SCOTUSblog By Amy Howe 10/2/2024
The Supreme Court will hear oral argument next week in a challenge to a 2022 federal rule that seeks to regulate “ghost guns” – firearms without serial numbers that, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives says, almost anyone can quickly assemble with parts that they purchase, often in a kit online or through the mail. Serial numbers are used by law enforcement to track guns used in crime.
Defending the rule, the ATF argues that it is necessary to address an “urgent public safety and law enforcement crisis” created by the “exponential” increase in ghost guns. And the agency stresses that the rule does not seek to ban ghost guns, but instead simply tries to ensure that they are regulated in the same way as other commercial gun sales.
But the gun owners and gun manufacturers challenging the rule counter that the federal government has not previously required a license to build a gun for private use. And they push back against the ATF’s efforts to portray ghost guns as a problem. Even without the 2022 rule, they say, federal laws regulating guns still apply to “the vast majority of firearms produced in this country,” and, they claim, the ATF’s own data shows that ghost guns are “not a substantial source of firearms for criminals.”
Background
The Gun Control Act of 1968 requires gun manufacturers and dealers to obtain a federal license, keep records of gun sales and transfers, and conduct background checks. Manufacturers must also put a serial number on guns. The law defines a “firearm” as “any weapon … which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” including “the frame or receiver of any such weapon.”
Arguments
The ATF and the challengers disagree on virtually every element of the case before the Supreme Court, starting with the ATF’s premise – that almost anyone can quickly assemble a ghost gun using only “basic tools and rudimentary skills” “in as little as twenty minutes.”
Both the challengers and a “friend of the court” brief filed by a former ATF official contend that the process is significantly harder than the ATF suggests. Putting a ghost gun together can require considerable time, specialized tools and technical expertise, they say, and the out-of-pocket costs can add up to more than the expense of buying a new, ready-made gun.
A central issue before the justices is whether the 1968 law gives the ATF the power to regulate ghost guns through the 2022 rule. The ATF insists that it does, arguing that the 1968 law does not apply only to guns that are already fully assembled. The rule “closely tracks” the text of the 1968 law, the ATF reasons, making clear that a weapon parts kit that may “readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive” is a “firearm.”
The ATF suggests that applying the 1968 law to ghost guns is really a matter of common sense. “If a State placed a tax on the sale of tables, chairs, couches, and bookshelves,” it explains, “IKEA could not avoid paying by insisting that it does not sell any of those items and instead sells ‘furniture parts kits’ that must be assembled by the purchaser.”
The challengers argue that the government’s comparison of weapons parts kits to IKEA bookshelves misses the mark. A better one, they write, “would be a box containing shelves and, instead of a frame to hold them, planks of wood that had been cut to length and drilled to do so.”
Both the history of efforts to regulate ghost guns and the text of the 1968 law itself, the challengers say, support invalidating the 2022 rule. Before ATF enacted the rule, the challengers note, Congress had considered, but did not pass, several proposals to amend the 1968 law to cover partially completed frames and receivers and parts kits – indicating that in Congress’s view the law as currently drafted does not cover them. And in other provisions of the act, Congress specifically included references to parts of weapons, demonstrating that it knows how to regulate weapons parts kits when it wants to.
Moreover, the 1968 law defines a “firearm” as a weapon that can “expel a projectile by the action of an explosive” and (among other things) weapons that is “designed” or “readily be converted” to do so. But although the law does not contain the same language for frames or receivers, the rule would interpret the act as if it did.
Such an interpretation, the challengers warn the justices, could have serious consequences: Because AR-15 receivers can usually be converted to function as machinegun receivers, sometimes quite easily, if “anything that can be ‘readily converted’ to function as a ‘frame or receiver’ is a ‘frame or receiver,’ then Americans who own AR-15 rifles, one of America’s ‘most popular firearms,’ run the risk of violating” the federal ban on unregistered machineguns. The 2022 rule, the challengers conclude, “thus risks turning law-abiding firearm owners into felons.”
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/10/justices-to-hear-challenge-to-regulation-of-unserialized-ghost-guns/
