10th Circuit: Colorado's Ghost Gun Ban Must Survive 2A Fire

The Tenth Circuit ruled that Colorado's ban on possessing unserialized firearms is still wide open to Second Amendment challenge—even after the Supreme Court upheld the ATF's federal ghost-gun rule in Garland v. VanDerStok.

The panel drew a hard line: the ATF rulemaking question and the Colorado state prohibition are two separate legal battles. The Supreme Court closing one door does not lock the other. Gun owners in Colorado are not required to accept VanDerStok as the final word on what their own state can criminalize.

**The state thought it had a shield. The Tenth Circuit just knocked it out of their hands.**

The panel went further—it reversed the district court's refusal to grant injunctive relief on the unserialized possession ban. The lower court must now take a hard second look at whether Colorado's law should be blocked entirely while the litigation runs its course. For law-abiding gun owners who legally acquired unserialized firearms before this ban took effect, that is real, immediate breathing room.

Colorado's legislature pushed this prohibition as part of a broader campaign to criminalize any firearm not stamped, tracked, and logged—treating peaceful gun owners as suspects by default and building the infrastructure for quiet, incremental registration. The Tenth Circuit just ruled that scheme is not insulated from constitutional scrutiny. It has to earn its place under the Second Amendment, or it doesn't get to stand.

**That is not a small thing. That is the whole ballgame.**

2A advocates head back to the district court with momentum, a live injunction question, and a constitutional challenge that survived the state's best kill shot. The door is open. Now plaintiffs have to walk through it—and finish the job.

Watch this case. Support the organizations carrying this litigation. If the injunction is granted on remand, Colorado's unserialized possession ban could be on ice before the constitutional merits are even fully argued. That is the next inflection point—and WTF News will be there when it lands.