WASHINGTON, DC – Following today’s decision at the Supreme Court in Bondi v. VanDerStok, a case in which the Court considered whether weapon parts kits and incomplete frames and receivers can be regulated as “firearms” under the Gun Control Act, Constitutional Accountability Center Senior Appellate Counsel Miriam Becker-Cohen issued the following reaction:

Today’s decision is a victory for public safety and honest textualism. It is also timely—it highlights the importance of government agencies and their ability to pass regulations to improve Americans’ lives and wellbeing.

In a cogent and straightforward analysis, Justice Gorsuch, joined by all of the Court’s justices except for Justices Thomas and Alito, rejected the gun lobby’s farfetched argument that a build-your-own-gun kit designed and marketed as an untraceable firearm may not be classified and regulated as a “firearm” by the federal government.  Mirroring arguments made in our brief, Justice Gorsuch engaged in a close analysis of the text of the statute, including the nouns “weapon,” “frame,” and “receiver,” and concluded that the ordinary meaning of all three terms is broad enough to include nearly complete or ready-to-complete versions of those items, like the ghost guns subject to the challenged regulation.

CAC Counsel Nina Henry continued:

In the aftermath of the tragic 1968 assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by people who never should have been permitted to purchase firearms, Congress took decisive action to prevent the sale of untraceable firearms and passed the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA). Echoing our amicus brief, Justice Gorsuch’s opinion for the Court recognized that the plain text of the GCA applies to modern 3D-printed gun kits as much as it did to the modified starter guns of the 1960s, and thus these firearms kits can be regulated under the GCA.

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Resources:

Case page in Bondi v. VanDerStok: https://www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/garland-v-vanderstok/

Nina Henry, The Supreme Court Should Listen to Congress in Ghost Guns Case, Washington Monthly, https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/10/08/the-supreme-court-should-listen-to-congress-in-ghost-guns-case/