By Tanya Metaksa
What’s New — D.C. – D.C. Circuit Wehr-Darroca v. District of Columbia magazine ban erroneously decided; Carlin Anderson, et al. v. Kwame Raoul, et al. (7th Cir.). Case No. 25-2642 (District Court No. 3:23-cv-00728-DWD), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit;oral argument is scheduled for October 28, 2026; Edward A. Williams v. Attorney General United States of America; Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives; The court held that the government had not established a historical tradition justifying Williams’s permanent disarmament on these facts, distinguishing dangerous driving from a demonstrated threat of violent firearm misuse; District Court: Colorado: Tenth Circuit: Hoffman et al. v. City and County of Denver, Colorado, et al., Case No. 1:26-cv-04837: The case challenges the combined effect of Colorado’s concealed-carry licensing and reciprocity restrictions and Denver’s prohibition on open carry; New York: Second Circuit: Goldberger v. James, Case No. 7:26‑cv‑02325, pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, filed on March 20, 2026; a lawsuit challenging New York’s prohibition on the concealed carry of handguns in Times Square; Firearms Policy Coalition Letters to 15 state Attorney Generals: Alaska Legislature / Attorney General — State seeks repair of criminal law tied to federal NFA registration: NFA nonenforcement reaches dealers and buyers — New reporting distinguishes federal policy from repeal.
Weekly Second Amendment Developments — Week Ending Friday, October 16, 2026
The week’s most consequential judicial developments was the Third Circuit’s en banc decision distinguishing constitutionally permissible disarmament for violent threats from impermissible lifetime disarmament based on an old DUI conviction. A parallel theme was state-law uncertainty that continues to grow around the Justice Department’s decisions not to enforce certain firearms restrictions.
U.S. Courts of Appeals
District of Columbia — D.C. Circuit; Wehr-Darroca v. District of Columbia; District court case No. 1:24-cv-03504 (D.D.C.); D.C. Circuit appeal No. 25-7159.
The complaint in Wehr-Darroca v. District of Columbia, filed on December 18, 2024, stated: “The magazines at issue in this case are not ‘dangerous and unusual,’ but instead are standard components of the sorts of bearable arms in common use for lawful purposes.”
The federal district court dismissed the two gun owners’ constitutional challenge to the magazine ban under D.C. Circuit precedent requiring a heightened showing of a specific threat of prosecution. Under that rule, law-abiding gun owners who want to exercise their rights but refuse to risk criminal prosecution can be denied the opportunity to challenge the very laws threatening them.
As a result, the petition filed on October 15, 2026, asks the full D.C. Circuit to hear the appeal from the outset and eliminate this improper barrier to constitutional litigation. The appellants’ opening brief further argues that, even if the full court declines immediate review, a three-judge panel can and should correct the circuit’s outdated precedent and reverse the dismissal.
Illinois — Seventh Circuit; Anderson v. Raoul; Seventh Circuit appeal No. 25-2642; district court case No. 3:23-cv-00728-DWD (S.D. Ill.).
Anderson v. Raoul challenges Illinois’s ban on firearm suppressors. The district court case and the Seventh Circuit appeal were each consolidated with the corresponding Morse v. Raoul proceedings. As of October 12, 2026, the appeal remained pending, with oral argument scheduled for October 28, 2026.
District Court Proceedings
Carlin Anderson and Dave Clark v. Kwame Raoul et al., case No. 3:23-cv-00728-DWD, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Judge David W. Dugan; consolidated with Larry Morse and Theodore Ray Buck, Jr. v. Kwame Raoul et al., case No. 3:22-cv-02740-DWD.
Anderson and Clark filed suit on February 27, 2023, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against Illinois’s prohibition on possessing devices designed to silence a firearm’s report, 720 ILCS 5/24-1(a)(6). The court consolidated their case with Morse on June 15, 2023, directing subsequent filings to the Morse docket while preserving the cases’ separate identities.
On September 5, 2025, Judge Dugan issued a memorandum and order under the consolidated Morse caption granting the defendants’ Rule 12(c) motion for judgment on the pleadings. He concluded that the plaintiffs had not plausibly alleged that suppressors qualified as “arms” within the Second Amendment’s historically fixed meaning, particularly because they identified no eighteenth- or nineteenth-century precursor. The court entered judgment for the defendants and ordered the case closed, leaving the Illinois ban in place.
Appellate Proceedings
Carlin Anderson et al. v. Kwame Raoul et al., case No. 25-2642, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; consolidated for briefing and disposition with Larry Morse et al. v. Kwame Raoul et al., case No. 25-2663.
The plaintiffs appealed the judgment rejecting their Second Amendment challenge to Illinois’s suppressor ban. The Anderson appeal was filed on September 18, 2025, and the consolidation order was entered on September 22, 2025. As of October 12, 2026, the litigation sponsor’s status page reported that appellate briefing was complete and oral argument was scheduled for October 28, 2026.
Pennsylvania — Third Circuit
Edward A. Williams v. Attorney General United States of America et al. Third Circuit appeal No. 24-1091; earlier appeal No. 19-2694; district court case No. 2:17-cv-02641-JMY.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, sitting en banc, heard argument on February 11, 2026, and issued its precedential opinion on October 13, 2026. Circuit Judge Paul B. Matey authored the opinion of the court.
Writing for the court, Judge Matey explained that America’s historical tradition supports disarming people who pose a physical danger—not everyone swept within the modern definition of “felon.” The court expressly rejected the idea that the Second Amendment is limited to people deemed “responsible” according to “the whim of the sovereign or the will of the majority,” concluding that historical restrictions applied to the violently dangerous, “not felons writ large.”
The court held that the government had not established a historical tradition justifying Williams’s permanent disarmament on these facts, distinguishing dangerous driving from a demonstrated threat of violent firearm misuse. The ruling was an as-applied decision, not a facial invalidation of § 922(g)(1).
Scope of the Decision
Second Amendment attorney Mark W. Smith, known as @FourBoxesDiner on X and the host of the Four Boxes Diner on YouTube, reviewed this case on his YouTube channel. His discussion primarily concerns challenges involving the carrying of weapons and sensitive places.
This case, however, is a civil challenge to a person-based firearm disability, not a direct challenge involving those other issues. The en banc opinion discusses restrictions on people, places, and types of arms, but the judgment resolves the application of § 922(g)(1) to Edward Williams only.
U.S. District Courts
Colorado — District of Colorado, Tenth Circuit
Hoffman et al. v. City and County of Denver, Colorado, et al.: Case No. 1:26-cv-04837, U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.
The plaintiffs are Gene Hoffman and Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC). The complaint was filed on September 29, 2026, and the first amended complaint was filed on October 6. The plaintiffs also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction.
What the Lawsuit Challenges
The case challenges the combined effect of Colorado’s concealed-carry licensing and reciprocity restrictions and Denver’s prohibition on open carry. The plaintiffs contend that these overlapping rules leave otherwise qualified visitors such as Hoffman with no lawful avenue to carry a handgun publicly for self-defense in Denver.
Hoffman is a California resident who visits his son in Colorado. He holds carry permits from California, Utah, Arizona, and Florida, but the lawsuit alleges that none allows him to carry publicly in Denver. Colorado does not recognize his California permit, and his nonresident permits from other states do not solve the problem. Meanwhile, Colorado’s residency requirement prevents him from obtaining a Colorado permit, and Denver prohibits the open-carry alternative.
The requested preliminary relief would block the challenged restrictions as applied to Hoffman and similarly situated nonresidents and require Colorado to let them obtain carry licenses on the same terms as Colorado residents. FPC identifies both a Second Amendment theory and an additional challenge under the Constitution’s Privileges and Immunities Clause.
The plaintiffs also point to practical consequences outside Denver. They argue that federal school-zone restrictions and certain Colorado location-specific rules make the absence of a Colorado permit consequential even where open carry is otherwise available. Those are arguments about the cumulative burdens of the licensing exclusion, rather than a claim that open carry is categorically prohibited throughout Colorado.
Public Carry Versus Concealed Carry
In his Four Boxes Diner video, Mark W. Smith argues that the constitutional issue is the denial of public carry—not simply the denial of concealed carry.
He emphasizes the plaintiffs’ framing: this is not merely a demand for a preferred method of carrying. Rather, where Denver prohibits open carry and Colorado denies access to concealed carry, the combined regime allegedly extinguishes the public-carry right altogether for people in Hoffman’s position.
His broader point is that constitutional rights do not disappear at state borders. He compares the Second Amendment with speech, religious exercise, and other constitutional protections that Americans continue to enjoy while visiting another state.
New York — Southern District of New York, Second Circuit
Goldberger v. James: Case No. 7:26-cv-02325, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; filed March 20, 2026.
Background
Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) filed a federal lawsuit challenging New York’s prohibition on the concealed carry of handguns in Times Square. The case stems from sweeping gun-control legislation New York enacted after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which struck down the state’s prior carry-permit regime and mandated that firearm regulations be rooted in the nation’s historical tradition.
In response to Bruen, New York designated numerous locations—including a large central portion of Manhattan encompassing Times Square—as “sensitive places” where carrying a firearm is a criminal offense.
Attorney General James’s Motion to Dismiss
On October 13, 2026, FPC announced that it had filed an opposition to New York Attorney General Letitia James’s motion to dismiss in Goldberger v. James. Briefing on James’s motion began over the summer, but, pursuant to the court’s instructions, the documents were not filed on the docket until recently.
James argues that she cannot properly be sued over the Times Square ban and that the plaintiffs lack standing to sue her. FPC’s opposition argues that New York law expressly allows the attorney general, at the governor’s direction, to step into the role of a district attorney and prosecute violations of the ban.
That matters because, if local prosecutors are ultimately enjoined, James could otherwise remain available to enforce the law in their place. As FPC’s brief explains: “If Plaintiffs are right that the Times Square Ban is unconstitutional, that avenue needs to be closed.”
Federal Nonenforcement and State-Law Consequences:15 state legislature need to address uncertainty created by federal nonenforcement of registration and approval requirements for suppressors and certain short-barreled firearms.
Alaska’s criminal prohibition includes an affirmative defense tied to compliance with federal registration requirements.
Firearms Policy Coalition’s Letters to 15 State Attorneys General
On October 9, 2026, Firearms Policy Coalition announced that its lawyers had sent letters to the attorneys general of 15 states that still tie the legality of silencers, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, or other covered arms to compliance with the federal National Firearms Act registration process. FPC is asking those states to stop enforcement immediately while lawmakers pursue repeal of the laws.
The states are Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin.
FPC is putting those states on notice that full repeal of these state laws should begin immediately.
Alaska — State Seeks to Address Criminal Law Tied to Federal NFA Registration
Acting Attorney General Cori Mills called on the next Alaska Legislature to address uncertainty created by federal nonenforcement of registration and approval requirements for suppressors and certain short-barreled firearms. Alaska’s criminal prohibition includes an affirmative defense tied to compliance with federal registration requirements. Mills directed law enforcement to consult prosecutors before bringing affected charges.
Reporting also identified Senator Scott Kawasaki’s SB 243 and Representative Mike Prax’s work on a companion proposal, but did not establish any new committee action, vote, or enactment during the week.
Why It Matters
Alaska illustrates why federal enforcement discretion does not automatically remove state criminal exposure. The operative problem is how state statutory language functions when the federal government stops requiring registration but continues accepting voluntary applications—not simply whether federal paperwork has become optional.
Development Dates
The attorney general’s announcement was issued on October 15. Reporting on the legislative response was published on October 16 at 6:47 p.m. Alaska time, within the reporting window.
NFA Nonenforcement Reaches Dealers and Buyers — New Reporting Distinguishes Federal Policy From Repeal
October 14 reporting by the Clarion Ledger examined the nationwide implications of ATF’s decision to stop requiring specified NFA approvals and registrations for suppressors, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, and “any other weapons.”
Although the policy itself dates to October 9, the October 14 reporting addressed its implementation and limits, including ATF’s warning that state and local restrictions remain applicable. ATF’s own summary describes the action as an exercise of enforcement discretion implementing the zero-dollar tax and a federal court ruling.
Why It Matters
Three legally distinct actions must remain separate: Congress’s tax change, an injunction protecting specified litigants, and an agency’s broader nonenforcement policy. Treating the policy as statutory repeal—or treating a plaintiff-specific injunction as a nationwide judicial remedy—would materially misstate the legal position of owners and dealers.
Jurisdiction and Development Dates
The policy has nationwide implications, with state-specific consequences. The reporting was published on October 14, 2026; but the underlying policy dates to October 9.
