Another ill-conceived bit of DOJ gun regulation is now headed to the Supreme Court.
After the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) promulgated a rule to regulate home-built firearm kits, or what the Biden administration calls “ghost guns,” two Texas residents filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the rule that will now be heard by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).
The Biden Administration and other gun-grabbing Democrats call them “ghost guns” because they are literally, by law, not guns. They’re unfinished 80% receiver kits, or build kids that you must finish at home on a milling machine, 3D printer, etc. American citizens building their own guns without the approval of the federal government (which has only occurred since, oh, about 1873) promises to thwart their plans of complete civilian disarmament, hence “ghost gun” regulations.
Represented by the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), the lawsuit from plaintiffs Jennifer VanDerStok and Michael Andren contends the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) exceeded the boundaries of federal law by implementing the new rules, which treat unfinished firearm kits as finished firearms and requires all firearms to possess a serial number.
The DOJ argued it simply wants to make sure the unfinished parts kits are treated like any other firearm and says implementation of the rule will not prevent anyone who is lawfully allowed to possess a gun from obtaining one. Those wanting to buy one would need to undergo the regular process to purchase any firearm, which includes a background check.
The plaintiffs disagree, writing in their SCOTUS brief that they believe the federal government’s goal in implementing the rule isn’t to simply regulate the firearm kit industry, but to get rid of it.
“The expected result of ATF’s Rule was not simply to regulate this industry but to destroy it,” the FPC wrote, pointing to a communication from the ATF to the FBI regarding the rule’s effect.
“The ATF informed the FBI that the Rule should not be expected to significantly impact the background check system because “many parts kit manufacturers and dealers will go out of business,” the brief continued.
Both a federal judge in North Texas and subsequently the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the plaintiffs in challenging the rule, prompting the DOJ to file an appeal with SCOTUS.
On Monday, SCOTUS granted a review of the case for its fall term, setting up a final legal showdown between the gun rights groups and the federal government on the issue.
In previous Supreme Court cases on the legality of various firearms sale and registration acts, the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution has typically done a lot of heavy lifting. However, someone producing a gun in their own workshop for personal use and not to sell in another state, would not seem to fall under the purvey of federal regulation were it not for the radical expansion of federal power to stick it’s nose into every possible affair of private citizens afford by such post-New Deal decisions as Wickard vs. Filburn.
Maybe the Supreme Court will finally use this opportunity to reign in the federal government’s unlegislated regulatory powers based on vague, unenumerated Commerce Clause rationales.
Tags: ATF, Commerce Clause, Department of Justice, Firearms Policy Coalition, Guns, Jennifer VanDerStok, Michael Andren, Regulation, Supreme Court, Texas, Wickard vs. Filburn
The BATF and DOJ are fighting a lost cause, they just don’t know it.
The reality is that 3D printing and the rest of the modern manufacturing suite is going to make it so damn easy to manufacture weapons and other implements of destruction that it ain’t even funny.
Where they really need to be worried, and cracking down? Home and small lab recombinant DNA tech. We are not that far from the point where some high school kid is going to be able to replicate the Australian work with mouse pox, and it’ll be “Hey, what happened to everyone…?”
Firearms technology is chump change, on the scale of the problem. Hell, it always has been… Someone with only a modicum of machining knowledge could churn out thousands of STEN-analog weapons in the course of a week with any decent production machine shop…
The serialization of firearms was first required by the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934 so NFA weapons could be taxed. Serialization was extended to handguns by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 (FFA) so manufacturers, importers, and persons in the business of selling handguns could be taxed. The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA ’68) extended the serialization requirement to long guns.
The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed differential taxes on a constitutionally protected activity – newspaper publishing – in its 1936 Grosjean v. American Press Co. decision. The U.S. Supreme Court then directly contradicted Grosjean in their March 1937 Sonzinsky v. United States ruling that constitutionally protected firearms transactions could be differentially taxed.
The Sonzinsky volte face was a direct response to President Roosevelt’s SCOTUS packing plan, announced a month earlier in February 1937. Sonzinsky was Justice Stone delivering the Supreme Court’s abject surrender to Roosevelt and his Attorney General, Homer Cummings.
The U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment prohibits the federal government from taxing firearms, regulating firearms, and thus imposing any serialization requirements, The Fourteenth Amendment extended this prohibition to the States.
Robert Baker had a rifle barrel boring factory in Pennsylvania in *1719*.
Rifles, not muskets. Firearms manufacturing separate from government (e.g. Springfield Armory) was absolutely well known to the founding fathers.
[…] Related: “Ghost Gun” Ban Headed To Supreme Court. […]
1. A piston ring is not a car. A head gasket is not a car. Parts kits are not cars or guns.
2. Suppose I buy a programmable mill and mass produce finished receivers. Suppose I stamp each finished receiver with the date and time of completion: MK 2024-04-23:1906.
How does that help law enforcement?
3. “Maybe the Supreme Court will finally use this opportunity to reign in the federal government’s unlegislated regulatory powers …”
“Rein in”: it’s an equestrian metaphor.
ffffff
A year or two ago, the CBS affiliate in Houston ran a news special about ghost guns. The chief of police was on camera talking about what an incredible threat they posed. These weapons were being used to commit ever more crimes, and the police wouldn’t be able to trace them!
Like 1) these rifles are being left behind at crime scenes. Or 2) rifles were being used in any appreciable numbers to commit crimes. Or 3) there existed a way to legally trace weapon purchases if only the police had the serial number. They were at best conflating stolen weapons with serial numbers filed off with home finished weapons, and at worst scare mongering to generate a public opinion based on deliberate falsehoods.
This goes on nationwide, to influence numbers of people who don’t take the time to check what the news media feeds them.
The media geniuses never ask the statist twats just how many crimes are actually solved via tracking weapons, in the first place.
The reality is that it’s a hell of a lot harder than they make it look on TV. Case in point: I once dealt with, somewhat peripherally, a case wherein a young officer in the Army was being charged with theft of an SKS. He “foolishly” tried to register an SKS he’d purchased as a college student, from a gun shop in his home town. Trouble was, that SKS serial number was already registered in the then-new Army-wide firearms registration system, and it had been reported stolen.
Now, if you know a damn thing about those Chinese SKS rifles, you know that their serial numbers were… Iffy. The Chinese repeated a lot of them, using date codes and other esoteric things to differentiate them. The importers were usually stone-ignorant of these things, and typically did not care that they were importing multiple serial numbers that were essentially the same in terms of how they’d be looked at by anyone. The BATF didn’t catch that crap, either… Add in all the varied importers? And, the fact that idjit people taking serial numbers off the guns for registration never a.) verified them in the first place, nor b.) knew that there were date codes and arsenal markings that had to be included in order to actually verify the damn precise serial number identity of that particular weapon. As well, the Chinese ideographs were not in the registration system in the first damn place, sooo…
The entire basis for persecuting that young officer was essentially nonsensical. You’re going to run into those very same issues throughout any tracing exercise, and despite what the TV tells you, knowing who bought what doesn’t solve crimes very well. The “authorities” have introduced enough question into the matter to make the whole thing highly dubious, at best.
And, as well… Show me where the laws say you can’t build your own weapons, for your own use. So far as I know, there’s nothing out there that says that.
Of course, the whole thing doesn’t really matter all that much, as long as we have judges like the one in this news piece:
https://redstate.com/jeffc/2024/04/22/brooklyn-man-convicted-over-gun-hobby-by-biased-ny-court-could-be-facing-harsh-sentence-n2173162
Interesting that this bitch thinks she can write her own damn version of the Constitution, and thinks nothing of saying so publicly. Not that long ago, such a thing said by a judge like that would have resulted in their instantaneous disbarment, but… We live in sadly diminished times.
And then there’s Luty designed by an Englishman protesting his country’s brain dead restriction. Brandon Herrera build one to spec.
https://youtu.be/3YE9J7qcj0c?si=nkqHdkPhxlk0lG73
Why does the political Left want to place a limit on “ghost guns”? As a radical abortionist, Joe Biden could be expected to logically argue that if his right to have a gun is denied, he will use a coat hanger in the back alley to make his own.