The U.S. Supreme Court issued a major stopgap ruling on the Biden administration’s efforts to regulate ghost guns.
In a 5-4 vote on Tuesday, the higher court temporarily paused the lower court’s orders, blocking the White House’s efforts aimed at curbing gun violence.
The order was issued by Justice Samuel Alito and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, along with the three liberal justices, to freeze the lower court’s ruling.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, meanwhile, said that they would deny the request from the Biden administration to revive the rules.
The White House has since released a statement commending the Supreme Court’s decision and saying that it will continue to crack down on the so-called ghost guns.
“While this case is being litigated, the Supreme Court’s action will keep in place important efforts to combat the surge of unserialized, privately-made ‘ghost guns’ which have proliferated in crime scenes across the country,” said Olivia Dalton, White House principal deputy press secretary.
The Biden administration previously requested that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ regulate ghost guns after a legal dispute reached the Supreme Court late last month.
The Gun Control Act’s definition of a “firearm” was changed as a result of the ATF’s measure, which took effect in August 2022. This was done to address the rise in the number of ghost guns, or untraceable firearms, that can be made from kits available online and assembled at home.
This comes as discussions on gun control legislation have been a hot-button issue recently following a series of mass shootings in the U.S. Since then, President Joe Biden has reiterated his rhetoric against the Second Amendment.
During a speech earlier this year, the president stated unequivocally, “We’re going to ban assault weapons,” adding, “We banned it once, we’re going to do it again, and the number of bullets that can be in a clip.”
It is unclear what he means when he refers to “assault weapons,” considering they are already illegal, which suggests that Biden is trying to redefine what makes an “assault weapon.”
