Supreme Court Lets ATF Regulate (Some) DIY Firearms Kits
When is a paperweight a firearm? When the U.S. Supreme Court overrules sensible lower court decisions so the federal government can regulate inert objects as if they were capable of firing bullets. That’s the result of the high court’s 7–2 ruling last week in Bondi v. Vanderstok permitting the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to enforce its “ghost gun” rule reinterpreting the law so it can treat at least some unfinished gun parts kits as functioning firearms. The case avoided the Second Amendment and dealt only with the permissible extent of administrative legal interpretations.
Scary ‘Ghost Guns’ and the Limits of the Law
At stake are so-called ghost guns, a term encompassing firearms made by hobbyists and lacking serial numbers. Specifically, “ghost gun” most often refers to firearms made from unfinished parts or kits that require work with tools such as drills and milling machines—less work in some cases than in others—in order to produce a functioning gun. Making DIY guns has become a popular hobby in recent years, and that upsets the usual ranks of control freaks.
In response, the late Biden administration instructed the ATF to administratively reinterpret the law to require serial numbers and background checks for the trade in unfinished gun parts, just as if they were firearms, even though they’re not by any stretch of the imagination capable of firing ammunition. Logically enough, lawsuits ensued. Lower courts were unimpressed by the government’s unilateral reinterpretation of law without congressional action. A case originally called VanDerStok v. Garland before the changing of the guard in D.C. ended up before the Supreme Court.
“Shortly after the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stunned the Nation, Congress adopted the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA). Existing gun control measures, Congress found, allowed criminals to acquire largely untraceable guns too easily,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote on March 26 for the
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