On Tuesday, October 8, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Garland v. VanDerStok, a case challenging the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) rule regulating the parts kits used to build ghost guns. Since it took effect in August 2022, the ATF’s “frame and receiver” rule has made it harder for people prohibited from owning firearms — including minors and those with felony convictions — to buy unserialized, and thus untraceable, gun-building kits online while avoiding background checks and transaction records.
To learn more about ghost guns and their deadly proliferation, click here.
In June, the Supreme Court struck down the ATF rule banning bump stocks despite their use in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. But as the VanDerStok case moved through lower courts, the Supreme Court twice granted the federal government emergency relief to keep the frame and receiver rule in effect, allowing the ATF to continue subjecting ghost guns to the same regulations as commercially made firearms.
the rise of untraceable guns
Congress enacted the Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968 to prevent people from buying mail-order guns like the rifle used in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jr. The law requires that licensed gun makers imprint serial numbers on their guns, and that gun dealers record those serial numbers in their transaction records so police can trace the gun back to its original purchaser if it’s ever recovered at a crime scene.
The GCA defines a “firearm” as any weapon “which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” as well as “the frame or receiver of any such weapon.” But in recent years, a number of retailers skirted the GCA’s requirements by selling nearly complete frames and receivers — the core building blocks of handguns and long guns, respectively — along with jigs, drill bits, and instructions for completing them in minutes. The retailers alleged that these kits were not firearms, and thus did not require serial numbers or background checks on buyers.
Predictably, ghost guns quickly became weapons of choice for criminals. The ATF estimates that police recovered over 71,000 ghost guns between 2017 and 2022, with over 25,000 of those recoveries taking place in 2022 alone.
New Jersey recently published a report finding that ghost gun recoveries in the state increased by over 600 percent from 2019 to 2023, and that more than 80 percent of those guns were made from Polymer80 ghost gun kits.
Ghost guns have been used in mass shootings, armed far-right extremists, and led to gunfire on school grounds in places like Arizona, Kansas, Maryland, and New Mexico. More ghost gun recovers and shootings are detailed here.
the ATF rule is working
To respond to this threat, the ATF issued a rule clarifying that “parts kits that are readily convertible to functional weapons, or functional ‘frames’ or ‘receivers’ of weapons, are subject to the same regulations as traditional firearms” and must be sold with serial numbers and background checks.
After the rule’s enactment, gun groups, certain state attorneys general, and ghost gun sellers, including the largest, Polymer80, sued the ATF and the Department of Justice in an attempt to stop the rule from being implemented. One of those challenges — brought by ghost gun retailers and the Firearms Policy Coalition, an extreme gun rights group — is now before the Supreme Court. The case centers on two issues: whether certain firearm parts kits fall within the GCA definition of “firearm,” and whether the statutory term “frame or receiver” includes nearly complete frames and receivers.
But early evidence suggests that the ATF rule is working in conjunction with state laws regulating ghost guns and litigation against retailers — like Polymer80, which recently shut down.
A recent study by the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund analyzing crime gun recoveries in 34 U.S. cities from 2019 to 2023 found that Polymer80 ghost gun recoveries dropped by 28 percent last year — the first decrease since 2019.
California released a report last week with similar findings. From 2019 to 2021, the number of ghost guns recovered from all crime scenes in California increased by 592 percent. But from 2021 to 2023, the state actually saw a 28-percent decrease in ghost gun recoveries due in part to California’s ghost gun regulations, litigation, and the ATF rule.
New Jersey also reported a decline in ghost gun recoveries in 2023 — as have several large cities, including New York City, Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Oakland.