Chief Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has done what the Supreme Court declined to do. In Defense Distributed v. Blanche, No. 4:22-cv-00691-O (N.D. Tex. Aug. 17, 2026), he declared the Biden administration’s frame-or-receiver rule unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and permanently enjoined its enforcement against Defense Distributed, the Second Amendment Foundation, and SAF’s current and future members, as to four specific products: the M1911 80% Frame, the G80 Build Kit, the Unfinished Receiver, and the Grip Module. This is the merits question the Court ducked in Bondi v. VanDerStok, and it just came out our way.
The Question VanDerStok Left Open
Bondi v. VanDerStok, 604 U.S. 458 (2025), decided 7-2 in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch, upheld ATF’s Final Rule against a facial administrative-law challenge, holding that the Gun Control Act reaches at least some partially complete frames and receivers. Justices Thomas and Alito dissented. But the majority never touched the Second Amendment. It sent that question back down, and the case that began as VanDerStok v. Garland returned to the Northern District of Texas restyled as Defense Distributed v. Blanche once the original individual plaintiffs and intervenors dismissed their claims, leaving Defense Distributed and SAF to finish what they started in 2022.
The Right to Acquire Arms Includes the Right to Make Them
Judge O’Connor applied Bruen’s text-first, history-second methodology, and the first move belonged to the government. As I have long argued, the text of the Second Amendment protects the right to “keep and bear” arms, and you cannot keep or bear anything you do not first possess. There are only a few ways to acquire a firearm: buy it, inherit it, receive it as a gift, or make it. The opinion recites that the parties did not dispute this point — that individuals making or repairing their own firearms is conduct covered by the plain text. That is a significant concession from the government, because once conduct falls within the text, the burden shifts entirely to the government to prove a historical tradition of analogous regulation reaching back to 1791.
Two Analogues, Two Failures
The government offered two categories of founding-era laws to carry that burden, and Judge O’Connor rejected both. The first were barrel-proofing statutes from Massachusetts and Maine, which required inspection before a barrel could be sold, to ensure it would not explode in a buyer’s hands. The second were gunpowder-storage and inspection laws from Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, aimed at preventing fires in densely built colonial towns. Judge O’Connor found neither analogous to a modern rule justified on crime-control grounds — background checks, serialization, and forced FFL licensure aimed at tracing crime guns. Consumer safety and fire prevention are not crime prevention. The government needed a “how and why” match, and it had neither.
A Founding-Era Tradition That Favors the Self-Made Gun
Beyond rejecting the government’s analogues, the opinion goes further, citing Joseph G.S. Greenlee’s article, The American Tradition of Self-Made Arms, 54 St. Mary’s L.J. 35 (2023), for the proposition that the founding generation actively encouraged citizens to make their own firearms rather than depend on any government or foreign power to supply them. Greenlee, now Director of the Office of Litigation Counsel at NRA-ILA, has documented that history in detail, and I have made a related point for years about why the Revolution itself turned on Americans’ access to their own arms at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. When the burden falls on the government to prove a restrictive tradition and the actual tradition points the other way, that is not a close call. And even in a closer case, the tie goes to freedom, not to the government.
What the Injunction Actually Covers
The relief here is not abstract. If you are Defense Distributed, the Second Amendment Foundation, or a current or future SAF member, the named products in the opinion’s closing pages are no longer subject to this Final Rule’s restrictions, and the underlying regulations, 27 C.F.R. §§ 478.11 and 478.12(c), have been declared unconstitutional and unenforceable against that class of people and products. That is a durable, litigated win, not a policy memo that can be quietly walked back. Another brick in the wall.
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.