Tag: Ghost Guns

SCOTUS Backs Biden Admin ‘Ghost Guns’ Rule for Second Time

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The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a federal judge’s order suspending the Biden administration’s “ghost guns” rule, which regulates gun parts kits as traditional firearms.

After blocking U.S. District for the Northern District of Texas Judge Reed O’Connor’s decision to vacate the rule nationwide in August, the Supreme Court vacated O’Connor’s more recent Sept. 14 injunction suspending enforcement of the regulation against two manufacturing companies, Blackhawk Manufacturing and Defense Distributed. The justice’s decision leaves in place the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “Frame or Receiver” rule, which expands the definition of firearm to encompass parts kits that are “readily convertible to functional weapons” or “functional ‘frames’ or ‘receivers’ of weapons.

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Biden’s ATF Continues Its Crackdown on ‘Ghost Guns’

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The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) specified Tuesday that Gun Control Act (GCA) regulations cover types of incomplete pistol frames used in “ghost guns.”

The bureau argued in its open letter to federal firearms licensees that partially complete Polymer80, Lone Wolf and similar striker-fired semi-automatic pistol frames “may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted” to a functional frame and thus fall under GCA jurisdiction based on the Justice Department’s (DOJ) “Frame or Receiver” rule. The rule, which became effective in August, says regulations for completed firearms also apply to gun parts kits that can be readily converted into them.

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‘Ghost Gun’ Ban Fails in Virginia General Assembly

Eric Burk

The Virginia House of Delegates and Senate failed to come to a compromise over a ban on “ghost guns” – a nickname for firearms that are handmade, improvised, or otherwise assembled from unserialized parts. As a result, the bill died when the General Assembly session ended Monday. Although HB 2276 passed in the House of Delegates, senators worried that the bill could have unintended consequences such as preventing legally owned firearms that had been grandfathered in from being transferred to someone else.

A Senate committee had already changed the bill to allow possession of unserialized firearms, but still banned manufacture, sale, or transfer of the weapons.

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Virginia AG Herring to Court: Ban ‘Ghost Guns’

Eric Burk

Attorney General Mark Herring has joined 19 other attorneys general asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to force regulation of so-called “ghost guns” – partially assembled firearms kits that can be completed by consumers without the serial numbers law enforcement uses to track the weapons. Herring and the other attorneys general signed an amicus brief as third parties to Syracuse v. ATF, a lawsuit that says the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) was too lenient in its 2015 interpretation of the Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968.

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