“The Final Rule is limitless,” marveled Judge Andrew Oldham in a pointed concurrence that supported the majority “without qualification” but sought to more harshly spank the ATF. “It purports to regulate any piece of metal or plastic that has been machined beyond its primordial state for fear that it might one day be turned into a gun, a gun frame, or a gun receiver. And it doesn’t stop regulating the metal or plastic until it’s melted back down to ooze. The GCA allows none of this.”
Can the government regulate objects that resemble unfinished firearm parts as if they are guns because, with tools and effort, they might be turned into working components? More specifically, can a federal agency start doing that via a reinterpretation of the law, and threaten noncompliant people with prosecution on its own initiative, without an act of Congress? The Supreme Court has now agreed to weigh in on those issues after lower courts rejected federal efforts to turn many Americans into felons by reinterpreting established legislation.
The Supreme Court’s announcement that it will consider arguments came in the form of a brief Monday notice that certiorari was accepted in the case of Garland v. VanDerStok.
Government Regulators Chase Ghosts
At issue are so-called “ghost guns”—homemade firearms that are often crafted from “80 percent” kits including unfinished parts that hobbyists complete in their own workshops. The “ghost” designation comes from the absence of factory-provided serial numbers, making the DIY guns harder to trace and record. To this day, on its website, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) specifies that “ATF has long held that items such as receiver blanks, ‘castings’ or ‘machined bodies’ in which the fire-control cavity area is completely solid and un-machined have not reached the ‘stage of manufacture’ which would result in the classification of a firearm according to the GCA,” referring to the Gun Control Act of 1968.
By J.D. Tuccille
