Amy Coney Barrett appeared to break with conservatives during a hearing on gun control on Tuesday.
The court was hearing arguments in Garland v. VanDerStok, a challenge to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’s regulation that places new requirements on previously untraceable “ghost guns” assembled by the buyer. The parts are typically purchased online for home assembly into an operational firearm. Their use has surged in recent years with the White House stating there has been a ten-fold increase in suspected ghost guns since 2016.
Barrett has expressed her support for the regulation which forces ghost gun purchasers to obtain a gun license.
It is one of several cases in which Barrett, a Trump appointee, has shown her willingness to break from traditional conservative viewpoints.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the court that a self-assembly gun kit can be easily converted to a fully usable gun with the addition of one small part.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett (L) and Chief Justice John Roberts on October 01, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Both have shown support for ghost gun regulations in their Supreme Court decisions.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Discussing how components can be defined as a weapon, Justice Samuel Alito asked Prelogar: “If I put on a counter some eggs, some chopped-up ham, some chopped-up pepper and onions, is that a western omelet?”
Prelogar replied that they are not, as they can be used to make many other dishes, whereas the components of a ghost gun can only be used to make a firearm.
“The key difference here is that these weapon parts kits are designed and intended to be used as instruments of combat and they have no other conceivable use.”
Barrett appeared to jump in on the government side, suggesting that if components are sold and marketed together, they are different from purchasing individual components separately.
“Would your answer change if you ordered it from Hello Fresh, and you got a kit and it was like turkey chili but all of the ingredients are in the kit?” she asked.
Prelogar readily agreed. “Yes, and I think that presses on the more apt analogy here, which is that we are not suggesting here that scattered components that might have some entirely separate and distinct function could be aggregated and called a weapon,” she said.
“But if you bought from Trader Joe’s some omelet-making kit that had all of the ingredients to make the omelet and maybe included whatever you needed to start the fire to cook the omelet … we would recognize that for what it is,” Prelogar said.
The ATF rule, introduced in April 2022, amends the definition of a firearm to include self-assembly kits. It also stipulates that partially assembled weapons that can easily be converted to full firearms must be registered as guns.
That means the owners must have a gun license and undergo background checks, and the guns must have traceable serial numbers.
When the ATF attempted to implement the ghost guns rule, the Supreme Court overruled a lower court’s injunction against it taking effect last year. The decision was a 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining Justice Barrett and the three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson—in supporting the ghost gun regulation.
This is not Barrett’s only case in which she has shown support for gun control.
As Newsweek previously reported, Barrett showed her strong disapproval of an analysis by the conservative Justice Clarence Thomas during oral arguments in United States v. Rahimi, a case that brought into question whether people under a domestic violence civil restraining order have the right to own a gun.
Zackey Rahimi was placed under a domestic violence restraining order in 2020 after assaulting his girlfriend when she tried to leave his car and then fired at a witness to the incident.
During oral arguments in June, Thomas asked Rahimi’s lawyer why a criminal defendant should be subject to a civil remedy like a restraining order. Barrett pulled out a copy of the restraining order, which forbids Rahimi from coming near his now ex-girlfriend or her daughter. She then read from the restraining order’s list of Rahimi’s alleged crimes against his ex-girlfriend, including threats and intimidation.
By doing so, Barrett appeared to be signaling that she does not agree with Thomas’s strict constructionist view of the Second Amendment. Thomas’s school of thought suggests that readers should look only at the wording of the Constitution, which placed no impediments on the rights of U.S citizens to own a gun.
Barrett eventually voted with the majority in favor of the domestic violence law while Thomas was the sole dissenting voice.
