Delaware Judge Permanently Blocks Ban on Possessing and Making ‘Ghost Guns’
A U.S. District Court judge in Delaware struck down part of the state’s ban on privately made firearms (PMFs), which Delaware calls “ghost guns.”
Judge Maryellen Noreika entered final judgment in Rigby v. Jennings. Delaware’s bans on possessing and self-manufacturing or assembling untraceable firearms (and unserialized unfinished frames and receivers) are permanently enjoined as Second Amendment violations. The commercial distribution rules and the CAD/3D-print file ban survive.
On Oct. 27, 2021, John Rigby, Alan Knight, and the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) sued Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, challenging the constitutionality of H.B. 125 (2021)—the “ghost gun,” unfinished-frame, and 3D-print regime under 11 Del. C. §§ 1459A and 1463. On Sept. 23, 2022, the judge granted a preliminary injunction against the law’s regulation of possession and manufacture/assembly of PMFs. The provisions banning distribution and digital instructions remained in place. In March 2024, both sides moved for summary judgment.
According to a Delaware Department of Justice letter, while the law was enjoined, a family court mistakenly prosecuted a juvenile under the enjoined § 1463(a). Because the court applied an enjoined statute, it vacated the juvenile’s conviction.
The final judgment was not a complete win for the plaintiffs. They prevailed on two counts but lost on other parts of the law.
The court struck down the possession ban as unconstitutional, both facially and as applied. Unserialized, untraceable firearms and unfinished frames and receivers are “Arms.” Frames and receivers are necessary for a firearm to function, so they receive the same protection magazines receive in this circuit. The ban applies to “the people,” concerns Arms, and restricts “keeping” them, so it fails Bruen step one and is presumptively invalid.
At step two, Delaware offered historical laws on clubs, Bowie knives, slungshots, trap/punt/swivel guns, and gunpowder storage. The Third Circuit had already rejected those same analogues in ANJRPC (2026) as too late, the wrong “why,” or the wrong “how.” Delaware did not carry its burden. An outright ban on a class of arms used for self-defense is not “relevantly similar” to those historical rules.
The court also held the manufacturing and assembly ban unconstitutional, both facially and as applied. The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms includes the ancillary right to acquire them. Cutting off self-manufacture restricts that right. The ban also interferes with the repair and reassembly needed to keep a lawfully owned gun operable and blocks a law-abiding person from obtaining a chosen self-defense firearm (here, a self-made Glock-pattern pistol or rifle). That fails step one. Step two fails for the same historical-analogue reasons as the possession ban.
The court noted that a different statute, for example, requiring existing homemade guns to be serialized with the state, or requiring future homemade guns to be serialized after manufacture, might survive. An outright ban on possession and manufacture does not.
The judge upheld the distribution ban. It does not restrict keeping or bearing arms. It is a condition on commercial sale of the kind Heller called presumptively lawful. Plaintiffs produced no evidence that it actually cuts off access to parts needed for self-manufacture. It survives step one; the court did not need a historical analogue.
The court also upheld the instruction ban, which was challenged on First Amendment grounds. Following the Third Circuit’s 2026 decision in Defense Distributed v. Attorney General of New Jersey, computer code is not automatically protected speech. Coverage depends on a fact-specific inquiry into whether the files are expressive or purely functional. Plaintiffs offered only general citations that “source code is speech” and never identified what ideas the CAD files communicate. Because the statute is framed in functional terms (“that may be used to program a 3-dimensional printer”), the court held that the plaintiffs failed to show the First Amendment even applies.
The Fifth Amendment takings claim (forced dispossession of previously lawful guns) was not reached because the Second Amendment already invalidates the same provisions. The permanent-injunction factors favor the plaintiffs on the two invalidated bans: loss of a constitutional right is irreparable, damages cannot cure it, Delaware has no legitimate interest in enforcing an unconstitutional law, and the public interest favors allowing law-abiding people to exercise the right.
Delaware is expected to appeal to the Third Circuit. There is no timeline for that appeal.
About John Crump
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons, follow him on X at @right2bear, or at www.crumpy.com.
