Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- The Supreme Court is reviewing the legality of a 2022 regulation introduced by the Biden administration to restrict "ghost guns."
- These regulations require manufacturers to mark such kits with serial numbers and conduct background checks akin to those for traditional firearms.
- The challenge comes after lower courts invalidated the rule, with opponents arguing that a government agency overstepped its authority.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday over 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 administration is appealing 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, which can be purchased online and quickly assembled at home.
The arguments were ongoing.
Plaintiffs including parts manufacturers, various gun owners and two gun rights groups — the Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation — sued to block the agency's rule in federal court in Texas.
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing on behalf of the administration, said that the federal government has long required firearms sellers and manufacturers to mark their products with serial numbers, maintain sales records and conduct background checks.
"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 can be built at home in as little as 15 minutes.
Those untraceable guns are attractive to people who cannot lawfully purchase firearms, Prelogar said.
"As a result, our nation as seen an explosion in crimes committed with ghost guns," Prelogar added, noting that it was in the face of this "public safety crisis' that ATF promulgated the 202 rule.
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 rule clarified that these kits and components are covered by the definition of "firearm" under a 1968 federal law called the Gun Control Act and that commercial manufacturers of such kits must become licensed.
A western omelet
Some of the conservative justices questioned Prelogar on the limits of language on which the rule was based, focusing on weapons that can fire projectiles or can be readily converted to do so. Focusing on the word "weapon," Justice Samuel Alito asked whether individual components can themselves be considered a weapon, and offered some analogies.
"Here's a blank pad and here's a pen. All right? Is this a grocery list?" Alito asked Prelogar.
"I don't think that that's a grocery list. The reason for that is because there are a lot of things that you could use those products for that would create something other than a grocery list," Prelogar said.
"I put out on a counter some eggs, some chopped-up ham, some chopped-up pepper and onions. Is that a western omelet?" Alito then asked Prelogar.
"No, because again those items have well-known other uses to become something other than an omelet," Prelogar said.
"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.
Law enforcement authorities have a hard time tracing ghost guns weapons when they are discovered at a crime scene back to an individual purchaser because ghost guns lack the serial numbers present on other firearms.
Fort Worth, Texas-based Judge Reed O'Connor invalidated the rule in 2023, ruling that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had impermissibly "rewritten the law" without congressional input.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit later upheld O'Connor's decision, faulting the agency for attempting to "take on the mantle of Congress to 'do something' with respect to gun control. But it is not the province of an executive agency to write laws for our nation."
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 U.S. Constitution protects an individual's right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.
