Federal gun law has always set a floor, not a ceiling. That’s been true since the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 first required a license to ship guns across state lines, and it was baked further into the system when the Gun Control Act of 1968 created the modern FFL.
States were left free to stack their own licensing, recordkeeping, and storage rules on top of the federal minimum, and plenty of them have, for decades, with the courts generally shrugging and calling it dual sovereignty. Justice Brandeis had a phrase for this arrangement almost a century ago — he called the states “laboratories of democracy,” free to run their own experiments without waiting on Washington to agree. Delaware just ran one.
On Thursday, September 3, Governor Matt Meyer signed a three-bill package into law in Dover, and he wasn’t shy about the timing. “While Washington rolls back gun safety protections,” Meyer said, “Delaware is moving forward.”
That’s not spin from some talking head; that’s the governor’s own framing of what he just did, and it happens to be, in my humble opinion, the most accurate one-sentence summary of where American gun policy sits in September 2026: federal courts and a friendlier ATF stripping away NFA red tape with one hand, while a handful of state capitals add new friction at the dealer counter with the other.
Dover, September 3
The package is smaller than “gun safety bill package” makes it sound, and worth breaking down bill by bill, because each one does something distinct.
| Bill | What it does | Key detail |
|---|---|---|
| SB 300 | Creates a state dealer licensing system administered by Delaware State Police | Applies to dealers moving more than 10 firearms a year; biennial training, mandatory video surveillance, detailed transfer records; licensing requirement doesn’t actually take effect until 2029 |
| HB 418 | Sets a compliance path for unserialized (“ghost gun”) firearms | Six-month window to have the firearm serialized by a licensed dealer or rendered permanently inoperable |
| HB 369 | Makes permanent the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and Community Safety | The office already existed under Executive Order 9, signed May 1, 2025; this just gives it statutory footing so a future governor can’t quietly let it lapse |
Plus, the dealer-licensing bill carries a $300 annual fee, a number that survived negotiation after a proposed statewide firearm registry got stripped out of the final draft — a compromise Hoodline detailed in its own breakdown and one that suggests even Dover’s Democratic majority recognized where the political ceiling was.
Not Until 2029
Here’s the detail most of the initial coverage buried: the headline piece of this package, the dealer licensing requirement in SB 300, doesn’t actually bind anyone for roughly three more years. A dealer moving eleven guns a year in Wilmington today has the rest of this decade before the camera and training mandates apply to them. That’s not nothing, but it’s a far cry from the “Delaware just cracked down on gun dealers” pearl-clutching that ran in a lot of outlets the week of the signing.
The Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association wasn’t reassured by the runway. DSSA president Jeff Hague argued the package “will burden responsible gun owners” without doing anything to reduce violent crime, and pushed back specifically on the idea that a dealer should carry legal exposure for what a customer does with a gun after a lawful sale.
He also questioned the package’s constitutional footing — a claim worth taking seriously given Delaware’s actual track record in court, which I’ll get to below.
Part of a Pattern
Delaware isn’t acting alone, and treating this as a one-state story undersells what’s happening. Colorado passed HB 1144 this year banning unlicensed manufacture of firearms via 3D printer or CNC machine, on top of a separate bill requiring police departments to run crime-gun tracing through eTrace and share the data.
Maine’s HB 745 and Virginia’s HB 40 both mandate serializing previously unserialized firearms, mirroring Delaware’s approach in HB 418. California went further on the dealer-accountability side, finalizing DOJ regulations that let the state revoke a dealer’s approval for serious violations, with the legislature separately passing AB 1810 to allow year-long operating bans for dealers found non-compliant.
None of this is happening because state legislatures suddenly discovered gun policy. It’s happening because, as several of these states have said plainly, they view the current ATF — reshaped this year by a 34-rule deregulatory package and a leadership team more inclined to ease burdens than add them — as unlikely to fill that role for the foreseeable future.
States that want tighter oversight of gun commerce are building it themselves, dealer by dealer, because the federal backstop they used to lean on isn’t backstopping much of anything right now. It’s the same dynamic driving the suppressor story I wrote about last week — a federal system pulling back, and everyone downstream deciding for themselves what fills the gap.
Rocks to Throw
When it comes to rocks to throw at Delaware’s package, the fairest one isn’t about what it does—it’s about what happens next. I’m not a constitutional lawyer, nor do I play one on YouTube, but Delaware’s recent history with gun legislation should make anyone cautious about calling this “settled.”
The state’s 2022 ban on so-called assault weapons and large-capacity magazines has been in federal court for going on four years now: the Third Circuit affirmed denial of a preliminary injunction against it in July 2024, and the Supreme Court declined to take up the case afterward, but the underlying challenge is still working its way through the system on the merits.
A law that survives long enough to get signed in Dover is not the same thing as a law that survives contact with a federal courtroom, and Delaware’s gun rights groups have shown they’re willing to make that argument for years at a stretch if that’s what it takes.
The other rock is simpler: a six-month compliance window for ghost guns is only as good as the state’s ability to find the guns it applies to. Nothing in the reporting on HB 418 describes a funded buyback, an amnesty registry, or any enforcement mechanism beyond hoping owners comply voluntarily. That’s a reasonable bet on a law-abiding population. It is still a bet.
Delaware isn’t wrong that Washington has changed direction this year — it plainly has, and the NFA ruling and the ATF’s own reform package are the proof. What Dover is betting is that a small state can hold a different line indefinitely, on its own, against that current, and make it stick in court. We’ll know a lot more about whether that bet pays off well before SB 300’s licensing requirement ever actually takes effect.
Additional background via DSSA’s own case page on the 2022 ban challenge.
