Supreme Court ghost busters
But this is a court that has expressed
'I put out on a counter some eggs, some chopped up ham, some chopped up pepper, and onions. Is that a Western omelet?'
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Luckily the seven justices in the majority, in an opinion penned by President Trump appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch, thought Alito's point wasn't all it was cracked up to be. (Sorry.)
The court held that the ATF's regulation on ghost guns, on its face, is not inconsistent with the Gun Control Act of 1968. It left open the possibility for future challenges to the regulation as it applies to specific products. But the rule, as enacted by the ATF, need not be struck down as applied to all ghost guns.
I agree with the Constitutional Accountability Center's senior appellate counsel Miriam Becker-Cohen, who filed an amicus brief in the case, when she called the court's opinion a 'cogent and straightforward analysis.'
But Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented in the case, claiming among other things that the ruling puts the justices in the shoes of regulators and makes new rules that gun manufacturers could not have anticipated.
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Justice Sonia Sotomayor addressed those dissents in a separate concurrence.
'For more than half a century, firearms dealers, manufacturers, and importers have complied with the Gun Control Act's requirements,' Sotomayor wrote. 'They have marked their products with serial numbers, kept records of firearm sales, and conducted background checks for prospective buyers.'
'What is new,' Sotomayor continued, 'is that some manufacturers have sought to circumvent the Act's requirements by selling easy-to-assemble firearm kits and frames, which they claim fall outside the statute's scope.'
In short, any confusion was caused by manufacturers' attempts to circumvent the rules, not by the court's decision clarifying them, Sotomayor deduced. I think her assessment is
This is an excerpt from
, a newsletter about the Supreme Court from columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.
Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Globe. She may be reached at
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