Supreme Court upholds 'ghost gun' restrictions

What happened

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 Wednesday that "ghost guns" can be regulated like other firearms under the 1968 Gun Control Act, upholding a 2022 interpretation of the law by former President Joe Biden's administration. The decision, written by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, allows the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to require serial numbers, background checks and sales receipts for the build-it-yourself gun kits. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

Who said what

Police recovered more than 19,000 ghost guns from crime scenes in 2021, a 1,000% jump from 2017, but there has been a "sharp decline" since the rule took effect, Daniel Webster at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions told The Washington Post.

The ruling was a "rare win" for gun control advocates before this "conservative high court," said CNN. In 2022, the court's "conservative supermajority dove headlong into the deep end of a constitutional pool that seemed to make gun control very hard to defend in court," NPR said. But since then, most of the justices have "seemed a bit hesitant about heading back to the deep end."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What next?

The Trump administration "has not said whether it would enforce or rescind the ghost gun restrictions," the Post said. Gorsuch's ruling also "left open the possibility" that some fragmentary kits might "fall outside the regulation," The Wall Street Journal said.