10th Circuit orders second look at challenge to Colorado 'ghost gun' law

Source: Colorado Politics

04/23/2026 | updated 12 hours ago


The Denver-based federal appeals court issued a mixed decision on Thursday, finding that a group of plaintiffs could not challenge certain aspects of Colorado’s “ghost gun” prohibition, could challenge others, and ordered further analysis of the law’s constitutionality.

To address the proliferation of guns privately assembled from kits or 3-D printers, the General Assembly enacted Senate Bill 279 three years ago, making it a misdemeanor to possess certain firearm components not imprinted with a serial number. There is an exception when the owner obtains a serial number from a licensed firearm dealer and the dealer performs a background check. Multiple violations of the law are felony offenses.

After a collection of gun rights groups and individual plaintiffs failed to receive a preliminary injunction, they turned to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. In an April 23 opinion, a three-judge panel addressed the law’s manufacturing prohibition, the possession component, and the purchasing component.

All three judges agreed that the prohibition on manufacturing a firearm frame or receiver did not apply to what the plaintiffs wanted to do — assemble parts that were already manufactured. The law “limits the prohibition to making frames or receivers from raw material — not the completing, assembling, or converting a previously manufactured and unfinished frame into a finished one,” wrote Judge Joel M. Carson III in concluding the plaintiffs could not challenge the manufacturing component.

Read more: https://www.coloradopolitics.com/2026/04/23/10th-circuit-orders-second-look-at-challenge-to-colorado-ghost-gun-law/