The Supreme Court in Bondi v. VanDerStok (2025) rejected a challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act to a 2022 Final Rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) expanding the definitions of "firearm" and "frame or receiver." See my post here. However, the Court did not entertain the constitutional challenges brought by Defense Distributed. In a decision issued on August 17 in Defense Distributed v. Blanche, Judge Reed O'Connor of the Northern District of Texas declared the regulations unconstitutionally vague and violative of the Second Amendment.
In 1968, Congress defined "firearm" in the Gun Control Act to include "any weapon … which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive" and "the frame or receiver of any such weapon." 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(3). Contemporaneously, ATF's predecessor agency defined "frame or receiver" as "that part of a firearm which provides housing for the hammer, bolt or breechblock, and firing mechanism, and which is usually threaded at its forward portion to receive the barrel." 33 F.R. 18558 (1968). There things stood until 2022 when the Biden ATF decided to reinvent the wheel by "improving" these longstanding definitions under the fake issue of "ghost guns."
Just quoting the Final Rule's definition for "frame or receiver," 27 C.F.R. § 478.12(c)(c), itself exposes the vagueness thereof. It includes "a partially complete, disassembled, or nonfunctional frame or receiver … that is designed to or may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted" into one, but not "a forging, casting, printing, extrusion, unmachined body, or similar article that has not yet reached a stage of manufacture where it is clearly identifiable as an unfinished component part of a weapon (e.g., unformed block of metal, liquid polymer, or other raw material)." As the court notes, "when a hunk of metal or plastic" reaches that stage is "is left to the subjective determination of the ATF."
