The regulation had been challenged on Second Amendment grounds.
The Supreme Court voted 7–2 on March 26 to uphold the Biden administration’s rule regulating so-called ghost guns that can be assembled at home.
The majority opinion in Bondi v. VanDerStok was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Gorsuch was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor, Jackson, and Kavanaugh each filed concurring opinions.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito each filed dissenting opinions.
In October 2023, the Supreme Court reinstated the rule, which lower courts had blocked.
“Ghost gun” is a pejorative term used by gun control advocates to describe a homemade firearm that lacks a serial number and therefore can’t be tracked by law enforcement.
Although some states regulate homemade guns, gun control groups have been trying for years to ban or regulate homemade guns at the federal level but have failed to persuade the U.S. Congress to act.
Then-President Joe Biden defended the rule, claiming that privately made guns, which are often made with gun kits, are the “weapons of choice for many criminals.”
The government’s “frame or receiver” rule dates to April 2022. It requires individuals who assemble homemade firearms to add serial numbers to them. The rule also mandates background checks for consumers who buy gun-assembly kits from dealers.
Pieces of guns that are shipped are nonetheless guns subject to existing laws, the government argues.
In the majority opinion, Gorsuch wrote that the Gun Control Act of 1968 allows the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to regulate “some weapon parts kits and unfinished frames or receivers, including those we have discussed.”
After displaying a photograph of gun kit components supplied by seller Polymer80, Gorsuch wrote, “Plainly, the finished ‘Buy Build Shoot’ kit is an instrument of combat. No one would confuse the semiautomatic pistol pictured above with a tool or a toy.”
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
