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- [00:01]
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Michael Popak
Two members of the United States Supreme Court still want to allow ghost guns created at home from kits without serial numbers to be used to commit crimes in America, and the seven others on the United States Supreme Court think that's a terrible idea, siding with the Biden administration's position that if you're buying a kit to make a gun at home, it should be registered with a serial number and you should be getting a background check. Having seen a proliferation of ghost guns, more than 10,000 of them, used in 2022 and 2023 to commit crimes alone, I'm Michael Popach. We got breaking news at the United States Supreme Court level. In a rare show of unity, seven at least, of the Supreme Court justices cited and got behind Justice Gorsuch in writing the majority opin opinion which upheld the atf, the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau's interpretation under the under the Biden administration that the the Gun control Act of 1968 passed in the wake of the Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination and that of Robert F. Kennedy, that that would apply, including its background check and its requirement for serial numbers and the rest to ghost guns kits you buy to build your gun at home, or in this case 3D print your gun at home. In many circumstances, the question here was an arcane one, but it's what the case turned on. Whether the Gun Control act as applied to these types of kits you can buy from gun manufacturers effectively to do your own gunsmithing at home. Whether it was facial invalid as applied to these guns and these gun kits, the answer was no. It doesn't mean that. By kit by kit, depending upon the Type of kit. Could there be an argument that it comes out from under the Gun Control Act? Yes. But in general, the Supreme Court has ruled that they want to see ghost guns, registered serial number, background check for their use and as they enter America and are used in crimes. I'll cover it here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal af. An interesting grouping here, not in the dissent. Alito and Thomas once again find a way to stand for the death and destruction in America. No surprise with either they both sided. Thomas wrote the decision two or three years ago. The Braun versus New York rifle, in which it explains, expanded this the definition of the Second Amendment to give everybody a personal right to bear arms with little or no regulation. Forget concealed weapons permits, forget training, forget background checks, forget it all, all violated. Unless Alito and the people that joined with him there, and there was a majority. Unless they found an analog, an historical precedent for back in the old timey times of the 1800s to match the regulation. Now all regulations are out, despite school shootings. Tens of thousands of people killed every year in America from school shootings, from shootings and school shootings and things like that. So we knew before the ruling even came out where Alito and Thomas came out and they wrote separate dissents saying effectively that the Gun Control act only applies to assembled weapons. The receiver and the frame put together in a gun, when it's only together and can be fired, is it a weapon that can be controlled by the statute? And that the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau interpretation was unreasonably and invalid. Fortunately, that's not the majority decision. I found it compelling. When you look at the. I'm going to read to you from certain aspects of it, but when you look at what we're talking about, I want to show you a picture. This is reproduced in the actual decision. At the top is an actual firearm. At the bottom is what gets sent to somebody that ordered one of these kits. The only difference, you see those little red circles. You had to remove some plastic tabs at the top and drill a hole, insert a screw and you can fire away. Same thing here in this picture. First picture, by the way, was on page 18, this one on page 9. Similarly, and Gorsuch included these on purpose to show. The top is the parts that show up when you order this kit. The bottom is what it looks like when you're done. You see, even here you've got the magazine for the bullets at the bottom here. Right? And so you see what we're talking about. We're talking about gun kits. Here's what here's how Gorsuch framed it, joined by the other seven. Now a couple of the seven filed their own concurrences basically to attack Alito and Thomas, but joined in the decision in full. So we have fully seven people of the Supreme Court seven to two behind this Biden era regulation. Here's how Gorsuch put it on page one. Shortly after the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, that's our health department heads uncle our father, sorry. And because he's RFK Jr. And Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Stunned the nation, Congress adopted the Gun control Act of 1968. Existing gun control measures, Congress found, allowed criminals to acquire largely untraceable guns too easily. In response, Congress adopted a number of new mandates. As a result, many of those now engaged in importing, manufacturing or dealing in firearms must obtain federal licenses, keep records of their sales, and conduct background checks before transferring firearms to private buyers. And the Supreme Court, even under their definition and expansion of the second Amendment, has been okay with that. 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Your older self will thank you, thank you and thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode. On page two the Court under Gorsuch continues these mandates serve at least two ends. The background check requirement seeks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Sounds like a good idea Again, Alito and Thomas dissent. The licensing, record keeping and serialization requirements, meanwhile, aim to assist law enforcement authorities to investigate serious crime. Of course, it's also noted of the proliferation of these guns in his in his opening where we went from 100010 years ago ghost guns to 10,000 a year being used during crimes. The the Gorsuch continues. The act mandates apply to firearms, and the law defines that term broadly. Under a firearm. It includes any weapon, including a starter gun, which will or is designed to, or may readily be converted to expel a projectile. On that's Gorsuch's point. This is a kit that can readily be converted, like a starter pistol, into something that can fire a projectile. Clip the little plastic blocks, add a screw, your gun works off the kit. Thanks to this generous definition, the act has long been understood to reach everything from run of the mill rifles to novelty umbrella guns. Recent years have witnessed a profound change in how guns are made and sold. When Congress adopted The act in 1968, the milling equipment, materials needed, and designs were far too expensive for individuals to make firearms practically or reliably on their own. But with the introduction of new technologies like 3D printing and reinforced polymers, that is no longer true. Today, companies are able to make and sell weapon parts kits that individuals can assemble into functional firearms in their own homes. Page three these kits are widely available, Gorsuch continues, both in how complete they come and how much work is required to finish them. In other words, some gun you know, home gunsmithers, they want to do it. It's like a puzzle. They want all the parts, nothing assembled. They'll do it themselves. Okay. Others are like, no, I want to avoid serial numbers and I want to have a ghost gun. You know what I mean? So just send me as much of it assembled as you possibly can. Just maybe a couple of plastic locks, maybe it misses a screw and I'LL put it together. It's like when you order from Wayfair or from. For some furniture manufacturing, do you want the one where you just need to screw in the legs and you can sit down or do you want the one that comes in a thousand parts with some sort of Chinese Chinese converted into English set of instructions, you know which. You know where I'm going with that. At the other end. The judge said some kits contain all the components necessary for a complete pistol and can be completed in perhaps a half an hour using commonly available tools. And that's his point. It depends on the kit, but it's not going to render the regulation as interpreted by the bureau to be facially invalid. The judge continued, the justice continues the upshot. Police departments around the nation have confronted an explosion of crimes involving these ghost guns. By 2021, that number jumped to more than 19,000 from 1,000. So it's not even 10,000. 19,000 guns were used in 2020 that were ghost guns. Efforts to trace the ownership of these weapons the government represents has proven almost entirely futile. This is a good decision, even as MAGA would like to say that Biden proposed it. How Alito and Thomas can rule otherwise with the mayhem and destruction on the streets of America is beyond me. They get so esoteric and so caught up. Alito with his argument is to send well, there's another thing about machine guns. And they didn't even argue facial invalidity. Some, you know, highfalutin academic analysis in their brief. So why are we. And I don't think you can reconcile these two things. And it's going to be very hard. What's very hard about making a kit manufacturer subject to the same regulations as a gun completed gun manufacturer, when the thing he's selling can be easily converted within seconds, minutes or half an hour into something with lethality? I don't really get it, other than they don't care about the American people. They live. They're protected by federal marshals. They may or may not wear bulletproof vests. They get federal protection. They live in an ivory tower hermetically sealed from the public. When was the last time they went out for a pizza and a beer? When was the last time they walked freely around the streets? Not on a for Thomas's sake and Alito sake. Not on a million dollar junket with paid endorsers and paid sponsors who put money in their pocket by way of fancy trips with bodyguards on private planes. When was the last time they traveled commercial? When was the last time they went on a train or a subway or a bus. Probably not in the last 20 years. We in America have to deal with the streets and criminality. I want to have ghost guns have a serial number and a background check request guarded before my neighbor assembles a gun and then uses it against somebody in a peak of anger or in a school shooting or a road rage or a crime. Or they lose the gun and it gets used by somebody in a crime. This is a good thing. I'm glad to see at least seven reasonably sensible people got together on the court, or at least at least four led by Gorsuch, joined the three of the Democratic wing of the Supreme Court. And Amy and Ketanji, Brown, Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan. That's what happened. And we'll continue to follow it all right here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal af. Till my next report, I'm Michael Popak. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories the intersection of law and Politics. Go to YouTube now and free. Subscribe at Legal AFMTN. That's at Legal AFMTN.