Gun rights group asks 10th Circuit to reload challenge to Colorado’s ghost gun ban

DENVER (CN) — A gun rights group asked the 10th Circuit on Wednesday to revive its challenge to Colorado’s ghost gun ban, prohibiting the making and owning of unserialized firearms.

“The district court should have held the manufacturing ban is unconstitutional on its face because that has roots dating back to before the revolution,” argued attorney Barry Arrington on behalf of the National Association for Gun Rights.

Facing a dramatic rise in the use of unmarked homemade firearms, dubbed ghost guns, being used to commit crimes, Colorado lawmakers sought to tamp down on the making of firearms from unmarked, unregulated parts.

The National Association for Gun Rights joined named Colorado residents who bought unserialized parts from Polymer 80 and sued the state on Jan. 15, 2024, challenging the law requiring registration of homemade guns and parts.

Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Gordon Gallagher denied an injunction on May 2, 2024, finding the plaintiffs lacked standing and the matter wasn’t ripe for suit. The gun rights group appealed, asking that the law be analyzed under the legal tests set in* New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen* which instructs courts to weigh modern gun restrictions against the historical record.

“In your view, the district court didn’t do a proper Bruen analysis, so you’d like the court to do a Bruen analysis that’s in line with your position,” asked U.S. Circuit Judge Joel Carson.

Arrington said he was confident the state’s law would collapse under Bruen .

“At the very least, the district court’s interpretation can’t stand,” Arrington said. “That is in clear error, and I think the court has enough before them to find the statute on its face is unconstitutional.”

On behalf of the state, Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson argued the ghost gun ban falls into a century-old tradition of serializing firearms, fitting into Bruen’s nuanced technological advancement exception.

“We’re talking about unprecedented and dramatic technological change. There Bruen says we need to have some nuance, and Rahimi says we’re not trapped in amber when it comes to regulating firearms,” Stevenson said referring to the 2024 case U.S. v. Rahimi , which upheld firearm prohibitions against individuals under domestic violence restraining orders.

“The underlying purpose is to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, the same with Rahimi ,” Stevenson argued.

Carson pushed back against Stevenson’s explanation that closing a loophole justified outlawing possession of unserialized parts purchased before the law went into effect.

“You have people who purchased these parts when it was legal to, but now it’s illegal to possess them, and it would be illegal to do a person-to-person transfer,” Carson said. “At some point, don’t we have to give credence that the plaintiff has made an argument that has to be addressed under a Bruen analysis?”

While Stevenson highlighted the options Coloradans have to obtain and assemble serialized parts after undergoing a background check, Arrington doubled down on the limitations of making or using raw, unserialized components which require a federal license to legally possess.

“The Colorado statute requires a single person making a single firearm to go out and get the same license as Smith & Wesson has to get,” Arrington argued on rebuttal.

Trump-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge Alison Eid joined Carson at the Byron White U.S. Courthouse in downtown Denver. Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Kelly, a George H.W. Bush appointee, appeared remotely from New Mexico.

The court did not indicate when or how it would decide the case.

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