Ghost guns may make a comeback, despite a Supreme Court ruling

The legal battle over “ghost guns” is far from over, even after the Supreme Court upheld a Biden-era regulation requiring background checks and serial numbers for certain build-it-yourself firearm kits.

These kits, which allow buyers to assemble functioning guns from parts, have drawn scrutiny from law enforcement. Because the kits were initially sold without serial numbers or background checks, authorities often couldn’t trace the weapons — earning them the moniker “ghost guns.”

“The people who make them, oftentimes, and put them on the street are putting them in the hands of people who are prohibited, putting them in the hands of convicted felons,” said Bill Brooks, who chairs the firearms committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “As evidenced by the fact that so many of them now are showing up at crime scenes.”

The Biden administration moved to close that loophole in 2022 with a rule requiring that certain gun kits be treated like complete firearms — and sold with serial numbers and background checks. That rule was challenged in a federal case known as Bondi v. VanDerStok, but in March the Supreme Court allowed it to stand.

“It was good that the court upheld the ATF regulation,” Brooks said.

Still, gun rights groups see an opening. The high court’s decision turned primarily on questions of administrative law, and left open the possibility of future challenges, depending on kit designs.

In addition, the Trump administration has ordered the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to review all Biden-era gun regulations, including the ghost gun rule. The executive order, signed in February, calls for the review of regulations “that purport to promote safety but may have impinged on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”

“We’ve urged the administration to act as quickly as possible,” said Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation. “However, there’s a lot on their plate, and I don’t know how quickly it will happen. But we’d like it as soon as possible.”

Not all gun rights activists are willing to wait. Cody Wilson, known for his advocacy of 3D-printed guns, now markets a product called the G80 through his company, Defense Distributed. Though careful not to label it a gun, Wilson describes it as a kit that “you can ultimately build into a 9mm pistol, let’s say.”

Wilson worries the Trump administration will side with law enforcement and maintain restrictions on kit guns. So he’s filed a motion in the VanDerStok case, which has been remanded back to federal court in Texas, asking for a preliminary injunction to stop the government from enforcing the ATF’s ghost gun rule.

Wilson says he sees an obligation to press the question on constitutional grounds.

“I actually want there to be some law before this administration is over,” he said, “that the Second Amendment includes the right to build arms and not just keep them.”

Gun control advocates say this is part of an extreme strategy to dismantle firearm regulations entirely.

“There are folks out there who want there to be no gun laws at all, and they see this as being the avenue to do it,” said David Pucino, legal director and deputy chief counsel of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

“If they can sell a gun in parts without it counting as a gun, there are no gun laws that apply at all,” he said. “That’s the end goal here.”

For now, both sides are watching closely to see how vigorously the Trump Justice Department defends the Biden-era rule. The DOJ has opposed Wilson’s preliminary injunction, but it recently filed with the federal court a copy of a letter it sent to Defense Distributed’s lawyer in May, saying it would not enforce the rule against a list of the company’s products, and adding that it would “provide an expedited informal classification” for the “G80” kit.

Pucino, at Giffords Law, calls the letter “really troubling” — a sign the Trump administration may become more lenient toward the kits, and less likely to classify them as regulated firearms.