Supreme Court justices will consider on Tuesday whether the government can regulate so-called ghost gun kits for making untraceable weapons at home. Perhaps surprisingly, the dispute could be understood through an analogy to Ikea furniture. That might sound strange if you aren’t familiar with the case, called Garland v. VanDerStok. But here’s how it arises in the dispute being argued during the first week of the court’s new term.
It’s more like last term’s appeal in Garland v. Cargill, in which the court struck down the bump stock ban. The 6-3 majority said there that the ATF went too far in trying to regulate the deadly devices — which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire at almost the same frequency as automatic ones — under federal law. The same dynamic is at play here, with gun proponents arguing that the agency sought to wield power that Congress never gave it.