The Supreme Court on Tuesday considered whether the Biden administration's restrictions on homemade firearms are consistent with the Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968. As with the Trump administration's ban on bump stocks, which the Court rejected in June, the issue in Garland v. VanDerStok is not whether the rule violates the Second Amendment but whether it exceeds the authority that Congress gave the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Unlike in the bump stock case, however, most of the justices seem inclined to uphold the new regulations.
The ATF began enforcing those regulations in August 2023 after the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a ruling that vacated them. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit subsequently endorsed the logic of that decision, saying the ATF rule "flouts clear statutory text and exceeds the legislatively-imposed limits on agency authority in the name of public policy."
