Supreme Court restores Biden administration rule regulating firearms as firearms
By 
For once, the shadow docket is used to restore power properly belonging to the executive branch that had been usurped by a rogue neoconfederate:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to freeze a lower court order that bars the government from regulating so-called ghost guns – untraceable homemade weapons – as firearms under federal law.
The brief order grants the Biden administration’s request to allow the regulations to remain in effect while legal challenges play out.
Ghost guns are kits that a user can buy online to assemble a fully functional firearm. They have no serial numbers, do not require background checks and provide no transfer records for easy traceability. Critics say they are attractive to people who are legally prohibited from buying firearms.
The vote was 5-4. Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with the court’s three liberals to allow the rule to take effect.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would have denied the application.
In 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives updated its regulations to define the kits as firearms under the law so that the government could more carefully track them.
The rule does not prohibit the sale or possession of any ghost gun kit, nor does it block an individual from purchasing such a kit. Instead, it requires compliance with federal laws that impose conditions on the commercial sale of firearms. Those conditions include requirements that commercial manufacturers and sellers mark products with serial numbers and keep records to allow law enforcement to trace firearms used in crimes.
With Barrett flipping, this means of the three justices who claim to oppose nationwide vacaturs, 33% actually voted allowing this particular nationwide vacatur to remain in effect:
See, this Alito’s advantage — if you never even claim to have any overriding legal principles you can avoid this kind of embarrassment!