The United States Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will review a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s restrictions on so-called “ghost guns” during its next term, determining whether the federal government’s expanded definition of the term violates constitutional gun rights.
“Ghost guns”—firearms manufactured from kits that lack identifying serial numbers—have been a priority agenda item for President Joe Biden since he took office in 2021. Since then, thousands of untraceable firearms have been recovered at crime scenes across the country, complicating law enforcement investigations.
In 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) broadened its definition of “firearm” to include buy-build-shoot kits that allow buyers to build working guns without background checks. The ATF based this decision on the 1968 Gun Control Act, which considers a firearm to be “any weapon…which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” as well as “the frame or receiver of any such weapon.”
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This allowed the Bureau to regulate “80 percent receivers,” consisting of a metal or polymer handgun grip and internal mechanisms, as if they were complete guns. The ATF’s ghost gun regulations required kit manufacturers and sellers to obtain licenses, apply serial numbers, and conduct FBI background checks on customers just like vendors who sell complete weapons.
In August 2023, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of allowing the rule to remain in effect despite challenges by gun rights activists who called the law “unconstitutional and abusive.”
Then, in November of last year, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals determined in a separate case that “only Congress may make the deliberate and reasoned decision to enact new or modified legislation regarding firearms,” rendering the ATF regulation unlawful. The challenge was brought by the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), which claims that “the Biden ATF [has] tried to illegally rewrite the legal definition of the word to discourage homemade firearms.”
Related: Biden Moves to Close ‘Gun Show Loophole,’ Demand More Background Checks for Gun Buyers
The Biden Department of Justice appealed the decision to the Supreme Court once again, countering that the result of the law being overturned “would be a flood of untraceable ghost guns into our nation’s communities, endangering the public and thwarting law-enforcement efforts to solve violent crimes.”
The Supreme Court will now hear the case, known as Garland v. Jennifer VanDerstok, in the fall term, just before the 2024 election.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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