By Tanya Metaksa
What’s New — United States Supreme Court: Sept. 28 long conference summary; latest addition: Calce v. City of New York; Texas: US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit: Elite Precision Customs v. BATFE: Case No. 4:25-cv-00044-P: Challenging the federal ban on interstate transfers of handguns.
Week ending September 18, 2026
A review of the week’s available federal-court and Supreme Court materials did not reveal a new Supreme Court merits ruling, certiorari grant or denial squarely presenting a Second Amendment question, federal circuit merits opinion, or consequential preliminary-injunction ruling concerning the constitutional validity of a firearms restriction.
United States Supreme Court
September 28 long conference
Three high-profile cert petitions—Duncan v. Bonta, Gator’s Custom Guns v. Washington, and National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont—survived the Court’s late-June 2026 clean-up conference without either grant or denial. During the summer recess, the docket also accumulated a far larger group of new Second Amendment petitions, chiefly concerning felon-dispossession laws, with several discrete non-§ 922(g)(1) issues likely to be more analytically significant than the volume suggests.
Pending cert petitions
| Case | Docket | Provision challenged | Present posture |
| Duncan v. Bonta | No. 25-198 | California’s prohibition on possession of magazines holding more than 10 rounds. | Held over; petition challenges the Ninth Circuit’s decision sustaining the restriction. Supplemental briefing was filed in August following the Third Circuit’s contrary reasoning in Cheeseman v. Davenport. |
| Gator’s Custom Guns v. Washington | No. 25-153 | Washington’s restriction on manufacturing and selling magazines holding more than 10 rounds | Held over with Duncan. This case particularly presents commercial manufacture/sale restrictions rather than merely a possession prohibition. |
| National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont | No. 25-421 | Connecticut’s restrictions on AR-15–type semiautomatic rifles and magazines over 10 rounds. | Held over. Its combined rifle-and-magazine posture may explain why it was not granted with the two rifle-only cases. |
Why the three petitions matter
The three live petitions create a useful division of issues:
- Magazine-capacity limits: Duncan and Gator’s squarely present whether states may constitutionally cap magazine capacity at 10 rounds, with differing factual and regulatory contexts. This case directly challenges California’s prohibition on possessing magazines holding more than ten rounds. It asks whether such widely owned ammunition-feeding devices are protected “arms” under the Second Amendment and whether requiring owners to surrender previously lawful magazines without compensation violates the Takings Clause. Unlike a prospective sales restriction, Duncan challenges a possession-and-dispossession regime, making it a significant vehicle for resolving lower-court disagreement over common use, constitutional coverage, and the application of Bruen’s text-and-history test to magazine-capacity limits.
- Combined rifle-and-magazine ban: NAGR includes both common-use semiautomatic rifles and magazines, potentially making it a broader but less clean vehicle than the consolidated Viramontes/Grant rifle cases.
- Developing appellate conflict: During the 2026 summer the Seventh Circuit upheld an Illinois rifle/magazine ban in Barnett v. Raoul on July 9, while the en banc Third Circuit struck down New Jersey’s counterpart in Cheeseman v. Davenport on July 17. Although the Third Circuit later stayed its mandate pending New Jersey’s anticipated cert petition, the conflicting appellate analysis remains relevant to the Court’s consideration of the existing petitions.
Summary
Duncan v. Bonta, No. 25-198, is the principal California magazine case. It asks whether a state may prohibit possession of “exceedingly common” ammunition feeding devices and, separately, whether forcing citizens to relinquish previously lawful magazines without compensation violates the Takings Clause. Its posture makes it an especially consequential vehicle: it challenges a possession ban, not merely limits on future commercial transactions, and it expressly joins the Second Amendment question to a property-rights question. The petition has become more important as lower courts have divided over whether magazines holding more than ten rounds are protected “arms,” whether they are in common use, and how Bruen’s text-and-history framework applies to them.
Gator’s Custom Guns, No. 25-153, presents a cleaner threshold question: whether ammunition feeding devices capable of holding more than ten rounds qualify as “Arms” presumptively protected by the Second Amendment’s text. The Washington case arises from that state’s prohibition on the manufacture, importation, distribution, and sale of such magazines. Thus, unlike Duncan, its focus is principally commercial access and the constitutional status of magazines themselves, rather than California’s possession-and-dispossession regime. The Court may regard the two petitions as complementary vehicles: Gator’s poses the doctrinal classification question, while Duncan presents the practical consequence of treating widely owned magazines as outside constitutional protection.
NAGR v. Lamont, No. 25-421, is broader. It challenges Connecticut’s ban on possession of AR-15-style rifles as well as magazines exceeding ten rounds. The Court granted certiorari in Viramontes and Grant on the semiautomatic-rifle question but left NAGR pending, likely because its combined rifle-and-magazine posture is less clean as a vehicle. Nevertheless, its magazine component could become the Court’s next opportunity to resolve whether an item owned in large numbers and integral to the operation of common semiautomatic firearms falls within the Second Amendment’s textual scope.
Summer additions
The summer recess added numerous new Second Amendment petitions, and the Sept. 28 conference is expected to consider at least 30 firearms-related cases. The overwhelming majority challenge 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), the federal felon-in-possession prohibition, often through as-applied claims by persons whose predicate convictions were nonviolent. Examples include White, Cisneros, Price, Gaddy, Garrett, Bland, Finney, Meyer, Rojo, and Nunamaker.
The recurring questions from these cases are whether § 922(g)(1) permits individualized Second Amendment review after Bruen and Rahimi, whether permanent disarmament can be justified for nonviolent offenses, and whether the statute’s interstate-commerce element independently exceeds congressional authority in purely intrastate-possession cases. If any of these are granted certiorari we may receive further clarification on these issues.
Latest: Calce v. City of New York
Calce v. City of New York is a Second Amendment challenge to New York State and New York City prohibitions on possession of electronic weapons, including stun guns and tasers. The plaintiffs—individual New Yorkers, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Firearms Policy Coalition—contend that the bans violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments; the case is presently pending on a petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court.
District Court
Calce v. City of New York, No. 1:21-cv-08208-ER: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Edgardo Ramos. On March 24, 2025, Judge Ramos denied the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and granted the City’s cross-motion, entering judgment for defendants. The court concluded that plaintiffs had not offered evidence sufficient to establish that stun guns and tasers are “in common use” for lawful purposes and therefore had not shown that the challenged state and municipal prohibitions fell within the Second Amendment’s presumptive textual coverage,
Court of Appeals
Calce v. City of New York, No. 25-861:-U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Circuit Judges Barrington D. Parker, Raymond J. Lohier, Jr., and Sarah A. L. Merriam. In a nonprecedential summary order dated April 13, 2026, the panel affirmed the district court’s judgment. The Second Circuit held that, at the first step of the Bruen framework, plaintiffs bore the burden to provide admissible evidence that the relevant electronic weapons were in common use for lawful self-defense; because their Rule 56 record did not do so, summary judgment for the City was appropriate, without proceeding to the government’s historical-tradition justification.
Supreme Court
Calce v. City of New York, No. 26-46, Supreme Court of the United States (petition for writ of certiorari from Second Circuit No. 25-861-cv). The petition was filed July 7, 2026, docketed July 10, and challenges the lower courts’ treatment of the Second Amendment’s textual threshold as requiring plaintiffs to prove common use of tasers and stun guns before the government must establish a historical analogue for its categorical bans. After New York City initially waived a response, the Court requested one on September 8, 2026, with a response due October 8, 2026; the docket also shows the case distributed for the September 28 conference.
Short research note
The Second Circuit’s disposition is expressly a summary order, not a precedential opinion. Under Second Circuit Local Rule 32.1.1 and the language printed in the order itself, it may be cited in accordance with Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1, but it lacks precedential effect.
Youtube video concerning this case
Mark W. Smith of The Four Boxes Diner has made a video on Sept. 16 about this case. The video argues that the Supreme Court’s request for a response from New York City in Calce v. City of New York is a strong sign that the Court may take up—and ultimately invalidate—the City’s prohibition on stun guns and tasers. Smith presents this as an unusually clear Second Amendment case, but his predictions about the Court’s eventual outcome are advocacy rather than a ruling.
Central dispute
The petition challenges New York City’s enforcement of a ban on electronic weapons, including stun guns and tasers. The host says one petitioner was arrested after displaying a stun gun in claimed self-defense, and that the Second Circuit upheld the restriction on the ground that the challengers had not established the devices’ common lawful use.
Legal argument
Smith contends that the Second Circuit erred at the threshold “plain text” stage by treating stun guns as outside “arms” protected by the Second Amendment. He relies principally on District of Columbia v. Heller’s broad definition of arms and Caetano v. Massachusetts, in which the Supreme Court vacated a state-court decision denying Second Amendment protection to stun guns.
He argues that once a stun gun is recognized as a bearable arm, the burden shifts to the government under the modern text-and-history framework to justify its restriction through a relevant historical tradition. On his account, whether a weapon is in common use belongs in that historical inquiry, not as an evidentiary burden initially imposed on the individual challenger.
Why the order matters
The Court ordered New York City to respond to the certiorari petition filed in July, rather than simply disposing of it without a response. The host views that procedural step as meaningful because Caetano already addressed stun guns and because New York City’s position is portrayed as an outlier following the abandonment or invalidation of comparable restrictions elsewhere.
Broader implications
Smith connects Calce to pending challenges to bans on AR-15-style rifles, arguing that the Court’s recent Second Amendment methodology supports protection for commonly owned arms. He also invokes a recent case he calls Wolford v. Lopez as evidence that the Court is emphasizing a strict separation between the Amendment’s textual coverage and the government’s historical-justification burden
The key caveat: the video is a forceful pro-Second Amendment commentary, not a neutral case assessment. At this stage, the Court has requested a response; it has not yet granted review or ruled on the constitutionality of New York City’s stun-gun restriction. We are just a the beginning of the SCOTUS process.
Texas: US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Texas: Fifth Circuit
A major victory at the Court of Appeals level against a provision of the 1968 Gun Control Act in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was issued on Spetember 18, 2026.
Elite Precision Customs v. BATFE: Case No. 4:25-cv-00044-P: Litigation was filed on Inauguration day, Jan. 20, 2025, in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas “Challenging the federal ban on interstate transfers of handguns from federally licensed dealers to individuals who are otherwise eligible to purchase and possess a handgun for lawful purposes but cannot purchase directly from a dealer because they do not live in the same state as the dealer.”
- On Sept. 30, 2025, Judge Mark T. Pittman granted the Government’s motion to dismiss and denied plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, holding that the interstate handgun‑sale restrictions (“Sale Restrictions”) do not violate the Second Amendment.
- The District Court opinion characterized the federal scheme as a commercial regulation that does not operate as a de facto prohibition on handgun possession, but instead as a permissible delay and channeling mechanism, drawing on Fifth Circuit precedent. The court concluded that the Sale Restrictions are not abusive or an outright ban, and thus fall within the category of lawful regulatory measures, rejecting plaintiffs’ argument that Bruen transformed such transactional burdens into per se unconstitutional infringements.
- Plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal on Oct. 28, 2025. This past Feb. 4, the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), along with Elite Precision Customs LLC and two individual FPC members, filed their opening brief in the Fifth Circuit challenging the federal handgun interstate transfer ban.
Substance of the FPC opening brief and its key themes are:
- The brief argues that the Sale Restrictions violate the core of the Second Amendment by preventing otherwise lawful buyers from purchasing handguns directly from licensed dealers in other states, turning a right into what FPC characterizes as an impermissible “second‑class” liberty.
- FPC contends the district court “abandoned” the Supreme Court’s Bruen test and engaged in “constitutional gaslighting” by treating the federal ban as a minor inconvenience rather than a categorical barrier to interstate handgun acquisition.
- The brief urged the Fifth Circuit to reverse and to “secure the Second Amendment as a fundamental liberty,” arguing that the government cannot justify the interstate handgun sales ban under the text‑and‑history framework and that historical regulations do not support residency‑based prohibitions on purchasing from licensed dealers.
- FPC emphasized that striking down the ban would provide relief for “millions” of peaceable individuals who currently must use more expensive, cumbersome arrangements (shipping through an in‑state FFL) to obtain handguns while traveling or shopping across state lines.
The three judge panel of the Fifth Circuit who issued this decision in Elite Precision Customs, L.L.C. v. ATF, No. 25-11206 were:
| Judge | Position | Vote |
| Judge Jerry E. Smith | Author of the majority opinion | Voted to reverse the dismissal and render judgment for the plaintiffs, concluding that the challenged interstate-handgun-sale restrictions were unconstitutional. |
| Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt | Panel member | Joined Judge Smith’s majority opinion. |
| Judge Catharina Haynes | Panel member | Dissented; she would have upheld the district court’s conclusion that the provisions did not violate the Second Amendment. |
Thus, the panel ruled 2–1 to reverse the district court and render judgment for the plaintiffs. The ruling addressed the combined operation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(a)(3), 922(a)(5), and 922(b)(3), insofar as those provisions prevented direct interstate handgun transactions.
Attorney Mark W. Smith of the YouTube channel, The Four Boxes Diner, has posted a video concerning this decision.
The video’s central point is that a Fifth Circuit panel, in Elite Precision Customs v. ATF, held unconstitutional a federal restriction preventing nonresidents from taking possession of a handgun bought from an FFL in another state. The ruling concerns federal law and handguns—not general state firearm laws, long guns, or nationwide carry rules.
Core holding
- The panel held that the federal provisions governing interstate handgun transfers violate the Second Amendment as applied to the plaintiffs. The court reversed the district court’s dismissal and rendered judgment for the plaintiffs.
- The decision was a 2–1 Fifth Circuit ruling, so its direct precedential force is limited to the Fifth Circuit—Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi—unless altered by en banc or Supreme Court review.
Bruen analysis
- The court treated the restriction as implicating the Second Amendment’s plain text because the right to “keep” arms logically includes acquiring or purchasing them.
- That conclusion triggers the government’s burden under N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen to identify a sufficiently analogous historical tradition of firearm regulation.
- The court found that the government did not carry that burden; the video quotes the opinion as concluding that the ban conflicts with the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.
Historical analogues rejected
- The government relied on historical restrictions involving commerce with Native tribes, wartime transfers to enemies or enemy-aligned persons, and consumer-protection-type laws.
- The court deemed those analogues materially mismatched: tribal commerce was not ordinary interstate commerce among U.S. citizens, wartime measures addressed conflict with enemies, and product-quality rules did not resemble residency-based restrictions on acquiring handguns.
- The presenter emphasizes that the court centered the relevant constitutional-historical inquiry on 1791, the Second Amendment’s ratification year.
Practical significance
- The ruling does not mean every firearm regulation, the entire 1968 Gun Control Act, FFL requirements generally, or all restrictions on interstate firearm transactions, have been invalidated.
- It addresses a specific barrier to an otherwise lawful buyer taking possession of a handgun from an out-of-state FFL; the ordinary federal background-check and Form 4473 process remain part of the process of purchase.
