Eight years. That is how long Gerald Novak and Adam Wenzel have been waiting to get their fourteen firearms back from the Saginaw County Sheriff’s Office — guns seized in 2017 from a hunting cabin that had nothing to do with the crime under investigation. On June 20, 2025, the Sixth Circuit handed down Novak v. Federspiel, No. 24-1278, reversing the district court and ruling that Novak and Wenzel have a viable Second Amendment claim. The decision is a significant brick in the wall of Second Amendment precedent, and every gun owner needs to understand both why it matters and the cautionary tale buried in its facts.
How Fourteen Guns Disappeared for Eight Years
The story starts in October 2017 at a deer-hunting cabin on Nelson Road in Merrill, Michigan. Benjamin Heinrich — Gerald Novak’s nephew — showed up at the cabin, aimed one of the guns at the mother of his child, and forced her out. Deputies from the Saginaw County Sheriff’s Office responded, arrested Heinrich, and seized all fourteen firearms in the cabin. That part makes sense.
What does not make sense is what happened next. Heinrich pleaded guilty, completed probation, and was fully discharged by January 2019. No criminal case, no defendant, no ongoing investigation — nothing. Novak and Wenzel, who owned the cabin and claimed ownership of all fourteen guns, were never charged with anything. They submitted affidavits swearing the guns were theirs. Sheriff William Federspiel refused to return them, insisting sworn affidavits were not sufficient proof of ownership.
Here is where the situation gets maddening: several firearms were manufactured before 1968 and predate federal serial-number requirements — vintage hunting rifles, the kind a family accumulates over generations, that often come without receipts. Two innocent men lost fourteen guns because a relative did something stupid with one of them.
The District Court Got the Second Amendment Exactly Wrong
Novak and Wenzel brought Second Amendment claims in federal court. The district court dismissed them on a theory I find extraordinary: the court reasoned that because Novak and Wenzel could still go out and buy other guns, the sheriff’s continued possession of their firearms did not infringe their Second Amendment rights.
The Sixth Circuit panel — Judges Kethledge, Larsen, and Mathis, writing per curiam — dismantled that reasoning without hesitation:
“The right to keep or bear firearms would mean little if an individual lacked any presumptive right to keep or bear his own firearms. In that event, one might ask, whose firearms would one get to keep or bear?”
That question is rhetorical, and the panel was equally clear that the district court’s reasoning had “neither any limiting principle nor any basis in the case law.”
This is exactly the logic the Supreme Court already rejected in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). D.C. argued that its handgun ban was acceptable because residents could still own long guns — shotguns and rifles. The Court said no: the government cannot permit you to possess category A of firearms and then use that as a justification for banning category B. The Sixth Circuit applied the same principle here. The fact that Novak and Wenzel could purchase replacement firearms is legally irrelevant to whether the sheriff can keep the ones he already took.
Bruen’s Framework Applied to Possession
The panel walked through the Bruen two-step analysis. Under New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), the court first asks whether the Second Amendment’s plain text covers the conduct at issue. The answer was straightforward: the right to “keep arms” is expressly about possession and ownership of firearms for personal use, as Heller confirmed. Step one satisfied — the text covers the right to possess guns you lawfully own.
The Sixth Circuit held:
“The right to keep or bear one’s own firearms is quintessentially conduct that falls within the text of the Second Amendment.”
That puts the burden on the government to justify its prolonged retention of the guns under a historical tradition of firearms regulation — step two of Bruen. The district court never reached that question because it stumbled on step one. The panel vacated summary judgment on the Second Amendment claims and remanded for the district court to address whether Novak and Wenzel actually own the firearms and, if so, whether the sheriff’s eight-year possession of them is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.
What Gun Owners Must Take Away
I want to be direct about the practical lesson here, because this case is a warning as much as a victory. Before you let anyone — a relative, a friend, anyone — into a space where your firearms are kept, think carefully. If that person does something reckless with one of your guns, law enforcement may sweep up every firearm on the property. You could spend years in litigation trying to recover your own property.
It is the same logic as lending someone your car: if they cause an accident, you may end up in the lawsuit. The smarter play is to avoid the legal problem rather than fight your way out. A sworn affidavit is evidence, but as this case shows, even solid evidence does not guarantee a quick resolution when a government official decides to dig in.
The Sixth Circuit’s opinion carries precedential weight across the circuit. For the Second Amendment, it is a genuine advance: a federal appellate court confirming that “the right to keep arms” means the right to possess your arms, not merely the theoretical ability to acquire future ones. That holding matters for every case where the government seizes firearms and refuses to return them.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.