Washington- The Supreme Court will rule on Tuesday meet to hear arguments Tuesday on the Biden administration’s efforts to regulate non-serialized firearms known as ghost guns, questioning for the second time in months whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Tobacco is went too far when he took unilateral action to combat gun violence.
Brought by a group of gun owners, gun rights groups and manufacturers, opponents seek to invalidate regulations that seek to subject ghost guns to the same requirements as commercially manufactured firearms .
But the Biden administration has warned that repealing the rule would give felons, juveniles and others legally barred from having guns access to kits that can be assembled into a firearm functional and untraceable in less than 30 minutes.
The question in the case, known as Garland v. VanDerStok, is not whether Second Amendment rights were violated, but whether the ATF exceeded its authority when it issued the regulations in 2022 The rule clarified the definition of “firearm” in pistol. Control Act of 1968 to include a kit of gun parts that can be assembled into an operational firearm, as well as the incomplete frame of a handgun and the frame of a rifle.
The measure aims to address the rise in crimes committed using ghost guns, which can be made from 3D printers or kits and parts available online. Because these firearms do not have serial numbers or transfer records, it is difficult for law enforcement to trace them back to their purchasers, making them particularly attractive to people who cannot legally purchase firearms or who plan to use them to commit crimes.
Havre Daley / AP
But by clarifying the definition of “firearm” in the Gun Control Act to cover these kits, ghost gun manufacturers and sellers must be licensed, mark their products with serial numbers, perform background checks on potential buyers and maintaining transfer records, etc. commercial gun manufacturers must do this.
A group of 20 major cities told the Supreme Court in a filing that the rule appears to have been effective in reducing the use of ghost guns in their municipalities and across the country. In New York, for example, ghost gun recoveries fell last year for the first time in four years. In Baltimore, they decreased in 2023 for the first time since 2019.
Gun owners, advocacy groups and kit manufacturers sued the Biden administration over the rule shortly after it took effect, arguing that when Congress wrote the 1968 law, it -It did not give the ATF the authority to change the definition of a firearm to cover kits. A federal district court judge struck down the settlement. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also struck down the regulation, finding that only finished firearms, or complete frames or slides, are covered by the Gun Control Act.
The Biden administration later asked the Supreme Court to review this decision, arguing that the rule simply ensures that ghost guns comply with the same “simple, low-cost administrative requirements” that apply to commercial gun sales .
The 5th Circuit’s decision, wrote Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, “ignores the words written by Congress and would effectively overturn the law’s careful regulatory scheme by allowing anyone to anonymously purchase a kit online and assemble a fully functional weapon in minutes – with no background check, records, or serial number required.”
She also argued that the lower court’s interpretation of the law flies in the face of its design by turning the definition of a firearm into an invitation to evade its requirements.
But opponents said the ATF’s clarification cannot be reconciled with the plain text of the gun control law and “risks upending the regulation of popular semi-automatic firearms.”
They told the high court in a filing that any change in the regulatory approach to privately made firearms must come from Congress, not the ATF.
“The decisive fact in this case is Congress’s decision, under the GCA, to focus on the commercial firearms market rather than on the private manufacturing of firearms for personal use. Accordingly, the GCA does not cover items used in the private manufacturing of firearms that the ATF is attempting to regulate,” said the gun owners, led by Jennifer VanDerStok of Texas.
The Supreme Court has already been asked to intervene in the dispute, but at an earlier stage of the dispute. In August 2023, the High Court agreed to allow The Biden administration must enforce the ghost gun rule until it makes a decision on its legality, likely by the end of June 2025.
The Supreme Court was divided 5-4 in suspending the district court’s order that struck down the measure, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the three liberal justices in the majority.
Roberts and Barrett’s previous votes make them key justices to watch, although they don’t mean they will vote to uphold the measure now that the Supreme Court is considering the merits of the case.
The High Court will consider the ghost gun rule just months later. invalidated a separate measure which banned Bump Stocks, a firearm accessory that increases the rate of fire of a semi-automatic rifle to hundreds of rounds per minute.
In overturning that rule, the Supreme Court’s six-justice conservative majority ruled that the ATF exceeded its authority when it issued the ban in 2018 after a mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival , the deadliest in United States history.
