningless if no individual or entity could manufacture a firearm. Thus, if possessing untraceable firearms is protected by the Second Amendment, then so too is manufacturing them.”
The Court’s Order states in pertinent part that: “Defendant [Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings], her officers, agents, servants, employees, and all persons in active concert or participation with her, and all persons who have notice of the injunction are preliminarily enjoined from enforcing 11 Del. C. § 1459A(b); 11 Del. C. § 1463(a); 11 Del. C. § 1463(c)(1) and from enforcing 11 Del. C. 1463(b) to the extent that the Court has found it likely unconstitutional (i.e. the statute’s provisions that bar the manufacturing and assembly of untraceable firearms, but not the prohibitions against distributing untraceable firearms).” The Order issued today further denied the State’s motion to dismiss in its entirety.
“The self-manufacture of arms is deeply rooted in American history,” said FPC Law’s Director of Constitutional Studies, Joseph Greenlee. “It has been a celebrated tradition since the earliest colonial days, it helped save America’s war for Independence, it was essential to western expansion, and it has led to many of the most innovative technological breakthroughs in our nation’s history. We are pleased that the court recognized this essential element of the right to keep and bear arms and will continue to fiercely advocate for its protection.”
“Yet another Court has recognized the expansive natural and individual right that is protected by the Second Amendment–in this case, the individual right to manufacture one’s own self-defense tools,” said Cody J. Wisniewski, FPC’s Senior Attorney for Constitutional Litigation. “FPC has notched another post-Bruen win, not only demonstrating how important the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision is, but further demonstrating that FPC has the most effective and expansive program dedicated to fighting for individual’s Second Amendment protected rights in courtrooms across the nation.”
“Limiting the means by which peaceable people acquire arms is about one thing: the unconstitutional and immoral monopolization of power,” said FPC Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “The state is not entitled to cut off access to self-manufacturing of arms under the Second Amendment, period.”
This decision marks the first-ever federal Second Amendment decision upholding the fundamental right to self-manufacture arms. FPC will continue to aggressively litigate to protect and restore the right to self-manufacture arms in this and cases throughout the United States, including VanDerStock v. ATF, Renna v. Bonta, Palmer v. Sisolak, Fahr v. San Diego, and others.
Now bring that to Illinois and the handful of other states that have enacted so-called ‘ghost gun’ bans.
Ain’t afraid of no ghost 👻
Casper appreciates being able to carry in Delaware now.
BOO!
lol
get ready for the ghost-gun Halloween costumes!!
Here’s the strange part – The judge is a Democrat, yet she was appointed by Trump. And wrote a decision that sounds a whole lot more Right than Leftist Scum ™.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryellen_Noreika
I’m in no way complaining about the result, but I’d really like to know what was happening ‘behind the scenes’ when Trump’s team selected her…
Yeah, that pesky little fact was tripping me out yesterday afternoon when the decision was handed down.
Likely attributable to wanting her streak to be unmolested v. appellate courts or SCOTUS quashing her ruling, only logical answer I can come up with. Doesn’t matter, ruling is squared away and proper under the BoR, so I’ll mark it as the win it is.
Functionally, it means FJBeez BATFeces rule is dead out of the gate. Yay!?!
DINO? Maybe they are not extinct?
one brick at a time – take away the whole ‘house that anti-gun built’
Turn that house into a parking lot.
Right in front of a big bran’ spankin new gun store
Also note that if possessing untraceable firearms is a right, that means that the laws about grinding off serial numbers, and the laws about serial numbers in general for manufacturers, nuts also be unconstitutional.
Which almost renders the 4473 itself unconstitutional, and certainly renders it irrelevant.
Yay!
If we have any right to privacy the 4473 should be unconstitutional.
Good point, Publius.
This decision should begin to wake up the Leftist Scum ™ to the mortal peril their beloved evil ‘gun safety’ is in.
Personally, I’m going to make a point to them any time I can that they, themselves, are the ones to blame for their predicament.
They chose to run the only person who could have lost the 2016 election, and that gave us solid control of the High Court.
If we likely win the upcoming lawsuits forcing social media companies to not ban speech they dislike, they will really lose their feces (so to speak).
They have to be in full-panic mode right now, and it is *glorious*… 🙂
Biden & the ATF just lost some more marbles.
The few they had left, you mean?
*Snicker*… 🙂
What marbles?
gunnygene,
WTF?? Where did they get the marbles to lose?? The Leftist/fascists lost the FEW marbles they had back in the 50s. They lost their s*** on the daily . . . but then, they’ve got a LOT of s*** to lose.
Delaware no less. I love it when anti’s get their asses handed to them. Thank you FPC. If you live in the Colorado area please think about giving to RMGO. They are fighting for us also.
Glad to hear the NRA is out there making a difference…oh wait.
yeah, right…just keep paying your dues boys….
The first domino falls. Delaware is a long way from California, but I’d like to see the momentum carry all the way and knock down our own prohibition on serialized gunns.
Derp. I meant unserialized.
That was the end goal the antis have always been reaching for, Cali further down the road than most other states. It’s just that Bruen happened before they could get there.
“It’s just that Bruen happened before they could get there.”
*Sniff-sniff*.
Smell that? It’s the stink of fear, and it’s the only thing they can smell right now.
Those who laugh last laugh best,
…and we are the ones laughing our asses off right now… 🙂 🙂 🙂
Serial numbers on guns could turn out like mattress tags — something required for commercial sale, but removed by the end user. Gun makers were using serial numbers long before they were legally required, and they’ll probably keep them if the requirement hoes away.
It’s amazing what happens when you don’t have the “two step” bullshit to navigate.
And there we were, hoping beyond hope to get strict scrutiny.
We got it on steroids, the “one step too many” variety…
So Delaware is going to be hit with 13,000 new cant do it laws.
Bruen sure showed New York how the cow ate the cabbage didnt it.
While the total ban on possession of 80% lowers may be unconstitutional here, the judge states in a footnote that if Delaware copies the CA law requiring serial numbers and FFL transfers of 80% lowers, all is well. Not exactly a stunning victory. This same ruling also said that code is not speech, and the ban on transferring 3d printer files is still just fine. She thinks she can stop the signal.
“This same ruling also said that code is not speech, and the ban on transferring 3d printer files is still just fine.”
Thanks to ‘Bruen’, we’ll win that one as well.
Besides, didn’t someone, years back publish the decryption key for DVD decoding on a T-shirt?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS
The State Bans are irrelevant because the ATF has banned them on the Federal Level so what was the point of going to court? It was all political show.
Honestly. Are you that thick or are you pretending?
Precedence.
To complicated a concept for that one.
To Vlad
The ATF ruling still stands. Now try and refute that one.
Weed has also been banned at the Federal level and yet here we are. And the ATF ruling may only stand until it goes to court.
You really are not a very well educated person, are you, dacian?
Oh, no, vlad, believe us, dacian the demented dips*** is every bit as thick as you can imagine. dacian is one of those rare individuals who can pick a fight with himself . . . and both sides lose.
I have a very sweet, but very dumb, dog. I read her dacian comments and she says, “Damn, dad, that guy is dumber than one of my s***s!!” She is not wrong.
No they aren’t. Read and try to understand the law.
Idiot.
lol
BATF has rescinded the bump stock ruling. The serial number requirement will be next. Try reading something intelligent before you post.
Thank God for Firearms Policy Coalition. NRA (corrupted by the deep state for almost its entire existence) for decades, wouldn’t use the courts to strike down obviously unconstitutional garbage, saying they were afraid of an adverse ruling that would set a bad precedent. We the people LITERALLY had to create new 2nd amendment lobbying organizations from the ground up, such as FPC and GOA and SAF. And now because of that, thank God we’re slowly getting some of our rights back.
FPC, GOA and SAF are the true 900-pound Gorillas on the block…
I wonder if anyone has any news form up in Washington state about it’s own pseudo bans on homemade guns. Starting in this coming year they want to require you to run anything you build through an FFL.
“I wonder if anyone has any news form up in Washington state about it’s own pseudo bans on homemade guns.”
Do your state gun rights orgs have any lawsuits pending?
If you don’t know, how about joining them with some of your personal time or a little money every month?
That’s what they do to steal from us. Pay’em back in spades!
I appreciate that the laws is the law but for the life of me I cannot see the connectioin betwqeen legally owning firearms and MANFACTURING them unserialised and there fore untraceable and I would not expect ANY responsible gun owner to approve of the practice either.. What it seesm to me is to give any slack jawed mentally retarded hill-billy license to make bloody PIPE GUNS with impunity. Wait till one of them buggers is shoved up your arse !!
Do I hear where are the POLICE when you NEED THEM??
Yes I DO
there’s the real dacian. Arrogant and insufferable.
Hill-billy give it away?
Wonder if he knows the difference between hillbilly and redneck?
Where is the malum in se in manufacturing your own firearms? What victims are saved from victimhood, saved from having their rights violated, by means of the serialization of firearms?
Rawther a bit of kidney pie with that whine g’vnr? Pip pip cheerio old chap! ‘Av a nice visit to the lou before you throw a wobbly…are you a mite knackered after being gutted over this news?
Sod off you worthless muppet.
Prince Albert the Poncey Fake-Brit, Fake-Military Wanking Poofter,
Forgetting “legality” and “constitutionality” for a moment (since you are inherently incapable of understanding either), explain something to me, you idiot – HOW, EXACTLY do you plan to prevent someone from “manufacturing” firearms, when any idiot with a benjy and an afternoon can make a fully functional firearm with parts acquired from their local Home Depot???
We know you’re stupid, Prince Albert, so don’t feel the need to prove your stupidity each time you post. Heed the wisdom of that great American author and humorist, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, “Keep your mouth shut and let others think you a fool; don’t open it and remove all doubt.” Unfortunately, you frequently open your mouth, so we KNOW you are a fool.
“… Defendant has not shown that these firearms and components are not commonly owned by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes …” — Judge Noreika
While we might like that statement, it is erroneous for the simple fact that you cannot prove a negative. You cannot prove an absence of something–you can only prove the presence of something. (You cannot prove the absence of something because you would quite literally have to be all-knowing which is an impossibility.)
In this specific case, how would you prove that the public does NOT commonly own 80% firearm receivers unless you somehow exhaustively searched every home and business? Since that is an impossible task, you cannot establish an absence of common ownership.
Another way of driving toward the same concept:
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Of course none of my simple and truthful statements above matter one bit to 99% of the population who will do whatever they want for any reason or no reason.
There are now *millions* of 80-percent constructed firearms in circulation.
Since “in common use” firearms are expressly protected under the 2A (as per. Heller), then 80 percent components are also equally-protected.
Since the first settlers waded ashore from Europe, home construction of firearms has been the norm. Firearm ‘lockworks’ were shipped over here in bulk in straw-packed barrels from the ‘Old Countries’ to be fitted with barrels. At no time were ‘background checks’ required or performed until the last few decades.
It sure sucks to be a Leftist. All that effort being currently spent in un-doing what Trump has accomplished pales in comparison to his greatest accomplishment, the current supreme Court… 🙂
I think you misunderstand the meaning and application of “commonly owned” here.
As used here it means simply, property that is owned by ‘population group members’ (e.g. a demographic subset). It can be very much proven that such ownership does exist among ‘population group members’ (e.g. a demographic subset, in this case law-abiding citizens who own this property) of those which own the ‘property’ therefore it can not be proven “that these firearms and components are not commonly owned by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes”.
the man doesn’t even know where he is half the time so how can he comment on any type of gun or gun parts. what a joke!
Am I missing something here? A serial number is only helpful to the authorities when a firearm is recovered AFTER a crime. Other than creating a registry what else do they need? I’m sure the BATFE isn’t just curious about whatever firearms I own. There is no other reason or excuse.
There are several new Delaware gun laws that were passed back in June that are being fought by the DSSA (local branch of the NRA), as well as the FPC. One of which is a magazine ban on all mags over 17 rounds. Apparently they wrote in an exception for people that have their Delaware Concealed Carry Permit(https://www.blog.x-ringsupply.com/post/why-you-need-to-get-a-delaware-concealed-carry-license-now), so they can still buy and possess mags > 17 rounds. Hopefully this will get the same treatment in the court as the”ghost” gun infringement. Mag buy backs start in a week or two…. https://news.delaware.gov/2022/10/26/state-announces-high-capacity-magazine-buyback-events-for-delaware-residents/