On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Garland v. VanDerStok, focusing on ATF Final Rule 2021-05F, which requires owners to have a gun license, undergo background checks, and the guns must have traceable serial numbers.
A central part of this rule was redefining what the word “firearm” means so as to designate certain gun parts as firearms.
During oral arguments, Justice Samuel Alito asked about “components” of firearms and the way they are defined in relation to a “weapon.”
Alito was listening to Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argue that a self-assembly gun kit can be easily converted to a fully usable gun with the addition of one small additional part.
He asked, “Here is a blank pad and a pen. Is this a grocery list?” Prelogar answered no, citing numerous uses for the pad and pen.
He then asked, “If I put on a counter some eggs, some chopped up ham, some chopped up pepper and onions, is that a western omelet?”
Prelogar again answered no, again citing “well-known other uses” for the eggs, ham, etc.
Justice Neil Gorsuch followed up, asking about the scope of “ordinary meaning,” as applied to “every noun” used by Congress or the U.S. Code — if it can be used to see Alito’s pad and pencil as a grocery list. Therefore, Gorsuch suggests there “has got to be a line that makes [the government’s] theory the case.”
Gorsuch noted that as recently as 2021 “the government represented that an unfinished frame or receiver does not meet the statutory definition of a firearm.”
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