Dexter Taylor is a software engineer, father, and lifelong tinkerer from Brooklyn. He has no criminal record. He never threatened anyone. He never sold a gun. Yet he is serving ten years in a New York maximum-security prison for building firearms in his own home.
In 2022, police raided Taylor’s apartment and found roughly a dozen unfinished and completed guns he had assembled as a hobby—AR-style rifles and pistols made from parts he ordered online with his own credit card. Taylor never denied what he did. He simply maintained that the Second Amendment was his license. New York disagreed. A jury convicted him. The judge gave him the maximum sentence.
Prosecutors called him a danger. Gun-rights advocates call him a political prisoner. Both cannot be true. A man who harmed no one, brandished no weapon, and kept every firearm inside his apartment is not a public safety threat. He is a citizen who took the Constitution at its word in a state that treats that word as optional.
Taylor rejected a plea deal that would have cut his time dramatically. He chose to fight on principle rather than accept the premise that the right to keep and bear arms stops at the New York border. His case is now on appeal. A legal defense fund continues to support that fight.
At SJLP we believe individual rights do not depend on zip code or the tolerance of local politicians. When a peaceful man can be imprisoned for a decade over a victimless technical violation of state gun laws, the problem is not the man. The problem is a government that has forgotten its limits.
Support Dexter Taylor’s legal defense: givesendgo.com/dtaylor_2a_legal