If there’s one thing that I appreciate, it’s seeing a government agency which has so often been used to push gun control, take one on the chin.
And that’s exactly what happened to the ATF in a District Court case recently.
The subject of the court case? Ghost guns, and for anyone who cares about Second Amendment rights, this is a win worth celebrating.
Why?
Part of the reason is, of course, that it is about the right by individuals to have firearms for their own lawful purposes (meaning not to attack other people or commit crimes with).
The other reason has to do with limitations on gun ownership and, in this case, personal gun manufacturing that anti-2A activists are trying to deny to you and me even though Americans have been allowed to own and make firearms for personal use throughout American history.
So, what happened? Michael Clements gives us the details:
A U.S. District Court Judge in Texas struck down a Biden administration rule on so-called “ghost guns” on Aug. 17.
In the case of Defense Distributed et. al., v. Blanche, U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor found that the April 2022 rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) that redefined frames and receivers under the Gun Control Act of 1968 was too vague and violated the Second Amendment.
The same rule was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on March 26, 2025, after a separate challenge on different legal grounds.
The Frame or Receiver rule promulgated by the ATF in April 2022, redefined the term “firearm” to include partially finished frames and receivers, found in so-called “buy, build, shoot” kits. This required them to be assigned serial numbers just as fully functional firearms are required to have.
Of course, the ATF rule was in blatant contradiction to what court precedent had ruled was a firearm: the completed receiver. No completed receiver, no firearm, and, therefore, no need for a serial number.
This court absolutely got it right when they said the ATF can’t enforce that rule.
The only thing that they should have also done is to expand that enforcement ban beyond the named plaintiffs in the court case.
But I’ll take this as a step in the right direction.