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“The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared ready to uphold a 2022 federal rule regulating so-called ‘ghost guns’ – untraceable weapons without serial numbers, assembled from components or kits that can be bought online… The ATF enacted the rule to address what it characterizes as an ‘exponential’ increase in ghost guns. It relied on the Gun Control Act, which requires manufacturers to put a serial number on guns and regulates commercial gun sales by (among other things) requiring gun manufacturers and dealers to conduct background checks and keep records of gun sales.” SCOTUSblog
The left urges the Court to uphold the rule, arguing that it is consistent with the law’s intent.
“Starting around 2017, online gun companies scaled up a new business model: selling kits directly to consumers with all the parts needed to assemble a functioning firearm. Customers could purchase the gun without a background check and put it together in as little as 20 minutes with the help of a YouTube video; the resulting firearm would have no serial number, rendering it untraceable by law enforcement…
“These businesses boasted about circumventing federal law, assuring buyers that they did not ‘have to worry’ about a background check and could use their ‘unmarked and unserialized’ weapon without any ‘documentation’ that would trace it to them. One company printed an image of a raised middle finger on a product with the text: ‘Here’s your serial number.’ This model operated as an assault weapon.”
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
“By law, the background check and serial number requirements apply to ‘any weapon ... which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.’ They also apply to ‘the frame or receiver of any such weapon,’ the skeletal part of a gun that houses other components, such as the barrel or firing mechanism. Thus, if someone purchases a series of firearm parts intending to build a gun at home, they still must face a background check when they purchase the gun’s frame or receiver…
“Ghost gun makers seek to evade these requirements by selling a kit with an incomplete frame or receiver — although… it’s often trivially easy to convert the kit’s incomplete part into a fully functional frame or receiver. Some kits can be turned into a working firearm after the buyer drills a single hole in the kit’s frame. Others require the user to sand off a small plastic rail…
“The relevant federal law explicitly states that a ‘starter gun’ — that is, a gun with a plugged barrel that is designed to fire blanks, and that is typically used to begin track or swim races — does count as a gun that is subject to federal regulation. So if someone buys a starter gun, they must submit to a background check, even though starter guns cannot be used to shoot anyone without significant alterations… A ghost gun is much closer to being a fully operational firearm than a starter gun.”
Ian Millhiser, Vox
“The pro-ghost gun lawyers warned the justices that, if gun kits count as a gun, then AR-15s might count as machine guns, since they, too can be turned into machine guns using a kit. The argument is specious, to be sure. But take a second to wonder at its sheer outrageous chutzpah: The justices were being told that if they treat ghost guns as guns, they might be forced to treat rifles that can become machine guns as, gulp, machine guns…
“For now, we are left hoping that the justices reach the right result, albeit for the wrong reasons. This awkward situation will prevail until, eventually, the court comes to its senses and starts considering a law’s purpose relevant to what the law means — the way nearly all legal systems have since the dawn of legal time.”
Noah Feldman, Bloomberg
The right generally supports blocking the rule, arguing that the ATF has exceeded its authority.
The right generally supports blocking the rule, arguing that the ATF has exceeded its authority.
“Since the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, the term ‘lower receiver’ has been held to cover only those finished devices that can be attached to the rest of the gun without further amendment. But, in 2022, the Biden administration attempted to alter this unilaterally. Henceforth, the ATF announced that year… ‘receiver’ would not just mean ‘receiver,’ but would include anything that could, if further manufactured, plausibly become a receiver…
“At root, VanDerStok is but one more in a seemingly interminable line of judicially mediated disputes that are testing the integrity of our constitutional separation of powers… It is not wholly impossible to imagine a conscientious Congress rewriting the definition of ‘frame’ or ‘receiver’ in a manner that proved both workable and impervious to mischief. Thus far, however, Congress has done no such thing — and, because it has done no such thing, the law must remain in the same shape it has taken since it was passed 56 years ago.”
Charles C.W. Cooke, National Review
“At oral argument Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar (the Biden-Harris administration’s lawyer) made much of the supposed ease with which criminals might buy ghost-gun kits to avoid the background checks and serial numbers required for buying a fully assembled firearm. She continued that no sensible reading of the law would deprive the ATF of authority to regulate ghost guns because such a reading would defeat the congressional purpose behind the Gun Control Act…
“That summed up the administration’s view of why the ATF’s regulation was desirable as a policy matter. But as Pete Patterson, representing the challengers, made clear, those policy concerns are for Congress to consider—not the ATF, which is simply supposed to implement and enforce the law that Congress has passed…
“This case provides an opportunity for the court to consider whether administrative agencies like the ATF can grant themselves regulatory authority over new objects and items simply through their own reinterpretation and expansion of statutory terms.”
Zack Smith and Jack Fitzhenry, Daily Signal
Some argue, “This is one of those odd gun control cases where I can actually sympathize with both sides of the dispute. The kits in question are not themselves ‘firearms’ and are incapable of firing a live round. As such, they are not guns per se so their regulation, should any be required, should be the purview of Congress, not the executive branch. It is the intention of the owner who elects to install the required hardware needed to allow it to be fired that is called into question…
“And yet these ghost gun kits are so ludicrously simple to obtain and use that even those with the most rudimentary mechanical skills can do it. The temptation was too much for many to resist, as was seen by the steep rise in ghost gun seizures in 2022 and 2023. At what point do government regulations cross the line from government babysitting to protecting people's personal safety?”
Jazz Shaw, Hot Air
