Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Court Blocks Biden’s ‘Ghost Gun’ Rule

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A federal court Tuesday blocked a rule issued by the Biden administration targeting so-called “ghost guns” on constitutional grounds.

Chief United States District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas, a George W. Bush appointee, issued the ruling Tuesday in favor of Defense Distributed, accepting arguments that the “frame or receiver rule” enacted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) was unconstitutional on both Fifth Amendment and Second Amendment grounds. In the opinion, O’Connor said the rule deprived people seeking to manufacture their own firearms of due process and also unconstitutionally prohibited people from acquiring the means to manufacture firearms on their own.

“The Final Rule does not merely lack supporting analogues,” O’Connor wrote. “It contradicts the actual historical tradition of personal gunsmithing. Self-manufacture of firearms in America was common and indeed foundational to establishing our Nation.”

“The court found that it was not analogous to compare gunpowder storage, safe storage laws with a crime reduction bill, that they were not one and the same, that they were not analogous,” Second Amendment Foundation Senior Director of Litigation William Sack told the Daily Caller News Foundation, who noted that Defense Distributed and the Second Amendment Foundation were granted a permanent injunction by O’Connor.

The Supreme Court upheld a Biden administration regulation cracking down on so-called “ghost guns” because they were similar to certain restrictions on the First Amendment in a 7-2 decision, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joining the three left-wing justices to keep the regulations in place. In the prior case, O’Connor issued a preliminary ruling in September 2022 that ATF likely usurped congressional authority, following it up with a ruling that the regulations exceeded ATF’s authority in June 2023.

The Biden administration enacted the regulations in 2022, after a mass shooter killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, before Border Patrol agents stormed the classroom and fatally shot him. The ruling also noted that the rule made it impossible for people to know if they were following the law.

“Because the Final Rule fails to provide appropriate guidance, it is void for vagueness,” O’Connor wrote with regards to the Fifth Amendment grounds.

“If you look back at the rule itself, the determining factors, I should say, as to what point a partially manufactured frame or receiver became something that fell under the definition of firearm, the rule established like a multi-factor, non-exclusive, non-dispositive test that essentially boils down to, we know it when we see it,” Sack told the DCNF.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.