By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Two Colorado-based gun rights organizations have filed a federal lawsuit against Gov. Jared Polis over a new state law banning firearms made by home gunsmiths from parts or kits, and they are seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary and permanent injunctive relief.
The 10-page lawsuit was filed this week in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. Plaintiffs are the National Association for Gun Rights, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and three private citizens. They are represented by attorney Barry K. Arrington of Wheat Ridge, Colo.
According to CBS News, Gov. Polis signed the gun ban bill last summer, but the law did not become effective until Monday, Jan. 1. That’s when individual plaintiffs Christopher James Hiestand Richardson, Max Edwin Schlosser and John Mark Howard would have become injured parties.
The lawsuit asserts the new restrictions “infringe Plaintiffs’ rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, which is made applicable to Colorado by the Fourteenth Amendment.”
“The Act’s prohibitions burden the acquisition and possession of firearms and parts for making firearms, including handguns, for the purpose of self-defense in the home, where Second Amendment protections are at their zenith,” the complaint alleges.
KMGH/Denver7 News, the local ABC affiliate, quoted Democrat State Rep. Junie Joseph of Boulder, who co-sponsored the legislation banning so-called “ghost guns.” She complained that such firearms are “untraceable” because they lack serial numbers. Joseph contended the lack of a serial number “makes it even more dangerous.”
People who own such firearms must have them serialized, the station added.
The lawsuit contends that “privately manufacturing firearms, including handguns, is covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment, because the right to keep and bear arms implies a right to manufacture arms.” The complaint alleges the new law is “presumptively unconstitutional.”
Lawsuits such as this are likely to become more frequent and plentiful moving into 2024 thanks to language in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen ruling, which essentially requires gun control laws to have some historical basis; that is, they must be analogous to conditions in place at the time the Bill of Rights—including the Second Amendment—was adopted.
A leader in such litigation in recent years has been the Second Amendment Foundation, which now has at least 57 actions in progress in various federal and state courts around the country.
