Washington – The Supreme Court confirmed on Wednesday a federal prohibition of the sale of parts kits that allow the owners of arms without a license that the police cannot track.
In a 7-2 decision, the judges agreed these homemade weapons, often called “ghost guns”, qualify as firearms under federal law.
“Today, thousands of law enforcement agencies throughout the country depend on [federal] Tracking system to link firearms involved in crimes with their owners, ”said Judge Neil M. Gorsuch for the court.
Judges Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito disagreed.
The decision defends a regulation issued in 2022 by the Biden Administration that was strongly supported by the Police and the prosecutors.
The ruling annuls conservative judges in Texas who said that Congress had not given federal regulators the power to prohibit the “Kits of parties” that could meet in a weapon.
It is a rare victory for the defenders of arms control in the Superior Court.
“This decision of the Supreme Court is great news for all but for criminals who have adopted ghost weapons impossible to track their weapons of choice,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for the safety of weapons. “Ghost weapons seem regular weapons, shoot as regular weapons and kill as regular weapons, so it is logical that the Supreme Court has just affirmed that they can also be regulated as regular weapons.”
Last year, the conservative majority of the court blocked a regulation backed by Trump and Biden administrations that had prohibited “actions”, which allowed semi -automatic weapons to firing quickly as a machine gun. By a vote of 6-3, the judges said that these devices did not adjust to the definition of a machine gun established by the Congress.
But the court said on Wednesday that the weapons control of the 1968 law broadly defined a firearm as “any weapon … that will be designed or can easily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.”
None of the cases directly involved the second amendment and its protection for arms rights.
The Los Angeles Police Department and other police agencies have expressed the alarm for the growing threat of easy -to -assembly weapons that can be purchased as online kits.
Three years ago, Lapd said that “these ghost guns are an epidemic not only in Los Angeles but throughout the country … ghost weapons are real, they work and kill.”
The Low Biden Department of Justice told the Court that the local law agencies confiscated more than 19,000 ghost weapons weapons in the crime scenes in 2021, an increase of more than ten times in four years.
Upon urging the Court to defend the prohibition, the general lawyer Elizabeth pre -placed argued that the order weapons kits could “effectively annul” the arms laws that date back to 1968 that allow the police to draw weapons that are used in crimes.
Without the new regulations adopted by the Office of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or ATF, “anyone could buy an online kit and gather a fully functional gun in minutes, no background verification, records or serial number is required,” he said.
California has already banned the sale of these parts kits, but Atty. General Rob Bonta said the federal prohibition was necessary to enforce the prohibition of sending these kits by mail.
Although California has tried to stop the non -serialized weapons since at least 2016, he said that these weapons represented almost 30% of all weapons recovered in the state by ATF.
Meanwhile, the number of non -serialized weapons recovered by the application agencies of the California Law increased from 167 in 2016 to almost 12,900 in 2022, an increase of 77 times, said Bonta.
But the conservative court of the 5th Circuit in New Orleans was not unchanged by the warnings issued by the police departments. He hit the ATF regulation and ruled a “gun pie” is not a firearm, even if you can assemble in one.
The Supreme Court suspended the 5th Circuit waiting last year and voted to listen to the government appeal in the case of Bondi vs. Vanderstok.
