While the White House’s appeal is pending, the US Supreme Court has permitted limits on untraceable “ghost guns” to remain in place.
A Texas judge stopped a 2022 rule requiring serial numbers on self-assembled “ghost gun” kits, which would have made them legally a firearm, in July.
To stop the new restriction, gun rights organisations and gun owners filed lawsuits.
The choice is being made as pressure mounts on the White House to do more to combat gun violence.
The policy will remain in effect while the White House challenges the Texas verdict, according to the 5–4 opinion of the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The Supreme Court might eventually hear that appeal again.
Ghost weapons can be self-assembled and occasionally 3D printed, therefore they might not have a serial number and might be hard to track down. The purchase of the assembly kits has not previously been subject to background checks.
The new regulations introduced by the Biden administration in August to control the spread of “ghost guns” went into force. The regulations mandated that “buy build shoot” kit producers obtain licences, stamp serial numbers on the kits’ frames or receivers, and require retailers of these kits to hold federal licences as well.
However, US District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas concluded that when the Biden administration classed “buy build shoot” kits as guns, it exceeded its legal power under the 1968 Gun Control Act.
According to the White House, there were 20,000 suspected ghost guns discovered during criminal investigations in 2021, a ten-fold increase from five years earlier, and urgent action must be made against unregistered weapons.
More guns are in civilian hands than there are US inhabitants, making Americans the nation with the highest per capita gun ownership in the world.
In 2021, the most recent year for which complete statistics are available, more than 48,800 Americans died as a result of gun injuries, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Supreme Court decisions in recent years have primarily increased individual gun rights. The US Constitution protects a person’s right to carry a weapon in public for self-defense, the nation’s top court said last year.
The court will hear a case in its upcoming session, which begins in October, regarding the issue of whether or not those who are the targets of domestic violence restraining orders are permitted to keep their firearms.
Mr. Biden and Democrats are attempting to enhance gun regulations through methods other than establishing federal laws because to the intense partisanship on the subject in Congress.
These include decisions made by the executive branch, such as the ghost gun regulations, and laws passed at the state and municipal levels, typically in districts with majorities of Democratic Party legislators.