decided March 26, 2025
The federal Gun Control Act of 1968, codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 921-934, prohibits, among other things, the commercial sale of certain kinds of firearms, and certain kinds of firearm parts, that do not bear identification numbers that allow for their tracking by police authorities. In 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (the “ATF”), a division of the federal Justice Department, promulgated a new regulation seeking to expand the coverage of the Act to include “weapon parts kits” that allow purchasers to make their own “firearms” out of unassembled parts. See 27 C.F.R. §478.11. In this case, the Court ruled that the ATF’s new regulation is not “facially” invalid, meaning that it has some valid applications under the Gun Control Act with respect to some weapon parts kits that require some assembly before use as a firearm. The Court explained that the plaintiffs in the case attacked the “facial” .validity of the ATF’s new regulatory definition of “firearm. In that kind of attack on the validity of a law subject to a higher law, the Court has previously held that the plaintiffs must convince the court that the subordinate law has no valid application whatsoever under the higher law. In this case, the Court held that the original plaintiffs did not convince the seven justices joining in the majority opinion that the new ATF regulation had no valid application whatsoever under the Gun Control Act as that higher law was written by Congress. Justices Thomas and Alito dissented from that holding.
Comment: The Court allowed an administrative agency operating wholly within the Executive Branch of the federal government to expand the coverage of a statute written by Congress, which occupies the Legislative Branch of that government. The Court, including the two dissenting Justices, completely failed to address the real problem that presents, of whether the ATF regulation violates the intention of the of the United States Constitution to separate the Executive Power of the federal government from its Legislative Power. See U.S. Const., Art. I, § 1 and Art. II, § 1, see also Art. III, § 1 (separating the judicial power from the other two).
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