A reader left this interesting comment: Serial numbers and 2A issues aside, I’d like to remind everyone that if your firearm is stolen the serial number is about the only way you’re going to recover it. If you have written it down. I know I’ve returned a few to citizens. I have 6″ stainless Python that was stolen from me and recovered several years later.
The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that it is legal to possess unserialized firearms so long as they are not required to be serialized by federal law. This is a welcome and uncharacteristic reverence for the Second Amendment, considering the justices are all Democratic appointees.
The story began in February 2022, when a state trooper in Fridley, Minnesota, arrived on scene at a rollover traffic accident and noticed a firearm magazine in Logan Vagle’s vehicle. The trooper, apparently unaware of the Constitution, determined that Vagle had a handgun in the vehicle that he was not permitted to carry. The following day, Vagle was charged with possession of a firearm without a serial number and carrying a pistol without a permit.
After filing a motion to dismiss the first charge due to lack of probable cause, an Anoka County District Court judge decided that Minnesota law was unconstitutionally vague. This is in reference to the Constitution’s void-for-vagueness doctrine, which is a legal principle rooted in the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments that declares a law unconstitutionally vague if it fails to clearly define prohibited or required conduct or lacks specific standards for its application. The reasoning for the doctrine is to provide fair notice to individuals and adequate guidance to law enforcement.
By Darwin Nercesian
