Temple Gun Club v. Bondi — The Federal Machine Gun Ban Has No Constitutional Hook

A major federal lawsuit dropped last week that every Second Amendment advocate needs to understand. Temple Gun Club, Inc. v. Bondi, No. 4:2026-cv-00265 (N.D. Tex., filed Mar. 10, 2026), filed in the Northern District of Texas, directly challenges the Hughes Amendment — 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) — the provision that has banned ordinary Americans from acquiring post-1986 machine guns for forty years. The theory is simple and, in my view, correct: Congress had no Article I authority to enact this prohibition in the first place.

The Article I Problem at the Heart of § 922(o)

To be the best Second Amendment advocate you can be, you have to understand the whole constitutional architecture, not just the Second Amendment in isolation. Article I creates Congress’s enumerated powers. If a given power isn’t listed there, Congress cannot act. The complaint spells this out:

The power to prohibit possessing a firearm is neither implicitly nor explicitly among the federal government’s powers. To the contrary, the drafters of the Constitution included a direct prohibition on infringing upon the right to keep and bear arms. Indeed, the Constitution expressly delegates to Congress authority over only four specific crimes. Counterfeiting securities and coin in the United States, piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, offenses against the law of nations, and treason. Section 922 does not fall within any of the crimes specified.

There are only two plausible Article I hooks for federal gun laws: the taxing power and the Commerce Clause. The National Firearms Act of 1934 was structured as a tax — that’s its constitutional peg. The Hughes Amendment has neither. There is no taxing component and no jurisdictional element requiring the government to prove any interstate nexus. As a prosecutor, I would not have to demonstrate that the machine gun touched interstate commerce in any way to put you in prison under § 922(o). That is a constitutional defect, and it is not a fringe argument.

Justice Alito Said This Thirty Years Ago

The complaint appropriately cites then-Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr.’s dissent in United States v. Rybar, 103 F.3d 273 (3d Cir. 1996). Alito — then sitting on the Third Circuit — dissented from the majority’s decision to uphold § 922(o), arguing that the statute lacked any jurisdictional hook connecting intrastate machine gun possession to interstate commerce and that Congress made no findings establishing a substantial economic effect. Alito drew on United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), decided just months before. The future author of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022) — the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade — was telling us in 1996 that § 922(o) was constitutionally defective. The Temple Gun Club complaint is listening.

The Knutson Obstacle — and Why It Doesn’t End the Analysis

I want to flag the elephant in the room. The Fifth Circuit — the appellate court that will hear this case if it advances — already ruled in United States v. Knutson, 113 F.3d 27 (5th Cir. 1997), that § 922(o) is constitutional under the Commerce Clause. The Knutson panel joined every other circuit that had addressed the question and wrote:

Every other circuit that has considered this issue has upheld 922 as a rational exercise of that power, albeit for differing reasons. Today, we join those circuits in affirming the constitutionality of section 922.

Here is why that does not end the analysis. When every circuit held that the Second Amendment protected only a collective right, the Supreme Court reversed them all in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). The same near-unanimity existed pre-Bruen on public carry, and the Court swept it aside in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). Precedent can build up against us. It can also be torn down. The 1997 circuit consensus is a floor to argue through, not a ceiling.

The Standing Problem Worth Watching

Here is my concern as this case develops. Article III limits federal courts to actual “cases and controversies,” requiring plaintiffs to show a concrete, particularized injury. The complaint argues in paragraph 101 that filing an ATF Form 1 (to make a machine gun) or Form 4 (to transfer one) would be futile because the statute requires automatic denial. Futility can work, but it is not airtight.

The lesson from Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370 (D.C. Cir. 2007) is sobering. Six plaintiffs sued. Five wanted to possess handguns in DC but had never applied to register one. Senior Circuit Judge Laurence H. Silberman — my professor at NYU Law School — found only one plaintiff had standing: Dick Heller, who had actually applied and been denied. Judge Silberman wrote that the denial “constitutes an injury independent of the District’s prospective enforcement of its gun laws” and that a license or permit denial under an administrative scheme is a cognizable Article III injury. The other five were dismissed.

Dick Heller reached the Supreme Court because he applied and was denied. I am not saying the Temple Gun Club plaintiffs definitely lack standing — the Fifth Circuit may be more receptive. But this is the pressure point I would watch as the government prepares its response. The last thing we want is to hand Chief Justice John Roberts a procedural off-ramp to avoid the merits. Filing a Form 1 or Form 4 and receiving a formal ATF denial would close that gap.

The Bigger Picture

The federal government is one of limited enumerated powers. Any power not delegated is reserved to the states and the people. There is no right without a remedy, and there is no valid federal criminal prohibition without an Article I hook. The Hughes Amendment, passed by voice vote in 1986 with no real congressional debate, has never had that hook. This lawsuit is making that case directly, and it deserves serious attention as it works its way through the courts.