ST. PAUL — The Minnesota Supreme Court created doubt Wednesday over the viability of a decades-old state law that makes it a crime to possess certain firearms that lack serial numbers.

In overturning a lower court ruling, a majority of justices on the state’s highest court stopped short of invalidating a 1994 law entirely on constitutional grounds. But the split ruling could make it harder for prosecutors to bring the gun charges as they have in hundreds of cases per year.

Wednesday’s decision involves a man who, during a 2022 traffic incident in Fridley, was found to have a 9mm Glock 19 pistol lacking a serial number. Before his case could go to trial, charges against the man were invalidated by a district judge, then reinstated by the Court of Appeals and are now overturned by the sta

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