A few weeks ago, I noted that Gun Control Act of 1968 restrictions were in serious trouble, post-BRUEN.
Unconstitutional GCA restrictions are beginning to drop like flies, now that the Supreme Court has put the lower courts on notice that the intermediate scrutiny game doesn’t play anymore.
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“What makes the Second Amendment right second class this time? Where’s the general historical tradition for that, since it never existed prior to 1968?”
Chalk up another one.
Judge Rules Federal Ban on Guns With Removed Serial Numbers Is Unconstitutional
A judge has ruled that a federal law banning guns that have had their serial numbers removed is unconstitutional.
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Serial numbers were first required by the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 to allow guns to be traced. They were adopted in an effort to prevent illegal gun sales.
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Goodwin, a nominee of President Bill Clinton, found in his decision that the federal ban on guns with removed serial numbers is not consistent with the United States’ “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”He noted that a firearm without a serial number was not considered more dangerous compared to other firearms in 1791, when the Second Amendment was adopted. At the time, “serial numbers were not required, or even in common use,” he said, adding that the serial numbers “arose only with the advent of the mass production of firearms,” putting it outside of the “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The GCA only required firearms commercially manufactured after 1968 — nearly two centuries after the founding of the country — to be serialized. The requirement was not retroactively applied to existing firearms, and still does not apply to privately manufactured firearms. That’s hardly a general historical tradition, as Judge Goodwin (a Clinton appointee, no less) correctly noted.
Not that the requirement was even effective at preventing “illegal gun sales” or thefts. A thief wouldn’t care, and defacing a serial number simply exposed him — prior to this ruling — to another piled on charge. A person knowingly making an illegal sale simply ignores the requirement to not deface, preventing its trace back to him.
Of course, with a national “time to crime” of 8.80 years on traced guns, even an unlawful seller of a serialized gun is pretty safe.
The government still has Price on a felon in possession charge, so some might think the prosecutors would just be happy with putting him away for years on that, and not waste time fighting the defaced serial number issue. Victim-disarming control freaks can rest assured that they will challenge this. They can’t afford not to do so.
First, the feds never want to lose a charging tool. Piling on charges is too useful in plea bargaining.
Second, and possibly more importantly, this ruling mucks with the current “ghost gun” narrative.
The term “ghost gun” has been used to vilify privately manufactured firearms (PMF). But showing just how commonly they are used in crime has been tricky. The observant should have noticed that when PMF ban-bunnies start talking about the evils of home builds, they rapidly shift to “unserialized” or “defaced” when it comes to actual numbers. At that point, they’ve established in the minds of the ignorant that “ghost guns” are home-made, but the scary numbers really include PMFs, defaced commercial arms, and pre-1986 firearms that never had or required serial numbers. Conflation is a favorite tool of victim-disarmers (see “assault rifle” v. “assault weapon“).
This ruling, left standing, endangers six pages worth of current federal “ghost gun” legislation. Not too mention future attempts to criminalize historical, lawful activity. The feds can’t have that.
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