By Matthew Vadum Contributing Writer  The Supreme Court voted 7-2 on Wednesday to uphold the Biden administration’s rule regulating so-called ghost guns that can be assembled at home.  The majority opinion in Bondi v. VanDerStok was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch.  Gorsuch was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor, Jackson and Kavanaugh each filed concurring opinions.  Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito each filed dissenting opinions.  In October 2023, the Supreme Court reinstated the rule, which lower courts had blocked.  “Ghost gun” is a term used by gun control advocates to describe a homemade firearm that lacks a serial number and therefore can’t be tracked by law enforcement.  Although some states regulate homemade guns, gun control groups have been trying for years to ban or regulate homemade guns at the federal level but have failed to persuade the U.S. Congress to act.  Then-President Joe Biden defended the rule, arguing that privately made guns, which are often made with gun kits, are the “weapons of choice for many criminals.”  The government’s “frame or receiver” rule dates to April 2022. It requires individuals who assemble homemade firearms to add serial numbers to them. The rule also mandates background checks for consumers who buy gun-assembly kits from dealers.  Pieces of guns that are shipped are nonetheless guns subject to existing laws, the government argued.  When Biden announced the new rules in April 2022, attendees at the White House ceremony included the parents of Dominic Blackwell and Gracie Muehlberger, two students killed on Nov. 14, 2019, during the Saugus High School shooting, as well as Saugus High shooting survivor Mia Tretta, who spoke during the ceremony.  In the majority opinion, Gorsuch wrote that the Gun Control Act of 1968 allows the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to regulate “some weapon parts kits and unfinished frames or receivers, including those we have discussed.”  After displaying a photograph of gun kit components supplied by seller Polymer80, Gorsuch wrote, “Plainly, the finished ‘Buy Build Shoot’ kit is an instrument of combat. No one would confuse the semiautomatic pistol pictured above with a tool or a toy.”  The ATF rule includes background checks for buyers. “Thousands of law-enforcement agencies nationwide depend on the [Gun Control] Act’s tracing system to link firearms involved in crimes to their owners,” he wrote.  Citing evidence presented to the court, Gorsuch wrote that sales of gun kits “have grown ‘exponentially,” and criminals “find them attractive.” This has led to “an explosion of crimes” involving ghost guns.  Law-enforcement agencies reported in 2017 that they had “submitted about 1,600 ghost guns to the federal government for tracing,” he added. “By 2021, that number jumped to more than 19,000. Efforts to trace the ownership of these weapons, the government represents, have proven ‘almost entirely futile.’”  Describing the gun kit components as a weapon is justifiable, Gorsuch wrote.  The word “‘weapon’ is an artifact noun — a word for a thing created by humans,” he wrote. In everyday speech, people “sometimes use artifact nouns to refer to unfinished objects — at least when their intended function is clear.”  “An ordinary speaker might well describe the ‘Buy Build Shoot’ kit as a weapon,” even though “a half hour of work is required before anyone can fire a shot.”  The Supreme Court reversed a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruling from 2023 that held the Gun Control Act did not allow the ATF to regulate homemade guns and returned the case to that court “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”  The parents of Dominic Blackwell and Gracie Muehlberger, two students killed on Nov. 14, 2019 during the Saugus High School Shooting, stand and are recognized by President Joe Biden. Photo courtesy of the White House. The post Supreme Court upholds Biden-era ‘ghost gun’ regulation  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal. ...read more read less