Rigby v. Jennings: How Delaware’s Ghost-Gun Ban Lost on the Merits
On September 10, 2026, U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika entered judgment in Rigby v. Jennings, the long-running challenge to Delaware’s bans on possessing and self-manufacturing unserialized firearms. The court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment in part, held the possession ban and the manufacturing-and-assembly ban unconstitutional on their face and as applied, and closed the case. The ruling arrived seven days after Governor Matt Meyer signed House Bill 418, a statute designed to “clean up” the same 2021 law that Rigby attacked. The sequence is not a coincidence. It is the latest chapter in a fight over whether the Second Amendment protects the right to make an ordinary firearm at home.
The Parties and the Statute They Sued
John Rigby, Alan Knight, and Firearms Policy Coalition filed the complaint on October 27, 2021, in the District of Delaware, docketed as 1:21-cv-01523. The original caption named then-Governor John Carney; Attorney General Kathy Jennings became the operative defendant. Rigby is a Delaware resident who had already self-manufactured a handgun, moved it out of state after HB 125 became law, still owned components he intended to finish, and owned a 3-D printer and files he wanted to use. Knight and FPC supplied organizational standing and a broader class of members who build or possess unmarked frames and completed privately made firearms. Counsel included Bradley Lehman and Cooper & Kirk lawyers David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson, and William V. Bergstrom.
The target was House Bill 125, signed October 20, 2021. It created 11 Del. C. § 1459A, making it a class D felony to possess an unfinished frame or receiver without a manufacturer name and serial number, and limited sale of those parts to federal licensees who mark them to 18 U.S.C. § 923(i) standards and keep records. Section 1463 made it a felony to possess an “untraceable firearm,” to manufacture or assemble one, and, with limited exceptions, to use a 3-D printer to produce a firearm, receiver, or major component. A companion provision restricted distribution of digital files used to print those parts. Pre-1968 guns, black-powder muzzleloaders, and certain antique replicas were excluded from the untraceable-firearm definition. Existing owners of unmarked unfinished frames were given ninety days to comply—a window that litigation overtook.
Plaintiffs pleaded Second Amendment claims under District of Columbia v. Heller and, after June 2022, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. They also raised First Amendment objections to the file-distribution ban and Fifth Amendment takings arguments as to property already lawfully acquired. The state answered that unmarked guns and unfinished frames are not “Arms,” that serialization is a commercial regulation with deep roots, and that homemade unserialized weapons are disproportionately recovered in crime.
The 2022 Preliminary Injunction
On September 23, 2022, Judge Noreika issued a memorandum opinion reported at 630 F. Supp. 3d 602 and a one-page implementing order. She granted a preliminary injunction in part and denied a permanent injunction and the state’s motion to dismiss. The state was barred from enforcing § 1459A(b) (possession of an unmarked unfinished frame or receiver), § 1463(a) (possession of an untraceable firearm), § 1463(c)(1) (3-D printing of guns, receivers, or major components by unlicensed persons), and the manufacturing-and-assembly half of § 1463(b). The court did not preliminarily enjoin the ban on distributing untraceable firearms or the restriction on circulating CAD files.
The reasoning tracked Bruen. Possession of firearms and of frames and receivers falls within the plain text of “keep and bear Arms.” The state produced no persuasive showing that unserialized arms or unfinished frames are unusual weapons outside common use for lawful purposes. Because the right to keep arms is empty if no one may make them, the court held that “the right to keep and bear arms implies a corresponding right to manufacture arms.” History did not supply a tradition of banning peaceable people from finishing a frame or assembling a rifle in a workshop. That was enough for likelihood of success, irreparable harm, and a balance of equities that favored the injunction.
The injunction was not a paper tiger. In February 2026 the Delaware Department of Justice had to tell the court that a New Castle County officer had charged a 17-year-old in Family Court with possession of an untraceable firearm under the enjoined § 1463(a). The conviction was vacated. The episode illustrated what an injunction is for: when a legislature writes a felony that a federal court has already blocked, line officers still make arrests unless the order is treated as law.
Four Years of Briefing, VanDerStok, and a Legislative Workaround
Summary-judgment briefing began in 2024. The Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Bondi v. VanDerStok (sometimes styled with the Attorney General’s name) then forced a pause. VanDerStok addressed whether the Gun Control Act reaches certain weapon-parts kits and unfinished frames as “firearms” for federal commercial purposes—serialization, dealer licensing, and records when those items are sold in the stream of commerce. Judge Noreika ordered five-page supplemental briefs by April 8, 2025. Delaware argued that if Congress can treat kits as firearms in commerce, a state can criminalize unmarked possession and home finishing. Plaintiffs answered that a federal definition for licensed dealers does not erase the Second Amendment right of a private person to make an arm for personal use, and that VanDerStok did not decide the constitutional question Rigby presents.
While the motions sat, the General Assembly passed House Bill 418. Sponsors called it a cleanup to address issues raised in ongoing litigation. Governor Meyer signed it on September 3, 2026. It did not repeal the possession or manufacture bans. It added a six-month window for people who already lawfully possessed unmarked guns or unfinished frames—or who later move into Delaware with such items—to have an FFL imprint a federal-style serial number or render the item “permanently inoperable” under a new statutory definition: irreversible alteration, not disassembly or cosmetic damage, including welding the barrel closed or destroying the frame to ATF destruction standards. Temporary transfer for serialization is not a crime. After the window, the old felonies remain. The synopsis said the Act “preserv[es] the underlying prohibition on untraceable firearms.” That is the opposite of a concession that Bruen required the state to leave home-built guns alone.
The September 10, 2026 Merits Opinion
Judge Noreika’s merits opinion granted plaintiffs summary judgment in part and the state summary judgment in part, then entered judgment and closed the case. The holdings that matter for owners and for other states are these.
First, an unserialized firearm “is an Arm under the Second Amendment,” and “all firearms constitute ‘arms,’ whether serialized or not.” Frames and receivers are Arms as well. Serialization is a marking convention. It is not the constitutional definition of a weapon. Delaware’s attempt to put unmarked guns and unfinished frames outside the Second Amendment therefore failed at Bruen step one.
Second, the possession ban and the manufacturing-and-assembly ban are facially unconstitutional and unconstitutional as applied to Rigby, Knight, and FPC’s affected members. The state had to show a historical tradition of analogous regulation. It offered three clusters of old laws: restrictions on clubs, bludgeons, fighting knives, and slung shots; restrictions on trap, punt, pivot, and swivel guns; and gunpowder-storage rules. The court found them not relevantly similar. The Third Circuit’s recent en banc decision in Cheeseman v. Davenport (also styled with New Jersey officials) had already rejected reliance on those same categories at Bruen step two. Dangerous-and-unusual-weapon laws targeting street-fighting implements are late and do not ban a class of arms in common use. Trap-gun rules regulated a method of setting a firearm to fire without a person present; they did not forbid owning or building the gun. Powder-storage rules regulated a commodity hazard, not the right to make a small arm. Delaware therefore failed step two.
Third, the court did not give plaintiffs everything they asked. Consistent with the 2022 split, limits on commercial distribution of completed untraceable guns and at least some regulation of file trafficking were not swept away in the same stroke as the possession and home-build bans. The judgment is grant-in-part on both cross-motions. That matters for how HB 418’s dealer-serialization path and the state’s 3-D-file rules will be read going forward. A ban on peaceable possession and home manufacture cannot stand. A requirement that dealers mark what they sell is a different animal, and VanDerStok keeps that commercial lane open at the federal level even if the constitutional holding in Rigby protects the private workshop.
FPC President Brandon Combs called the decision a ruling that Delaware “tried to turn peaceable people into criminals for possessing firearms they lawfully made and owned,” and a step toward nationwide recognition of the right to acquire arms by building them. That is advocacy language, but it tracks the court’s text: the right to keep arms implies the right to manufacture them, or the keep-and-bear guarantee is a dead letter for anyone who does not buy from a licensed counter.
What the Merits Holding Does, and Does Not Do, to HB 418
HB 418 was written to survive Rigby by offering serialization or destruction instead of an immediate felony. After a merits holding that the possession and manufacture bans are facially invalid, that structure is in tension with the judgment. A six-month command to mark or destroy a gun the Constitution allows a person to keep and to make is not a modest commercial rule. It is the same prohibition with a countdown clock and a dealer as middleman. Whether the state will treat the new subsections as independently enforceable, seek a stay pending appeal, or rewrite the statute again is the next fight. The district court closed the 2021 case; it did not issue an advisory opinion on a bill signed the week before. An appeal to the Third Circuit is the obvious path if Delaware wants a second look. Cheeseman makes that path steeper, not easier, on the historical-analogue question.
The practical stakes for Delaware residents are immediate. People who built a rifle or finished a frame while the 2022 injunction was in force did so under a federal court order that the state’s highest law-enforcement officer was forbidden to prosecute. A merits judgment that those statutes are unconstitutional is stronger than a preliminary injunction. A new state law that tells those same people to serialize or torch the gun in six months asks them to surrender the very conduct the court just held is protected. Dealers asked to stamp polymer frames as if they were the manufacturer still face the gunsmithing and liability questions raised in the House Judiciary Committee. None of that is resolved by a press release calling HB 418 a “path to compliance.”
Why the Case Matters Beyond Dover
Rigby v. Jennings is not a dispute about crime guns recovered without numbers. It is a dispute about whether the Second Amendment’s text, as Heller and Bruen read it, includes the oldest method of acquiring an arm: making one. Commercial serialization of factory guns has been federal law since 1968. Extending that regime to the private person who mills a receiver or prints a frame, and then calling the unmarked result a felony, is a modern prohibition looking for a Founding-era analogue. Judge Noreika found none in 2022 and none in 2026. Other states with unfinished-frame bans and unserialized-possession felonies now have a reasoned district-court opinion, sitting in a circuit that has already discounted the same historical citations, holding that unmarked arms are still Arms and that home manufacture is part of the right.
The case also shows the cost of legislating past an injunction. Delaware spent four years defending statutes a federal judge had already said were likely invalid, prosecuted at least one enjoined count in Family Court, and then enacted a cleanup bill that preserves the prohibition the court has now held unconstitutional. That is not how a Bruen analysis is supposed to work. The analysis asks whether the people already have the right and whether history allows the state to take it away. Rigby v. Jennings answers both questions against the ban. What Delaware does with HB 418, and what the Third Circuit does if Jennings appeals, will decide whether that answer stays in Wilmington or becomes the rule for the circuit.