The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the Biden administration’s regulation of ghost guns, the largely untraceable firearms that had been used in a growing number of crimes over the past decade and alarmed law enforcement agencies.
In a 7-2 ruling written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, the justices allowed 2022 rules by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that require serial numbers, sales receipts and background checks for the weapons, which are typically purchased in kits online and assembled at home. Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas dissented in separate opinions.
The decision — supported by justices on both sides of the court’s partisan divide — could be considered a departure for the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, which has been skeptical of gun regulation in recent terms. The justices issued a landmark decision in 2022 that made it easier to challenge restrictions on firearms.
In the ghost gun case, the justices ruled that the weapons, which are sold partially assembled, count as firearms under the 1968 Gun Control Act, which means they can be regulated in the same way as other commercially available guns. The case, which was one of the most significant of the current term, did not implicate the right to bear arms that is enshrined in the Second Amendment.
Gorsuch noted in his opinion that some ghost gun kits may be so incomplete or cumbersome to assemble they may not count as firearms under the Gun Control Act, but most appear to qualify.
“Perhaps a half hour of work is required before anyone can fire a shot,” Gorsuch wrote of one kit. “But even as sold, the kit comes with all necessary components, and its intended function as instrument of combat is obvious. Really, the kit’s name says it all: “Buy Build Shoot.”
Steven Dettelbach, the director of ATF under President Barack Obama, said the ruling would “protect the lives of Americans.” Gun control groups hailed it as well.
“This Supreme Court decision is great news for everyone but the criminals who have adopted untraceable ghost guns as their weapons of choice,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “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.”
The statement echoed oral arguments in the case in October by then-Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar. She said striking down the Biden-era rules would be dangerous, allowing people banned from purchasing firearms — such as felons — to easily buy these types of guns online. She said it would also be more difficult to solve crimes since ghost guns typically can’t be traced back to their owners.
“Our nation has seen an explosion in the crimes committed by ghost guns,” Prelogar told the justices.
Police submitted about 1,800 ghost guns for tracing in 2016 as part of criminal investigations, according to the Justice Department. Those numbers climbed to 19,000 in 2021, the last year before the new regulations went into effect.
Less than 1 percent of ghost guns were traceable, however, before they were required to be stamped with serial numbers. The guns submitted for tracing in 2021 were linked to nearly 700 homicides or attempted homicides.
ATF responded to the explosion in violence linked to ghost guns by issuing a new interpretation of the 1968 Gun Control Act, saying ghost guns fell under the same regulatory framework as other firearms.
The ATF rules were challenged by ghost gun parts makers, groups and owners who said hobbyists enjoyed assembling the weapons. Kits and partially built weapons did not meet the legal definition of a firearm, the challengers argued, so they shouldn’t face the same regulations as other guns.
Peter A. Patterson, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the justices ATF exceeded its authority in promulgating the new rules. He said that as recently as 2021, the government held in a court brief that gun pieces did not meet the definition of a firearm.
“There definitely has been a sea change here,” Patterson said.
The groups that challenged the regulation did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, but their arguments were embraced by Thomas in his dissent. Congress could have regulated firearms parts as guns, but it had not, the justice wrote.
“The Government asked this Court just last Term to ‘rewrite’ statutory text so that it could regulate semiautomatic weapons as machine guns. We declined to do so,” Thomas said referring to a decision to legalize devices that allow rifles to fire rapidly. “The Government now asks us to rewrite statutory text so that it can regulate weapon-parts kits. This time, the Court obliges.”
The Gun Control Act defines a gun as “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.” It also includes the “frame or receiver” of a weapon, but Congress didn’t define those terms when it passed the law. The majority’s ruling allows both weapons kits and partially assembled frames and receivers to be regulated under the Gun Control Act.
The justices spent significant time during the October oral arguments grappling with whether a partially assembled gun can be considered a firearm and how much assembly qualifies as “readily converted.”
Prelogar told the justices that ghost gun kits were analogous to tennis rackets without the strings or bicycles without pedals and could be assembled in minutes. Anyone would classify them as guns, she said, even though they were not fully assembled.
But conservative justices pushed back on the idea, suggesting that a series of parts wasn’t the same thing as a firearm. Patterson said the weapons weren’t as easy to assemble as the government claimed.
A federal judge in Texas granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs challenging the law in 2023, and the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s ruling. The justices then ruled 5-4 to allow the ghost gun regulations to take effect while the case played out.
The Supreme Court has moved to loosen gun restrictions in recent years, although not uniformly. In 2024, an ideologically divided court struck down a federal ban on bump stocks, the devices that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire like automatic weapons.
In 2022, the justices upended gun regulations when they ruled that a New York law requiring a special need to carry a firearm outside the home was unconstitutional. The court’s conservative supermajority found any gun regulation must be consistent with the nation’s history of firearm regulations. The ruling has resulted in hundreds of challenges to gun regulations across the country.
Last year, the high court upheld a ban on gun possession by people who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders.
The Supreme Court will also decide this term on a civil suit by the Mexican government, which is seeking to hold American gunmakers liable for decades of gun violence in that country.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
