The Supreme Court will consider taking up a controversial firearms case after it ordered a one-week stay of a District Court ruling that opposed the Justice Department’s sale restrictions on ghost guns—privately made firearms constructed through components that can be easily purchased online, which President Joe Biden has championed as a major gun control initiative.
A ghost gun is displayed before the start of an event about gun violence in the Rose Garden of the ... [+]
The District Court’s ruling, which vacated a rule that updated the definition of a firearm to include parts kits, will be temporarily blocked until August 4 as the Supreme Court decides if it wants to take up the case.
The Biden Administration called for the Supreme Court to block the lower court’s ruling Thursday, which issued a nationwide order blocking the firearm definition rule and argued the administration overstepped its authority by adopting it.
In its request to the Supreme Court, the administration said allowing the District Court’s ruling to stand would enable an “irreversible flow of large numbers of untraceable ghost guns into our nation’s communities,” according to Reuters.
The Department of Justice submitted an application this week asking the lower court’s ruling to be blocked, as it criticized the ease of obtaining a ghost gun and claimed the kits could allow people prohibited from buying firearms, such as felons and minors, to “circumvent the law.”
The Department of Justice further argued in its application for a stay that a “lack of records and serial numbers” associated with ghost guns undermine law enforcement’s ability to properly track such weapons for crimes. “That, in turn, has impaired law enforcement’s ability to apprehend violent criminals who may pose an ongoing threat to public safety,” the department said.
19,273. That is how many requests the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives received from police officers in 2021 to trace ghost guns, a massive jump from the 1,629 requests made in 2017.
Ghost guns have been sold since the 1990s but the market for them did not significantly increase until around 2009, according to the New York Times. According to a report from the ATF, the use of ghost guns in crimes has risen more than 1,000% since 2017. The report also found within its five-year reporting period that almost a quarter of the guns traced by the ATF were purchased within the past year. The Department of Justice’s rule meant to rein in ghost guns states “parts kits that are readily convertible to functional weapons, or functional ‘frames’ or ‘receivers’ of weapons” are subject to the same laws enforced on traditional firearms.
Biden administration asks US Supreme Court to block 'ghost gun' ruling (Reuters)
Ghost gun use in U.S. crimes has risen more than 1,000% since 2017, federal report says (CBS)