WASHINGTON – During oral arguments on Tuesday, the Supreme Court appeared ready to uphold the Biden administration’s authority to create a rule regulating weapon parts kits in the same way as firearms through the Gun Control Act of 1968.

If the court affirms the Biden administration’s regulations, imposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, weapon parts kits, or ghost guns, would be required to have serial numbers and manufacturers and vendors would be required to run background checks and maintain sales records.

The weapons have been used in crimes at a consistently increasing rate since 2016. From 2016 to 2021 there was a 658% increase in the number of ghost guns recovered by law enforcement across the nation according to data from the Department of Justice. From January 2016 to December 2021, the ATF received approximately 45,240 reports of ghost guns recovered by law enforcement. During the same time period, ghost guns were found in 692 homicide or attempted homicide investigations.

In response to the rise in ghost guns, the ATF promulgated a new rule that included revising the definition of a firearm under the Gun Control Act to include weapon parts kits that are designed to or may readily be converted into an operable firearm capable of expelling a projectile.

A group of advocates and gun owners sued arguing the ATF violated the Gun Control Act. The case made its way through the court system. After a summary judgment in favor of the advocates by a federal judge in Texas, the government requested the Supreme Court take the case. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to allow the restrictions while the current case plays out.

Conservative justices Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal wing of the court in 2023.

The majority of justices seemed skeptical of the arguments made by the respondents in the case, made up of gun owners, Second Amendment advocacy groups and parts makers.

Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar argued for upholding the regulations. Pete Patterson argued for the respondents who believe the regulations are an overstep.

“A gun that was once fully operational that everyone would agree is a firearm, it’s disassembled as sometimes happens, maybe even after a crime, is that still a firearm or no? Under your view,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked the attorney for the respondents, Pete Patterson.

Patterson agreed that it was still a firearm. He said he agreed because that weapon would have a frame or receiver.

Jackson shot back by saying in her hypothetical the frame or receiver is not in the box to which Patterson said that would disqualify it from being a weapon indicating the respondents believe the frame or receiver is a critical component to the definition of a weapon.

The Biden administration’s regulation hinges on the sale of frames or receivers in the weapon parts kits. One of the issues at hand is the question of whether “a partially complete, disassembled or nonfunctional frame or receiver” that is “designed to or may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted to function as a frame or receiver” covered under the Gun Control Act.

At one point, Justice Samuel Alito asked Patterson if an ordinary name for an object designed to complete a function is still applicable even if the object is not functional.

“Suppose I see that my neighbor is restoring a classic car, but he’s taken out some critical parts and then someone says ‘What is that?’ I might well say well that’s a 1957 Thunderbird even though you couldn’t drive it and it would take some work to make it do the thing that it was originally created to do,” Alito said.

Early in the argument, Alito held up a large yellow legal pad and asked Prelogar if it was a grocery list. Prelogar said it was not because there are various well-known uses for the pen and pad.

“If I show you on the counter, some eggs, chopped up ham, some chopped up pepper and onions, is that a western omelet?” Alito said to Prelogar.

Prelogar responded by saying no because the items have various well-known uses other than an omelet. She went on to say the key difference in the case is that the weapon parts kits are designed and intended to be used as instruments of combat and that the respondents agree a disassembled gun qualifies as a weapon.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett followed up on Alito’s omelet question by asking Prelogar if her answer would change if the ingredients were in a kit from ‘Hello Fresh.’

“Yes, and I think that that presses on the more apt analogy here which is that we are not suggesting that scattered components that might have some entirely separate and distinct function could be aggregated and called a weapon in the absence of this kind of evidence that, that is their intended purpose and function,” Prelogar said.

Prelogar pushed back on the claim the market for ghost guns is targeted toward hobbyists.

“The evidence shows that actually the market for ghost guns collapsed after this rule was permitted to go into effect, which I think just underscores what was evident all along: The reason why you want a ghost gun is specifically because it’s unserialized and can’t be traced,” Prelogar said.

A decision is expected before the Supreme Court’s term ends in June.

Kevin Eagleson is reporting from Gaylord News’ Washington bureau this fall as part of an OU Daily scholarship.

Gaylord News is a reporting project of the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. For more stories by Gaylord News go to GaylordNews.net