On Tuesday, Oct. 8, a day after the justices called for a new Supreme Court term, the court will hear a case that could open a huge loophole in US gun laws. the plaintiffs Garland v. Vanderstock Ask the court to effectively strike down a federal law that requires gun buyers to submit to a background check, as well as a separate law that requires guns to have a serial number to allow law enforcement to track firearms.
The case involved “ghost guns,” weapons that are disassembled and sold in ready-to-assemble kits. Three Trump appointees to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit previously completed Guns sold in these kits are exempt from laws requiring background checks and serial numbers, thus making it easier for people convicted of violent crimes to obtain the guns by purchasing them in isolation.
By law, background checks and serial numbers Requirements apply “Any weapon . . . which can be readily converted or designed to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.” They also apply to “the frame or receiver of any such weapon,” the skeletal part of a gun that contains other components, such as the barrel or firing mechanism. Thus, if someone is purchasing a series of firearm parts with the intention of building a gun at home, they must perform a background check when purchasing the gun frame or receiver.
Ghost gun manufacturers try to avoid these requirements by selling an incomplete frame or a kit with a receiver – although, according to the Justice Department, this is often the case. trivial easy To convert an incomplete piece of kit into a fully functional frame or receiver. Some kits can be turned into a functional firearm after the buyer drills a hole in the frame of the kit. Others require the user to close a small plastic rail.
The Fifth Circuit upheld this attempt to circumvent the statute. It claims that frames missing a single hole are “Still no frame or receiverThe three Trump judges also argued that ghost gun kits “cannot easily be converted into a functional gun” because the phrase “cannot be read to include any object that, if manufactured, could become functional at some unspecified point. Future” — even if only a small amount of work is needed to make the gun work.
So the question now is whether a majority of this Supreme Court, which often takes a broad view of gun rights, will sign off on this effort to neutralize background check and serial number laws.
The good news for gun control advocates is that the court has already indicated it won’t. The court first heard the case, albeit in an expedited process, in August 2023, and it voted to temporarily fully implement the background check and serial number requirements while the case played out in a lower court. The bad news is that the vote in that August 2023 decision was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the court’s three Democrats. So if only one justice flips, Vanderstock The plaintiff may prevail.
At what point does a gun become a gun?
Vanderstock When a partially manufactured gun becomes sufficiently gun-like it raises the question of whether it should be regulated like a fully functional firearm. Congress, applying relevant statutes to operational guns, frames, receivers, and items that can be “readily converted” to an operational gun, clearly intended that a gun need not be completely complete to be regulated.
At the same time, it is also clear that there is a point when an unfinished gun is still not subject to background checks and serial number laws. For example, if someone buys a bucket full of raw steel and wood that a skilled gunsmith, after many hours of work using the right tools, can turn into a firearm, that bucket does not require a background check.
Until very recently, the question was “At what point is a gun sufficiently complete to trigger certain federal laws?” To be resolved by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). In Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), the Supreme Court held that when an agency is empowered to issue regulations interpreting federal law (and the ATF has that authority over gun laws Vanderstock), courts should generally defer to how the agency decides to resolve any ambiguity in that statute.
Thus, in a less overwhelming Supreme Court, Vanderstock A simple case would be ATF issued a regulation in 2022 It clarifies that background checks and serial number laws apply to ghost guns. under ChevronThis should be enough to resolve the case.
But last June, six Republican justices voted for repeal Chevron. In their decision Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) establish that henceforth, whoever controls the majority of the Supreme Court will have the final word on thousands of policy questions. Chevronwere resolved by federal agencies. so Vanderstock It will give us an early window into how these justices intend to use their new, self-granted policymaking authority.
If these justices concerned themselves with the text of federal gun laws, however, it is still hard to see how they could have affirmed the Fifth Circuit’s decision to exempt ghost guns from background check and serial number requirements.
That’s why federal gun laws don’t just declare a vague standard — that incomplete guns “that can be easily converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive” are still subject to federal regulation. It also provides examples of certain types of not-yet-ready-to-fire guns that are subject to background checks and serial number laws.
The relevant federal law clearly states that a “starter gun”—that is, a gun with a plugged barrel that is designed to fire blanks and is typically used to start a track or swimming race—counts as a gun that is subject to federal regulations. . So if someone buys a starter gun, they must submit to a background check, even though the starter gun cannot be used to shoot anyone without significant modifications.
In its brief, the Justice Department suggests that this reference to the starter gun was inserted into the statute because of a “gun maker” who “purchased starter pistols in bulk and distributed firearms to gang members.” He would then disassemble these starter guns and “using an electric hand drill mounted on a drill press stand, bore[d] Plugged out barrel and enlarged[d] .Cylinder chambers to accommodate 22-caliber cartridges
This is significantly more work than required to assemble many ghost guns. The fact that Congress intended to regulate devices requiring the use of reasonably specialized equipment to be disassembled and “bored” before they can be used as weapons suggests that Congress also intended for already disassembled guns that do not have a hole in the frame or receiver to be subject to regulation. A ghost gun is much closer to being a fully functional firearm than a starter gun.
Still, when Vanderstock Shouldn’t be a difficult case, the fact that four justices previously voted to exempt ghost guns from background checks and serial numbers suggests that this court will make this case more difficult than it needs to be.
At overruling ChevronThe court declared that it should have much more regulation than US policy in recent decades. Now we’re going to get a taste of how this GOP-dominated court intends to use that power.
