The Supreme Court confirmed on Wednesday the government regulation of self -assembly firearm that produce weapons impossible to track as “ghost guns.”
7-2 decision Wine from Judge Neil Gorsuch. Judges Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas disagreed.
“The weapons control law covers and, therefore, allows ATF regulate, some kits of weapons and uninformed frames or receptors, including those we have discussed,” Gorsuch wrote.
In 2022, the Biden Administration took energetic measures against the AutossoSamble Kits with a new rule that submitted them to the same verifications as traditional firearms, including the background verifications, the verification of age, the serialization and more.
The rule challengers, which included weapons manufacturers and owners of individual weapons, argued that the 1968 weapons control law did not apply to the kits of weapons and that the administrative action was an overreach.
Judge Gorsuch, writing for the majority, presented a textual case of why the kits of weapons pieces may be subject to federal regulations in the same way as any other weapon.
“He [Gun Control Act] Authorizes ATF to regulate “any weapon (including a starting gun) that is designed or can easily become to expel a projectile for the action of an explosive,” Gorsuch wrote.
“A person without any specialized knowledge can convert a start gun into a firearm that works using everyday tools in less than an hour. And measured against that criterion, the ‘Buy Build Shoot’ kit can ‘easily convert’ into a firearm too, since it does not require more time, effort, experience or specialized tools to complete. If the one meets the statutory test, so it must be the other.”
A vision of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, July 19, 2024.
Kevin Mohatt/Reuters, file
Judges Thomas and Alito dissent.
“The legal terms ‘Marco’ and ‘Receiver’ do not cover the unaffected frames and receptors contained in the arms matches kits, and the arms arms kits do not comply with the legal definition of ‘Firearm’,” Thomas wrote. “That should put an end to the case. Most bless the government overreach based on a series of errors with respect to the revision standard and the interpretation of the statute.”
Wednesday’s ruling of the Superior Court is significant for the defenders of arms control, since the number of firearms recovered from the crime scenes without a serial number increased abruptly in recent years: almost 17 times between 2017 and 2023, according to the Department of Justice, with 19,000 inactualizable weapons recovered only in 2021.
“This decision of the Supreme Court is great news for all but for criminals who have adopted ghost weapons impossible to track their weapons of choice,” said John Feinblatt, president of Eventown for the safety of weapons, in a statement. “Ghost weapons seem regular weapons, shoot as regular weapons and kill as regular weapons, so it is logical that the Supreme Court has just affirmed that they can also be regulated as regular weapons.”
The Court’s opinion recognizes that the exponential proliferation of ghost weapons has raised an urgent problem for the application of the law throughout the country.
“The efforts to track the property of these weapons, the government represents, have proven to be almost completely useless,” Gorsuch wrote.
Alexandra Hutzler of ABC News contributed to this report.
