A three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case that could dismantle a decades-old federal restriction barring Americans from buying handguns outside their home states. The challenge, brought by a coalition of gun rights groups and individual plaintiffs, targets a provision of the Gun Control Act of 1968 that prohibits federally licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to residents of another state.
The case, Mance v. Holder, has bounced through the federal courts for more than a decade. It now returns to the Fifth Circuit after the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen reshaped the legal framework for evaluating firearms regulations under the Second Amendment. That landmark ruling requires courts to assess gun laws against the text and historical tradition of the Second Amendment, rather than the interest-balancing tests many circuits had previously applied.
Under current federal law, a licensed dealer may sell a long gun to an out-of-state buyer, provided the sale complies with the laws of both the buyer's home state and the state where the sale takes place. Handguns receive different treatment. A resident of one state who wants to purchase a handgun from a dealer in another state must have the firearm shipped to a licensed dealer in the buyer's home state, where the transaction is completed and a background check conducted under that state's rules.
Challengers argue this distinction lacks any basis in the Second Amendment's text or in the historical record of firearms regulation at the time of the founding or the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. They contend the restriction burdens the right to keep and bear arms without a sufficient historical analogue to justify it under the Bruen framework.
The federal government defends the interstate handgun sales ban as consistent with a longstanding tradition of regulating commercial firearms transactions and ensuring that states can enforce their own firearms laws. Federal attorneys argued that the restriction does not prevent anyone from acquiring a handgun; it simply channels the final sale through a dealer in the buyer's home state.
The case was originally filed in 2014 by Fredric Russell Mance Jr., a Texas firearms dealer, along with two Washington, D.C., residents and several gun rights organizations, including the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The plaintiffs challenged both the dealer prohibition and the corresponding ban on out-of-state buyers completing handgun purchases directly.
A federal district court in Texas initially struck down the interstate handgun sales ban as unconstitutional. The Fifth Circuit reversed that ruling in 2018, applying the two-step framework that was then standard across the circuits. That framework combined a historical inquiry with a means-end scrutiny test, typically intermediate scrutiny, to evaluate Second Amendment claims. The Supreme Court's Bruen decision in June 2022 rejected that two-step approach and replaced it with the text-and-history test. The question of how lower courts interpret constitutional limits on federal gun laws has become one of the most active areas of litigation in the country, as Justice Thomas's constitutional theory faces its first major lower court tests.
After Bruen, the Supreme Court vacated the Fifth Circuit's earlier decision and sent the case back for reconsideration under the new standard. The Fifth Circuit then remanded it to the district court, which once again struck down the interstate handgun sales restriction. The government appealed, bringing the case back before the appellate panel.
During oral arguments, the three-judge panel pressed both sides on the historical evidence, as reported by Courthouse News Service. Judges explored whether founding-era or Reconstruction-era legislatures imposed comparable restrictions on interstate firearms commerce and whether the federal government's cited historical analogues were close enough to the modern ban to satisfy Bruen's requirements.
Attorneys for the challengers told the panel that no historical regulation singled out handguns for a blanket interstate sales prohibition. They argued that the few colonial and early republic laws governing weapons commerce addressed narrow circumstances, such as sales to hostile combatants or enslaved persons, and bore no resemblance to a sweeping ban on lawful commercial sales between residents of different states.
Government counsel countered that the historical record supports broad legislative authority to regulate the commercial sale of firearms, even if no precise historical twin exists. Under Bruen, the government argued, a challenged law need not have an identical historical match; a sufficiently analogous regulation can justify a modern restriction. Federal lawyers pointed to various state laws from the 18th and 19th centuries regulating weapons sales and licensing as evidence of a tradition of commercial firearms regulation.
The panel also questioned whether the practical burden of the interstate restriction is constitutionally significant. The government emphasized that out-of-state buyers are not barred from obtaining handguns. They can still purchase them by having the firearm transferred to a home-state dealer. Challengers responded that the added cost, delay, and inconvenience of that process impose a real burden on the exercise of a constitutional right, particularly for buyers in states with few licensed dealers or for those who travel frequently.
The outcome could carry weight well beyond the specific statute at issue. If the Fifth Circuit strikes down the interstate handgun sales ban, it would mark one of the most significant post-Bruen rulings to invalidate a federal firearms regulation. The decision could also deepen existing splits among the circuits on how strictly to apply the Bruen framework, potentially increasing pressure on the Supreme Court to take up another Second Amendment case.
Federal courts across the country have reached conflicting conclusions about which gun regulations survive Bruen's historical test. Some judges have struck down restrictions on young adults purchasing firearms, while others have upheld them. A federal judge in Hawaii recently upheld that state's ban on gun ownership for 18-to-20-year-olds, citing historical restrictions on minors' access to weapons. The inconsistency has created a patchwork of Second Amendment law that varies by jurisdiction.
Gun rights organizations view the interstate handgun sales ban as a relic of a regulatory era that treated the Second Amendment as a second-class right. They argue that no other constitutional right is subject to geographic restrictions that prevent a citizen from exercising it simply because they cross a state line. The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has framed the case as a test of whether the federal government can maintain commercial barriers to firearms access that have no basis in the nation's legal traditions.
The federal government, for its part, has warned that striking down the restriction could undermine state-level firearms regulations by allowing buyers to circumvent their home state's requirements. Under the current system, the home-state transfer ensures that every handgun sale complies with the buyer's local laws. Removing that requirement, federal attorneys argued, could create enforcement gaps that states would struggle to fill. The Supreme Court has shown a willingness to let lower courts work through these disputes before stepping in, as seen when the Court let stand a ruling on gun rights and unpaid child support without granting review.
The case arrives at a moment when federal courts are grappling with challenges to a wide range of regulatory restrictions, from firearms to commerce to personal liberties. Courts have increasingly been asked to measure longstanding federal rules against constitutional text and original meaning, a trend that has accelerated since Bruen and other recent Supreme Court decisions emphasizing historical analysis. Similar dynamics have played out in cases involving federal bans on home whiskey distilling, where circuit splits have pushed questions toward the high court.
The Fifth Circuit did not indicate when it would issue a ruling. The panel could affirm the district court's decision striking down the ban, reverse it, or remand for further proceedings. Whatever the outcome, the losing side is likely to seek further review, either en banc before the full Fifth Circuit or by petition to the Supreme Court.
For now, the interstate handgun sales restriction remains in effect. Buyers who want a handgun from an out-of-state dealer must still route the purchase through a licensed dealer in their home state. That process adds time, cost, and an extra layer of bureaucracy to a transaction that, for long guns, can be completed on the spot.
The Second Amendment either means what it says across state lines or it doesn't. The Fifth Circuit's answer will tell Americans a great deal about how seriously federal courts intend to take Bruen's promise.
