The Supreme Court signaled on Tuesday a willingness to uphold the legality of a 2022 regulation issued by President Joe Biden's administration cracking down on "ghost guns," largely untraceable firearms whose use has proliferated in crimes nationwide.
The justices heard arguments in the administration's appeal of a lower court's decision declaring that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority in issuing the rule targeting parts and kits for ghost guns. These products can be bought online to be quickly assembled at home, without the serial numbers ordinarily used to trace guns or background checks on purchasers required for other firearms.
Plaintiffs including parts manufacturers, gun owners and gun rights groups sued to block the rule in federal court in Texas.
Based on their questions to the lawyers representing the administration and the plaintiffs, the justices appeared satisfied with the rule's limits and reach. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. The rule clarified that these kits and components are covered by the definition of "firearm" under a 1968 federal law called the Gun Control Act.
Chief Justice John Roberts seemed skeptical that an unfinished frame or receiver — key components — of a firearm that requires merely the drilling of a hole to complete should not be considered covered by the Gun Control Act.
"What is the purpose of selling a receiver without the holes drilled in it?" Roberts asked Peter Patterson, the lawyer arguing for the challengers.
Patterson said that hobbyists want to "construct their own firearms," just like other people who might work on their car every week.
"Well, drilling a hole or two, I would think, doesn't give the same sort of reward that you get from working on your car on the weekends," Roberts replied. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, defending the regulation, said the market for ghost guns is not comprised of hobbyists, but rather people who are prohibited by law from buying firearms, including minors, people previously convicted of violent crimes and those who want to commit crimes.
"What the evidence shows is that these guns were being purchased and used in crime. They were sold to be crime guns," said Prelogar, who added that she "actually had the experience of putting one of these kits together."
The regulation requires manufacturers of firearms kits and parts, such as partially complete frames or receivers, to mark their products with serial numbers, obtain licenses and conduct background checks on purchasers, as already required for other commercially made firearms.
"The industry has followed those conditions without difficulty for more than half a century, and those basic requirements are crucial to solving gun crimes and keeping guns out of the hands of minors, felons and domestic abusers," Prelogar told the justices.
But in recent years, Prelogar said, companies like those that challenged the new regulation "have tried to circumvent those requirements" by selling firearms as easy-to-assemble kits that "require minimal work to be made functional." Prelogar said that "our nation has seen an explosion in crimes committed with ghost guns."
Some of the conservative justices questioned Prelogar on the limits of the language on which the rule was based. Focusing on the word "weapon," Justice Samuel Alito asked whether individual components can themselves be considered a weapon, and offered some analogies.
"I put out on a counter some eggs, some chopped-up ham, some chopped-up pepper and onions. Is that a western omelet?" Alito asked Prelogar.
"No," Prelogar said, because "those items have well-known other uses to become something other than an omelet."
"The key difference here is that these weapon parts kits are designed and intended to be used as instruments of combat. And they have no other conceivable use," Prelogar added.
Fort Worth, Texas-based Judge Reed O'Connor invalidated the rule in 2023, ruling that the ATF had impermissibly "rewritten the law" without congressional input. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit later upheld O'Connor's decision.
The Supreme Court in 2023 reinstated the rule pending the administration's appeals.
In a similar gun-related case, the Supreme Court in June rejected a federal rule banning "bump stocks" — devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.
The United States, with the world's highest gun ownership rate, remains a nation deeply divided over how to address firearms violence including frequent mass shootings.
In three major rulings since 2008, the Supreme Court has widened gun rights, including a 2022 decision that declared for the first time that the Constitution protects an individual's right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.
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