In June 2023, Colorado enacted Senate Bill 23-279, which prohibits the purchase, sale, transfer, and possession of unserialized firearms, frames, receivers, and parts kits. The law also bans the manufacture of frames and receivers, with exceptions for federally licensed manufacturers. Plaintiffs, including the National Association for Gun Rights and individual gun owners, sued to enjoin the law, arguing it violated their Second Amendment rights. The district court denied a preliminary injunction, ruling that the possession ban was a presumptively lawful condition on commercial sales and that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the manufacturing ban. The plaintiffs appealed, challenging both the merits of the ruling and the court's standing analysis.
The Tenth Circuit began by addressing Article III standing. The court affirmed that Plaintiff Richardson had standing to challenge the possession ban because he owned unserialized parts and faced a credible threat of prosecution. However, the court reversed the district court's finding that the acquisition ban was unripe. The court held that because the federal ATF rule does not prohibit private individuals from transferring unserialized parts, the Colorado statute creates a discrete injury that a court order could redress. Conversely, the court agreed that plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the manufacturing ban, interpreting the statute to prohibit only the creation of frames from raw materials (like 3D printing) and not the assembly of finished frames from parts kits. On the merits, the court rejected the district court's reasoning that the possession ban was a condition on commercial sales. The court explained that the law applies even if the parts were received as a gift, meaning it regulates private possession rather than just commercial transactions. Because the regulation does not fall under the 'presumptively lawful' category for commercial conditions, the district court abused its discretion by denying the injunction without applying the proper Second Amendment analysis under New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
The decision leaves Colorado's ban on unserialized firearms in effect but requires the district court to re-evaluate the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction. The lower court must now apply the Bruen historical tradition test to determine if the possession ban is consistent with the nation's history of firearm regulation. The manufacturing ban remains unchallenged by these specific plaintiffs, and the court clarified that the statute does not prohibit assembling frames from parts kits, only manufacturing them from raw materials.
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