March 26 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a Biden administration regulation on so-called ghost guns which allow people to obtain parts via online sellers to build a firearm.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented in the high court’s 7-2 decision in its 63-page ruling.
“The Gun Control Act embraces, and thus permits ATF to regulate, some weapon parts kits and unfinished frames or receivers, including those we have discussed,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a majority opinion.
“Ghost guns” are kits made up of prefabricated firearm components that can be sold and assembled in a way that makes them virtually untraceable.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, the number of recovered firearms with a missing serial number sharply rose from 2017-2023 with more than 19,000 untraceable weaponry confiscated by federal officials since 2021 alone.
“Efforts to trace the ownership of these weapons, the government represents, have proven almost entirely futile,” Gorsuch wrote Wednesday.
The Biden administration in 2022 cracked down on self-assembly gun kits with new rules which subject them to traditional firearm regs like background checks, verification of age, serial numbers, among other rules.
Last year in April, the justices agreed to hear an appeal after a 5-4 ruling in August 2023 temporarily reinstated restrictions imposed by the Biden administration when gun rights advocates sued in a Texas court to block the set of regulations.
Arguments revolved around whether or not the weapons met the definition of “firearm” under the federal Gun Control Act. Such a designation would have given the government the power to regulate them as it does with other firearms.
The GCA said it applied to “any weapon .. which will or is designed to or may be readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” and likewise covered the “frame or receiver of any such weapon.”
However, challengers of the rule which did include regular gun owners and gun manufacturers, argued that the 1968 law did not apply to weapon parts kits in what they claimed was government overreach.
They contended that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives does not have the unilateral authority to apply the Gun Control Act to the ghost gun kits.
Gorsuch, meanwhile, wrote the Gun Control Act authorizes the ATF bureau to regulate “any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” the Trump-appointed justice said.
“A person without any specialized knowledge can convert a starter gun into a working firearm using everyday tools in less than an hour. And measured against that yardstick, the ‘Buy Build Shoot’ kit can be ‘readily converted’ into a firearm too, for it requires no more time, effort, expertise, or specialized tools to complete. If the one meets the statutory test, so must the other,” Gorsuch concluded.
Thomas, writing on behalf of him and the George W. Bush-appointed Alito, in their dissent wrote the statutory terms “frame” and “receiver do not “cover the unfinished frames and receivers contained in weapon-parts kits, and weapon-parts kits themselves do not meet the statutory definition of ‘firearm,'” he said.
“That should end the case,” Thomas continued. “The majority instead blesses the Government’s overreach based on a series of errors regarding both the standard of review and the interpretation of the statute.”
John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said the court’s decision was “great news for everyone but the criminals who have adopted untraceable ghost guns as their weapons of choice.”
“Ghost guns look like regular guns, shoot like regular guns, and kill like regular guns — so it’s only logical that the Supreme Court just affirmed they can also be regulated like regular guns,” he said in a statement.