Background
Brennan Comeaux was charged with possessing an unregistered silencer in violation of Section twenty-two hundred fifty-four of Title twenty-six of the United States Code. He moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing the statute violated the Second Amendment. The district court denied the motion, and Comeaux entered a conditional guilty plea preserving his constitutional challenge. He was sentenced to twenty-four months in prison and three years of supervised release.
The court’s reasoning
The court applied the two-step analysis from New York State Rifle and Pistol Association versus Bruen. First, the court determined that silencers are Second Amendment arms because they facilitate armed self-defense. Second, the court applied the rule of orderliness from United States versus Peterson, which requires challengers to the National Firearms Act to show the shall-issue regime has been put toward abusive ends through exorbitant fees or lengthy wait times. Comeaux failed to allege such abuse, so his challenge failed at the first step of the analysis.
The dissent
Peterson ought to be revisited.
Edith Brown Clement
What it means going forward
The decision reinforces the Fifth Circuit’s existing precedent that silencer registration laws are presumptively lawful unless a challenger can prove the system is being abused, making it difficult to mount successful Second Amendment challenges to the National Firearms Act in this circuit.