The Supreme Court has voted to uphold a Biden administration rule to regulate "ghost gun" kits. CBS News' Jan Crawford has more.

Washington

The Supreme Court has affirmed a regulatory action by the Biden administration concerning "ghost guns," which are unassembled firearms kits sold online without serial numbers or background checks. The decision allows the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to impose regulations requiring these kits to have serial numbers and necessitate background checks for buyers. This ruling addresses the concerns raised due to a significant increase in the presence of ghost guns at crime scenes, with police departments reporting more than a 1,000% rise in their recovery over the last five years.

The ATF's regulations are based on older gun control laws, which were challenged by some firearms manufacturers claiming that the agency overstepped its authority. However, the Supreme Court has sided with the Biden administration on this matter, emphasizing that if a firearm kit acts and functions as a gun, it should be regulated as one. This ruling marks a victory for gun control advocates closely monitoring the case, as the sale of ghost guns without regulation posed a significant hurdle in law enforcement and public safety efforts.



Supreme Court upholds regulations on ghost guns

All right, we've got this breaking news just coming into our newsroom right now. The Supreme Court has issued a ruling on ghost guns. Let's cross over to our CBS News legal correspondent, Jan Crawford, who has all of the latest. Jan, great to see you. What's the update? Well, Errol, I mean, obviously, this is one of the biggest decisions of the term that we've been waiting on, and it's about, as you said, ghost guns. Well, what are ghost guns? Those are those unregulated, do-it-yourself guns that people can buy on the Internet and put the pieces together, they're unassembled, and turn it into a gun. There are no background checks for these kind of weapons. You can lie about your age. If you're 16 or a criminal, you can get one. There are no serial numbers. And so, as a result of this, the Biden administration decided to regulate them under an old gun control law. Some of the firearms manufacturers said that that exceeded their authority. And this is now what the Supreme Court decided today, ruling with the Biden administration and now the Trump administration has entered this case, ruling that the ATF does have that authority to regulate these ghost guns, that, if you're going to sell a gun like this, you have got to do a background check, you have got to put a serial number on it. And this is important, because police, and we have talked to many of them, have seen an explosion of these kind of guns, more than 1,000 percent increase over the past five years that they have recovered at gun scenes — I mean, at crime scenes. So, this is a significant case. Gun control advocates very closely watching it. But the court is allowing the ATF to go ahead and regulate these kind of ghost guns, as you said, as firearms. So, bottom line, Errol, if it looks like a gun, it fires like a gun, it acts like a gun, they're going to treat it like a gun, and you have got to get those serial numbers on it to sell it and background checks as well.

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