Supreme Court backs Biden's tougher federal rules on untraceable 'ghost guns' for now

WASHINGTON – A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday backed a Biden administration effort to regulate “ghost guns,” temporarily allowing the government to require manufacturers of the untraceable weapon kits to conduct background checks on customers and mark their products with serial numbers.

Ghost gun kits allow people to purchase parts that can be built into a weapon without the usual regulations that come with an assembled gun. President Joe Biden last year required companies selling the do-it-yourself kits to adhere to the same rules as other gunmakers, such as keeping records that help police trace the weapons.

The Supreme Court agreed 5-4 on Tuesday to pause a lower court's ruling, allowing the Biden administration to enforce the rule while the underlying case continues. Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts, both conservatives, sided with the court's three-member liberal wing to keep the Biden rule in place for now.

Four other conservative justices − Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh − said they would have temporarily blocked enforcement of the rule. As is often the case on its emergency docket, the high court issued only a short order and did not explain its reasoning.

What are ghost guns?

So-called "ghost guns" are often kits sold on-line that allow purchasers to assemble parts into a functioning weapon.

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Gun control advocates see the kits as a dangerous loophole and point out that police frequently find the weapons at crime scenes. The Biden administration told the Supreme Court that law enforcement agencies submitted 1,600 ghost guns to federal authorities for tracing in 2017. Four years later, that number had increased to more than 19,000.

Those tracing requests were largely futile, the administration says, because the kits do not carry serial numbers.

"These guns are weapons of choice for many criminals," Biden said last year. "We are going to do everything we can to deprive them of that choice and, when we find them, put them in jail for a long, long time."

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Gun owners, advocacy groups and companies that make or distribute the products sued. They told the Supreme Court that Biden overstepped his authority by defining “firearm” to include the kits. Rather than “take matters into its own hands,” the plaintiffs say, the administration should have tried to convince Congress to change the law.

Eleven states, including Illinois, California and New York, have regulations on ghost guns in place intended to curb their use, according to the gun control advocacy group Everytown.

White House, gun rights groups respond

White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton said the Supreme Court's order "will keep in place important efforts to combat the surge of unserialized, privately-made 'ghost guns' which have proliferated in crime scenes across the country."

Cody Wisniewski, a lawyer for the Firearms Policy Coalition, said the gun rights group was "deeply disappointed" in the order but said the group is "still confident that we will yet again defeat ATF and its unlawful rule" when lower courts review the case on the merits.

'Ghost guns' on the 'shadow docket'

A U.S. District Court in Texas blocked the regulation from covering ghost guns in June. The Louisiana-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit declined to pause the lower court's ruling. The Biden administration then filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court late last month.

The Supreme Court's ruling arrived on its "shadow docket," where such emergency cases are handled. The court did not decide whether the rule is legal. Rather, the court allowed the regulation to stand while the case continues.

The nation’s highest court is already set to consider a significant Second Amendment later this year: A challenge to a federal law that prohibits Americans subject to domestic violence orders from possessing a gun. A Texas man is appealing his conviction under that law in a case that could have sweeping implications for other gun regulations.