By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
A ruling earlier this month by a U.S. District Court judge in Delaware striking down the First State’s ban on so-called “ghost guns” could have an impact on a similar ban at the far end of the country: Washington state, where anti-gun Democrats have been pushing restrictions on gun owners in recent years.
According to a report at Seattle Red, a conservative online publication, the 28-page Sept. 10 ruling by District Judge Maryellen Noreika “permanently blocks Delaware from enforcing its ban on possessing untraceable firearms and unserialized unfinished frames and receivers, along with its ban on manufacturing or assembling untraceable guns.”
Judge Noreika is a 2018 Donald Trump appointee. She granted in-part and denied-in-part plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment.
Her ruling upholds Delaware’s law which limits the sale and transfer of so-called “ghost guns,” and unfinished frames which are not serialized, but she permanently blocked the state from enforcing a ban on the possession of such firearms and frames, and the ban on manufacturing or assembling such firearms.
The Seattle Red report notes, “Noreika concluded an unserialized gun is still an arm protected by the Second Amendment, and she found the state offered nothing showing homemade firearms are more dangerous than factory-made ones.”
And Seattle Red further reported, “The ruling does not touch Washington law since Delaware is in the Third Circuit, while Washington answers to the Ninth Circuit. But a Seattle Red review of the opinion shows Washington enforces nearly every provision Noreika threw out, and the judge flagged the legal hurdle a challenge here would face.”
Judge Noreika wrote, “Having succeeded on its Second Amendment claims against the Possession and Manufacturing and Assembly Bans, Plaintiffs must now show (1) it will suffer irreparable injury, (2) no remedy available at law could adequately remedy that injury, (3) the balance of hardships tips in its favor, and (4) an injunction would not disserve the public interest…Here, the irreparable injury factor weighs in favor of an injunction. 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.” For the same reason there is no adequate remedy at law; nothing can compensate Plaintiffs for the deprivation of their constitutional rights.
“Balance of the hardships tip in Plaintiffs’ favor as well,” she continued, “because Delaware will suffer no hardship in not enforcing an unconstitutional law whereas Plaintiffs would suffer hardship by being barred from exercising their constitutional rights. Finally, an injunction serves the public interest because the public has an interest in ensuring that law-abiding citizens can exercise their constitutional rights whereas the government has no countervailing interest in enforcing an unconstitutional statute.”
Elsewhere in her opinion, Judge Noreika observed, “Indeed, there is no record evidence here that untraceable or self-manufactured guns pose any danger that serialized or traditionally manufactured guns do not. (See e.g., D.I. 58, Ex. B ⁋ 11 (“The presence or absence of serial numbers on firearms has no effect on their functionality . . . .”)…If anything, the evidence tends to show that law-abiding citizens commonly use these types of firearms for self-defense.”
