A federal judge in Delaware ruled Thursday that the state’s ban on making and possessing so-called “ghost guns” violates the Second Amendment, handing gun-rights plaintiffs a clean win and adding another entry to a growing list of court decisions dismantling state firearms restrictions.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware issued its opinion in Rigby v. Jennings, holding that Delaware’s prohibitions on possessing and self-manufacturing unserialized firearms cannot survive constitutional scrutiny. The Firearms Policy Coalition, a plaintiff in the case, announced the ruling on X, calling it “a major Second Amendment victory.”
The decision targets provisions of H.B. 125, a bill Delaware’s Democrat-controlled legislature pushed through in 2021. That law criminalized the possession, sale, and manufacturing of firearms with no serial numbers or other identifying marks, weapons lawmakers labeled “ghost guns” because they are difficult for law enforcement to trace.
The court’s written opinion focused squarely on what the ban did to people who already owned lawful firearms before the legislature acted. The language left little room for ambiguity.
“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.'”
That passage carries real weight. The court did not merely find the law constitutionally suspect or send it back for further review. It called the statute “unconstitutional” outright and described the harm to plaintiffs as irreparable, the legal standard that typically justifies immediate relief.
The ruling arrives at a moment when federal courts across the country are reassessing state-level gun restrictions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which required firearms regulations to be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of gun regulation. That framework has proved difficult for blue-state legislatures to satisfy, and the results keep piling up.
A federal appeals court recently struck down New Jersey’s semiautomatic rifle ban under similar reasoning, and trial courts have been chipping away at restrictions from coast to coast.
When H.B. 125 moved through the Delaware General Assembly in 2021, its sponsors framed the measure as a commonsense public-safety step. State Sen. Nicole Poore, a Democrat, was among its most vocal proponents.
“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.”
Poore also told reporters at the time that “untraceable, undetectable guns present obvious public safety dangers,” adding that she was “glad the General Assembly is taking proactive steps to outlaw them early in their evolution.”
The rhetoric was familiar. Democratic lawmakers in state after state have leaned on the same formula: label a category of firearm as uniquely dangerous, assert that criminals will exploit it, and pass a ban before the courts can weigh in. The strategy works in legislatures where Democrats hold comfortable majorities. It has fared far worse in courtrooms since Bruen.
Delaware’s law defined ghost guns broadly, any firearm lacking serial numbers or other identifying marks. The legislature described such weapons as “untraceable by law enforcement and often undetectable by metal detectors.” Critics of the law argued it swept in a longstanding American tradition of private firearms manufacturing, an activity with roots predating the Republic itself.
The Delaware ruling does not exist in isolation. Federal courts have been handing Second Amendment plaintiffs a string of victories that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
A federal judge recently gutted a 90-year-old suppressor registration law, allowing the first unregistered transfers since 1934. That decision signaled just how far the judiciary is willing to go when applying the historical-tradition test the Supreme Court mandated.
The Trump administration has reinforced the trend from the executive side. The Department of Justice let the landmark suppressor ruling stand rather than appeal, delivering one of the largest Second Amendment rollbacks in modern memory.
And the DOJ has gone on offense as well. The department filed twin lawsuits against California and Virginia gun laws after the Supreme Court reaffirmed its Second Amendment framework, a clear signal that the federal government is no longer content to let states test the outer boundaries of permissible regulation without challenge.
Thursday’s ruling raises questions the court’s opinion does not fully resolve, at least not in the material publicly available so far.
It is unclear whether the court issued a formal injunction blocking enforcement of H.B. 125 or limited itself to a declaratory judgment. The practical difference matters. An injunction would immediately bar state officials from prosecuting anyone under the ban. A declaratory judgment, while legally significant, might leave enforcement in a gray zone until further proceedings.
Delaware has not publicly indicated whether it intends to appeal. The state could seek review from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which would set up yet another appellate showdown over post-Bruen gun rights. Given the current trajectory of federal case law, an appeal would be risky for the state, but blue-state attorneys general have shown a willingness to fight these battles all the way up, if only to delay the inevitable.
The identity and official role of the defendant “Jennings” in the case caption is also not specified in available reporting. Typically, such defendants are state officials sued in their official capacity for enforcing the challenged law.
Separately, a Virginia judge blocked that state’s AR-15 ban just days before enforcement was set to begin, another example of courts intervening at the last moment to protect rights the legislature tried to curtail.
The court’s opinion highlights a fact that rarely gets enough attention in these debates: real people suffered real consequences while this law was on the books. Plaintiffs in Rigby v. Jennings were forced to give up firearms they had lawfully owned before the legislature acted. They did not break any law. They did not threaten anyone. They simply possessed property that Delaware retroactively decided to criminalize.
The court recognized that harm for what it was, irreparable injury. But the word “irreparable” cuts both ways. The plaintiffs can now seek to repossess their firearms, but the years they spent without them cannot be returned. The chilling effect on other gun owners who complied with the law out of fear of prosecution cannot be undone.
This is the hidden cost of legislatures that treat the Second Amendment as a suggestion rather than a constitutional command. They pass laws they know will face legal challenge, bank on the years of litigation it takes to strike them down, and count the intervening period of enforced disarmament as a policy win. When the court finally rules, the sponsors shrug and move on to the next restriction.
The Firearms Policy Coalition, for its part, framed the ruling in direct terms. The group’s post on X described the court as “holding that the State’s bans on possessing and self-manufacturing so-called ‘ghost guns’ are unconstitutional.” No hedging. No qualifiers.
Delaware’s ghost gun ban followed a script that has become standard in blue states: identify a scary-sounding category of firearm, draft a broad prohibition, pass it on party lines, and dare gun owners to spend years and thousands of dollars challenging it in court. The strategy depends on the assumption that most people will comply rather than fight.
What the strategy did not account for is a judiciary increasingly willing to apply the Constitution as written. The Supreme Court’s Bruen decision gave lower courts a clear framework, and judges are using it. State legislatures that ignored the ruling are now watching their signature gun-control measures fall one by one.
Sen. Poore said in 2021 that she was glad the General Assembly was taking “proactive steps” to outlaw ghost guns. The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware just told her, and every lawmaker who voted for H.B. 125, that proactive steps still have to comply with the Bill of Rights.
Legislatures can pass whatever they want. The Constitution still gets the last word.
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