The U.S. Supreme Court has been extremely busy. They’ve handed down a huge ruling even out of session.
And now the U.S. Constitution will never be the same after what the High Court just did.
Early into 2022, the Biden administration announced that they would be going after what some call “ghost guns.”
To many, that sounds scary because they say that it is guns that “can’t be traced.” So it would make sense that these ghost guns would be a major contributing factor to gun violence in America, right?
Well, not really. Ghost guns are very rarely used at all in violent gun crimes according to federal and state-level law enforcement data that is available.
So in April of 2022, the Biden administration released a statement that they would be working with federal agencies like the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and explosives).
The White House website posted the statement release and reads:
Today, the President and Deputy Attorney General will also announce that the U.S. Department of Justice has issued a final rule to rein in the proliferation of “ghost guns” – unserialized, privately-made firearms that law enforcement are increasingly recovering at crime scenes in cities across the country.
They outright admit that they were going to try to go after “ghost guns” and ban them altogether.
This final rule bans the business of manufacturing the most accessible ghost guns, such as unserialized “buy build shoot” kits…
This supposed crackdown on ghost guns has been met with legal challenges, however. And the U.S. Supreme Court has now weighed in, indicating that they may be siding with the Biden administration.
The Supreme Court upheld a provision put in place by the Biden administration to regulate “ghost guns,” or firearms that can be made from kits in a private home.
The ruling comes after a federal court in Texas rejected a 2022 regulation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) that broadened the agency’s definition of “firearm,” imposing new requirements on the manufacturers of “ghost guns” in terms of licensing and background checks.
In his opinion, Federal District Court for the Northern District of Texas Judge Reed O’Connor stated, “A weapon parts kit is not a firearm,” effectively nullifying the ATF policy revision.
“Even if it is true that such an interpretation creates loopholes that, as a policy matter, should be avoided, it is not the role of the judiciary to correct them. That is up to Congress.”
On Tuesday, leftist justices Kentanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor sided with Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Amy Coney Barrett to rule in favor of the White House. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, all on the conservative side of the court, agreed with the initial decision of the lower court.
General Counsel for the Firearms Policy Coalition Cody J. Wisniewski, however, criticized the decision and argued that the lower court’s decision was well-grounded.
The lawyer expressed his displeasure to Fox News Digital, saying, “We are deeply disappointed that the Court pressed pause on our defeat of ATF’s rule effectively redefining ‘firearm’ and ‘frame or receiver’ under federal law.”
Attorney David Thompson, who argued for the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case that was decided against them on Tuesday, shared this line of thinking.
“The Gun Control Act of 1968 reflects a fundamental policy choice by Congress to regulate the commercial market for firearms while leaving the law-abiding citizens of this Country free to exercise their right to make firearms for their own use without overbearing federal regulation,” the attorney contends.
No matter which way you slice it, the Biden administration is trying to regulate raw materials that are not classified as weapons in ther raw state.
That’s an intrusion into the privacy of the lives of Americans that we simply have not seen before in the realm of firearms regulation.
Stay tuned to Prudent Politics for more updates on this pending case.
