Supreme Court maintains regulation of “ghost guns”

Opinion analysis

This article was update on March 26 at 1 p.m. 14.04

The Supreme Court maintained a Biden-Era rule on Wednesday that regulated so-called “ghost guns”-usual weapons without serial numbers, collected from components or sets that can be purchased online. By a vote of 7-2, the judges claimed that the 1968 Pistol Control Act allows the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to at least regulate some ghost weapons, even though they left the possibility that the rule may not apply in individual challenges for certain ghost guns.

Justice Clarence Thomas Dissented from the Court’s decision and complained that it agreed to “rewrite statutory text.” Justice Samuel Alito wrote his own dissent, claiming his colleagues had used the wrong test to determine if the ATF rule was valid.

ATF adopted the rule in 2022 to tackle what it characterizes as an “exponential” increase in ghost weapons. The Pistol Control Act defines a “firearm” as “any weapon … which will or is designed for or easily converted to exhibit a projectile at the action of an explosive”, including “the frame or recipient of such a weapon.”

ATF claimed that the 2022 rule was in line with the language of the law because it defines “firearms” to include products such as gun sets that can be converted to an operational gun or functional frame (the basic structure of the gun) or the recipient (the part of the gun that houses the firing mechanism). The rule also clarified that the terms “frame” and “recipient” include partially complete or separate frameworks or recipients that can be “easily” completed or converted to work as a frame or recipient.

But a group that included two individual gun owners and a gun rights lawyer group went to the federal court in Texas to challenge the rule. A federal district judge in Fort Worth banned the agency from applying the rule throughout the United States.

Although the Conservative US Appeals Court for the 5th Circuit largely maintained this decision, a shared Supreme Court of District Judge’s order put on wait, enabling the Biden administration to enforce the rule while appealing. Four Justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – indicated that they would have denied the government’s request at that time.

In a 24-page statement from Gorsuch on Wednesday, the court maintained the rule.

Congress passed the Pistol Control Act, Gorsuch explained because it found that the then current “Pistol Control Measures … enabled criminals to acquire virtually unusual guns too easily.” The law requires producers to place a serial number on guns and regulate the sale of commercial gun of (among other things), which requires gun manufacturers and dealers to carry out background control and keep registrations of gun sales.

Progress in technology, noted Gorsuch, such as 3D printing and reinforced polymers, changed the way cannons are produced and sold. And especially “companies are able to manufacture and sell weapons sets that individuals can be collected in functional firearms in their own homes.” These sets are popular with hobbyists, wrote Gorsuch, but also among criminals because some producers and sellers do not consider them “firearms” that are subject to the Pistol Control Act and therefore do not comply with the requirements of the law – leading to “an explosion of crimes” around the country.

Gorsuch emphasized that the challengers in this case did not ask the Supreme Court to decide whether the rules that regulate ghost weapons could be used for specific kinds of ghost guns – that is, “specific weapon -parts set or unfinished framework or recipients.” Instead, he emphasized that the challengers had asked the courts to maintain that the rule could not be used for any Ghost Guns. But the Supreme Court refused to do so.

First, Gorsuch explained that the Pistol Control Act allows ATF to regulate weapon parts. The text of the law, he justified, imposes two criteria. First, there must be a “weapon.” And “weapons” must “be able to exhibit a projectile at the action of an explosive”, be “designed to do it” or be “susceptible to clear conversion to operate that way.”

Unlike the 5th circuit, Gorsuch concluded that “at least some sets will satisfy both” of these requirements. For example, he used a kit called the “Buy Build Shoot” set of a company called Polymer80 that allows the buyer to quickly and easily build a “glock variant semi -automatic gun.” A “regular speaker may well describe the” Buy Build Shoot “set as a” weapon “,” posed gorsuch, although “maybe half an hour of work is required before anyone can shoot a shot.” He noted that “even as sold, the kit comes with all the necessary components, and its intended function as a combat instrument is obvious. Really, the kit’s name says it all: ‘Buy build Shot. ” ‘

And the “Buy Build Shoot” set also meets the second criterion because it can be “easily converted” into a firearm, “for it does not require more time, forces, expertise or specialized tools to implement” than a starter gun that is explicitly mentioned in the Pistol Control Act.

Gorsuch acknowledged that “[w]Eapon’s part sets vary greatly “and” may require more time, expertise or specialized tools to exit. “But the Supreme Court does not have to decide in this case when” a kit can be so incomplete or cumbersome to assemble it “can no longer regulate it according to the Pistol Control Act, he decided.

Gorsuch again concluded as opposed to the 5th circuit that the Pistol Control Act also allows ATF to regulate partially finished frameworks and recipients. Gorsuch’s opinion offered a picture of a “complete frame of a glock variant shooting weapon” over a picture of a “partial complete frame” sold by polymer80, highlighting what he described as “most important differences” between the two-a pair of plastic tabs that the buyer had to remove, and then add pins. Here, too, he observed that “a regular speaker could call the polymer80s product a firearm ‘frame’, although a small job is required to end. Look again in the second photo,” Gorsuch pleaded. “What else would you call it?”

Gorsuch added that ATF has previously “consistently interpreted the” Pistol Control Act to apply to at least some unfinished frameworks and recipients, “including those that are no more finished than polymer80’s product.” These “modern and consistent views” can provide evidence of the importance of the law, “he noted. And in fact, he continued, says the challengers that they do not dispute the ATF’s “prior practice” – “an admission that anything but gives the game away.” Although the challengers claim that the new rule that regulates “ghost guns” goes too far, he said, “For our purpose, what matters is that even the plaintiffs do not really insist that the” rule “reaches only finished frameworks and recipients.”

As with weapons part sets, Gorsuch admitted that the court’s “reasoning has its limits.” “Some products,” he wrote, “may be so far from a finished framework or recipient that they cannot be described by being described by these expressions. But this case,” he wrote, “demands that we not explore any of it.”

Gorsuch rejected the challengers’ request to rule in their favor based on either the Lenity Rule – the idea that when a criminal justice is ambiguous, it must be used in the way most favorable to the accused – or the doctrine of constitutional avoidance that instructs the courts to avoid deciding constitutional issues unless necessary. Gorsuch, perhaps the court’s strongest spokesman for the Lenity rule, opposed that “neither lenity nor avoidance has any role to play where ‘text, context and structure’ decide the case.” “The Pistol Control Act embraces,” Gorsuch concludes, thus allowing ATF to regulate some weapon parts and unfinished frameworks or recipients, including those we have discussed. “

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a two-page simultaneous statement in which he observed that the line between ghost guns, such as ATF’s rule (and therefore the requirements of the Pistol Control Act, such as background control, license and serial numbers) make or do not apply “is not quite clear.” Individuals can only be exposed to criminal responsibility for having violated most of these demands if the government can show that they knew their behavior was illegal, Kavanaugh noted – a high bar.

But someone who violates the background check requirement continued Kavanaugh, is subject to a lower standard and may be subjected to criminal responsibility, even if they were not aware that they were violating the law. Kavanaugh suggested that the federal government would avoid the potential justice issues that could arise in such a situation “by complying with his oral argument representation that it would probably refuse to bring charges in these circumstances.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was less concerned about the questions that Kavanaugh raised, and considered them “unfounded” in her own two-page simultaneous opinion. Firearms manufacturers and dealers have long complied with the requirements of the Gun Control Act, she wrote, and “ATF’s rule should come as no surprise.” But to the extent that producers are not sure if the rule applies to their products, she claimed that ATF “urges” them to seek guidance from the agency. “Manufacturers have long benefited from this process,” she added, “and a failure to do it may suggest that there is intentional on their part.”

Thomas would have determined that the ATF rule was not approved by the Pistol Control Act. In his view, the “common meaning of ‘frame or receiver’ does not include ‘unfinished frames or recipients. Similarly, even if “an object that” can easily be converted “to a gun qualifies as a” firearm “if this object is already A ‘weapon’, an object that is not already a weapon does not. ‘And here, he said, the’ common meaning of ‘weapons’ does not include weapon-parts set, ‘which is’ unfinished ‘and’ unspoken. ” But at least Thomas continued that the Pistol Control Act is ambiguous, which would require the use of Lenity rule.

“Congress,” concluded Thomas, “could have authorized ATF to regulate any part of a firearm or any object that can be easily converted to one. But it did not. I would comply with the words of Congress adopted.”

Alito disagreed with the majority’s decision to use the same test that the courts use when reviewing challenges to the constitutionalness of laws, as they are written, without regard to special facts. The challengers in this case, he claimed, did not agree that such a test should apply, and the federal government gave it only “damn treatment” in its short.

Alito also questioned whether the test known as Salerno sample, should apply. In the Court’s decision last July of sending first changes to Florida and Texas Love, which regulates large Internet platforms back to the lower courts for another appearance, Alito explained, he wrote that an important reason for using Salerno Test “is respect for the legislative authority of the legislative body that passed that law.” But the “threat to legislative authority is not present when a regulation is challenged,” he noted. Therefore, he would either have directed litigation in the case of informing this question or sending the case back to the lower right to consider it.

This article was originally published on Howe on the field.