MN Appeals Court: Ghost Guns Not Protected Under 2nd Amendment

St. Paul, MN (KROC-AM News) - The Minnesota Court of Appeals has turned back a constitutional challenge to a state law prohibiting the possession of so-called "ghost guns."

The decision stems from a 2023 St. Paul criminal case. Court records say Jayshawn Jarmell Jones was arrested after St. Paul police responded to Regions Hospital upon receiving a report that a person was carrying a firearm inside the hospital. They discovered a small firearm in the front pocket of Jones’s sweatshirt.

The unloaded weapon did not have a serial number and "appeared to be assembled privately from parts of other firearms or weapons-parts kits." That led Jones to be charged and convicted of a felony offense for possessing a firearm without a serial number.

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The decision handed down by the Court of Appeals says Jones argued that the state law violated the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution because it criminalizes the possession of a privately made firearm. He also argued that there is no historical analogy for requiring serial numbers on privately made firearms.

The judges who heard the case rejected his arguments, citing a previous Minnesota Court of Appeals decision that found firearms that have had serial numbers removed "are not typically possessed or commonly used by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes." The ruling also listed a variety of laws enacted in the 1800s requiring firearms and firearm parts to be “marked” at the time of manufacture and prohibiting the "erasure or obscuring of such markings."

The decision says those historical analogues are “relevantly similar” to Minnesota’s law making it illegal to possess a gun that does not have a serial number and that the state statute falls “within a permissible category of regulations” consistent with the Second Amendment.

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