Supreme Court upholds effort to regulate ‘ghost guns’

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The Supreme Court March 26 upheld a Biden administration effort to regulate so-called “ghost guns,” or unserialized, untraceable firearms that can be assembled in as little as 30 minutes from kits purchased online.

The high court heard oral arguments in Garland v. VanDerStok in October, with justices at the time appearing skeptical of a challenge to the Biden administration’s efforts to regulate ghost guns.

A group of firearms owners, gun rights groups and manufacturers sued in an attempt to invalidate a 2022 regulation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, to crack down on such sales by seeking to make such kits subject to similar regulations as commercially made firearms, arguing that the Biden administration overstepped in issuing the regulation, and the kits were not the same as a firearm.

But in a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court rejected that argument. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion, “Yes, perhaps a half hour of work is required before anyone can fire a shot.”

“But even as sold, the kit comes with all necessary components, and its intended function as instrument of combat is obvious,” he said. “Really, the kit’s name says it all: ‘Buy Build Shoot.’”

“The upshot?” he continued. “‘(P)olice departments around the Nation’ have ‘confronted an explosion of crimes’ involving these ‘ghost guns,” adding that in 2017, law enforcement agencies submitted about 1,600 ghost guns to the federal government for tracing, increasing to more than 19,000 by 2021.

“Efforts to trace the ownership of these weapons, the government represents, have proven ‘almost entirely futile,'” he said.

Gorsuch argued that the effort to regulate the kits met the criteria established by Congress in law for doing so. For comparison, Gorsuch said people often discuss buying a table from Ikea that they would describe as a table, although it may take them several hours to assemble the pieces to make one.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, “The statutory terms ‘frame’ and ‘receiver’ do not cover the unfinished frames and receivers contained in weapon-parts kits, and weapon-parts kits themselves do not meet the statutory definition of ‘firearm.'”

“That should end the case,” he argued. “The majority instead blesses the Government’s overreach based on a series of errors regarding both the standard of review and the interpretation of the statute.”

The U.S. bishops have called on congressional lawmakers to pass new legislation to curb gun violence, stating their support for a 1994 federal assault weapons ban similar to one Congress allowed to expire in 2004. They have also supported limitations on civilian access to high-capacity ammunition magazines. Other gun regulation measures the bishops support include universal background checks for all gun purchases.

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