US Supreme Court upholds federal 'ghost guns' restrictions

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court upheld on Wednesday a regulation targeting largely untraceable "ghost guns" imposed by Democratic former President Joe Biden's administration in a crackdown on firearms whose use has proliferated in crimes nationwide, finding the measure to be consistent with a 1968 federal law.

The justices, in a 7-2 ruling authored by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, overturned a lower court's decision that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had exceeded its authority in issuing the 2022 rule targeting parts and kits for ghost guns. 

Ghost gun products - particularly attractive to people prohibited by law from buying firearms - are typically purchased online and may be quickly assembled at home, without the serial numbers ordinarily used to trace guns or background checks on purchasers required for other firearms. 

Gun safety groups called Wednesday's ruling "life saving" and noted that the rule has broad support from law enforcement authorities.

"We applaud the Supreme Court for doing the right thing by upholding a lawful and critical rule that protects public safety, and by rejecting the gun lobby's extreme legal agenda," said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of the advocacy group Everytown Law. 

Plaintiffs including parts manufacturers, various gun owners and two gun rights groups - the Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation - sued to block the ATF rule in federal court in Texas. 

The regulation required manufacturers of firearms kits and parts, such as partially complete frames or receivers, to mark their products with serial numbers, obtain licenses and conduct background checks on purchasers, as already required for other commercially made firearms.

The rule clarified that these kits and components are covered by the definition of "firearm" under a 1968 federal law called the Gun Control Act and that commercial manufacturers of such kits must become licensed. 

Gorsuch in the decision called the regulation consistent with the Gun Control Act. Noting that the plaintiffs had asserted that the rule could never lawfully apply to a parts kit or incomplete frame, the court had "no trouble rejecting that unqualified view," Gorsuch wrote. 

The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, expanded gun rights in three major decisions since 2008 but has shown a willingness to allow some limits. 

In two rulings last year, it upheld a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns but rejected a federal rule banning "bump stocks" - devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns. 

In Wednesday's ruling, Gorsuch recounted how Congress adopted the 1968 statute shortly after the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy. 

"Existing gun control measures, Congress found, allowed criminals to acquire largely untraceable guns too easily," Gorsuch wrote. 

Gorsuch wrote that in recent years, that way in which guns are made and sold has changed profoundly, with 3D printing and reinforced polymers making it easier and cheaper for individuals to assemble their own functional firearms in their own homes.  

Gorsuch was joined in the majority by conservative Justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh as well as the court's three liberal members. Conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision. 

In a dissenting opinion, Thomas wrote that the court's majority "blesses the government's overreach based on a series of errors regarding both the standard of review and the interpretation of the statute." 

'LEGAL INFIRMITIES'

Bill Sack, the Second Amendment Foundation's director of legal operations, expressed disappointment with the ruling.

"We have maintained since the introduction of this rule that the legal infirmities it represented went beyond the made-up pejorative 'ghost guns.' What this rule does is allow the government to rewrite the law in accordance with what it wants the law to say, rather than what it does," Sack added.

The United States, with the world's highest gun ownership rate, remains a nation deeply divided over how to address firearms violence including frequent mass shootings. 

Ghost guns are especially attractive to people legally barred from buying firearms, including minors and individuals convicted of violent crimes, according to law enforcement authorities. When these weapons are discovered at a crime scene, authorities have a hard time tracing them back to an individual purchaser because ghost guns lack the serial numbers present on other firearms. 

Fort Worth, Texas-based Judge Reed O'Connor invalidated the rule in 2023, ruling that the ATF had impermissibly "rewritten the law" without congressional input. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld O'Connor's decision. 

The Supreme Court in 2023 reinstated the rule pending the Biden administration's appeals. It heard arguments in the case on Oct. 8.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)