Supreme Court Upholds Biden Administration’s Limits on ‘Ghost Guns’

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld federal restrictions aimed at curtailing access to kits that can be easily assembled into homemade, nearly untraceable firearms, a rare move by a court that has taken an expansive view of gun rights.

In a 7-to-2 decision, written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, one of the court’s conservatives, the justices left in place requirements enacted during the Biden administration as part of a broader effort to combat gun violence by placing restrictions on so-called ghost guns.

Justice Gorsuch included photographs, unusual in court opinions, to illustrate how one of the gun kits, Polymer80’s “Buy Build Shoot,” came with “all of the necessary components to build” a Glock-style semiautomatic weapon. He wrote that it was “so easy to assemble” that it could be put together in about 20 minutes.

“Plainly, the finished ‘Buy Build Shoot’ kit is an instrument of combat,” Justice Gorsuch wrote, adding that no one would confuse the pistol “with a tool or a toy.”

The ruling in favor of gun regulations is a departure for the court, which has shown itself to be skeptical of them — and of administrative agency power. Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas, both conservatives, filed dissents.

The “weapon-parts kits themselves do not meet the statutory definition of ‘firearm,’” Justice Thomas wrote, important because Congress in 1968 agreed the government could legally impose some regulations on firearms. “That should end the case.”

Legal experts said the decision was a victory for those advocating more gun regulations.

“Although this is not a Second Amendment ruling, it shows that the justices are not uniformly hostile to gun regulation,” said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Ghost guns have been found in increasing numbers at crime scenes, and today’s decision should help the problem.”

The Biden administration in 2022 enacted rules tightening access to the weapons kits, after law enforcement agencies reported that ghost guns were exploding in popularity and being used to commit serious crimes.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimated that use of the gun components and kits in crime increased tenfold in the six years before the rules were adopted.

Among the regulations: requiring vendors and gun makers to be licensed to sell the kits, mandating serial numbers on the components so the weapons could be tracked and adding background checks for would-be buyers.

Steven M. Dettelbach, the former director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who shepherded the regulation, urged the Trump administration and Congress to “fully support” the agency to implement the ghost gun regulations. With support from the administration, he said in a statement, “today’s decision can save lives.”

Gun rights groups based their challenge to the regulations by claiming that the government had overstepped its bounds in regulating the gun kits because they did not meet the definition of firearms under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Opponents of gun regulations argued that most people who bought the kits were hobbyists, not criminals. In legal filings, the groups argued that a majority of firearms used in crimes were traditional weapons that were manufactured professionally.

Lawyers for the government, arguing in October while President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in office, said the guns kits should be regulated as firearms because they allowed “anyone with basic tools and access to internet video tutorials to assemble a functional firearm ‘quickly and easily’ — often, in a matter of minutes.”

During the oral argument in Bondi v. VanDerStok, No. 23-852, a majority of the justices had appeared to favor keeping the rules in place. At least two conservatives, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, raised sharp questions about arguments by the plaintiffs that the administration had overstepped its bounds.

The justices had wrestled with how best to draw analogies to the gun kits. Chief Justice Roberts seemed skeptical of attempts by the gun rights lawyers to say that people who put together the kits were similar to amateur car hobbyists, saying that the kits seemed to require much less effort to put together.

“Drilling a hole or two,” Chief Justice Roberts said, “doesn’t give the same sort of reward that you get as working on your car on the weekends.”

Justice Gorsuch returned to this point in the opinion, explaining that the gun kits could be considered weapons even though they were unfinished objects because “their intended function is clear.”

An author might ask for an opinion on her latest novel, Justice Gorsuch wrote, even though the person was referring to an unfinished draft. A friend might talk about a table he bought at IKEA, even though he had hours of assembly ahead of him.

In both cases, the justice wrote, “the intended function of the unfinished object is obvious to speaker and listener alike.”

The same, he said, was true for the ghost gun kits.

“Yes, perhaps a half-hour of work is required before anyone can fire a shot,” Justice Gorsuch wrote. “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.’”

Like Justice Gorsuch, Justice Thomas also included photographs of gun kits to illustrate his point. But he came to the opposite conclusion.

Justice Thomas wrote that in his view, an object that “may readily be converted” into a gun would only qualify as a firearm if it was already a weapon.

“The ordinary meaning of ‘weapon’ does not include weapon-parts kits,” he wrote.

His point echoed a debate from the oral argument, when Justice Alito disputed the idea that the gun kits could count as firearms. Justice Alito made an analogy to cooking an omelet in his questions to the government’s lawyer.

As in, when do the components of a gun become a firearm?

“If I show you — I put out on a counter some eggs, some chopped-up ham, some chopped-up pepper and onions, is that a Western omelet?” Justice Alito asked.

Adam Liptak and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.