The Supreme Court has agreed to consider the Biden administration’s appeal of hard-to-trace ghost gun regulations that lower courts rejected.
The justices had previously intervened, by a vote of 5 to 4, to keep the regulation in effect during the legal battle. Ghost weapons without serial numbers appear more and more often at crime scenes.
Regulations effective in 2022 will amend the definition of a firearm under federal law to include unfinished parts, such as the frame of a handgun or the frame of a shoulder, so that they can be more readily followed.
These parts must be licensed and include a serial number. Manufacturers must also conduct background checks before sale, just as they do with other commercially produced guns.
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This requirement applies regardless of how the gun is manufactured, meaning it includes ghost guns made from individual parts or kits or with a 3D printer.
This rule does not prohibit people from purchasing a kit or any type of gun. The Department of Justice previously told the court that Court law enforcement seized more than 19,000 ghost guns at crime scenes in 2021, a tenfold increase in just five years.
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U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, struck down the regulation last year, concluding that it exceeded the authority of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
O’Connor wrote that the definition of a gun in federal law does not include all parts of a gun. Congress can change the law, he wrote A three-person panel of the 5th U.S.
The Circuit Court of Appeals, appointed by then-President Donald Trump, largely upheld O’Connor’s ruling. The Supreme Court allowed this provision to remain in effect while the trial continued.
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Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s thrCourt’sral members in the majority.
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas would have upheld the ruling during the appeal process. Trump appointed Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. The debates will not take place until the autumn.
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