U.S. District Court: Delaware Ban on Making, Possessing 'Ghost Guns' Unconstitutional

The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware on Thursday ruled that Delaware’s ban on making and possessing “ghost guns” is unconstitutional. The lawsuit centered on H.B. 125, which Delaware Democrats described as a bill that “would criminalize the possession, sale and manufacturing of ‘ghost guns,’ a term that refers to firearms with no serial numbers or other identifying marks, making them untraceable by law enforcement and often undetectable by metal detectors.” As H.B. 125 moved through the Delaware legislature in 2021, state Sen. Nicole Poore (D) said, “These homemade weapons can be just as deadly as other types of firearms and are potentially easier to obtain for people legally barred from owning a gun.” She added, “Untraceable, undetectable guns present obvious public safety dangers, and I’m glad the General Assembly is taking proactive steps to outlaw them early in their evolution.” But on Thursday, the opinion of the U.S. District Court made clear, “Plaintiffs have been forced to dispossess themselves of firearms they lawfully owned before Delaware passed the Possession and Manufacturing and Assembly Bans. Now the only thing preventing them from exercising their Second Amendment rights to repossess those firearms is an unconstitutional statute. That deprivation, ‘for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.'” One of the plaintiffs in the case, the Firearms Policy Coalition, announced the decision on X, writing, “…Today a major Second Amendment victory in [the] Rigby v. Jennings lawsuit, with the United States District Court for the District of Delaware holding that the State’s bans on possessing and self-manufacturing so-called ‘ghost guns’ are unconstitutional.” AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. He is a lever action man in an AR-15 world. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.