Before the U.S. Supreme Court is another challenge affecting guns.

Yet by all indications, the decision — like the 2024 decision on bumpstocks — won’t be about the Second Amendment.

Let’s pick up where we left off on the day of that 2024 decision.

What a statute, passed by Congress and signed by a president, says is one thing.

Whether a regulation that an agency enacts is consistent with the statute is a different question.

The latter is the issue before the court in Bondi v. VanDerStok. A decision is expected by the end of June.

In some court challenges, the disagreement between the parties is hard to summarize in three sentences.

In other challenges, it’s easy.

This one is easy:

Regulations that federal agencies–such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, or ATF–promulgate must be consistent with the underlying statute.

The VanDerStok challengers contend that definitions in an ATF regulation are invalid, because they extend beyond corresponding definitions in the underlying statute, the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, which we’ll call the GCA here.

The attorney general, in briefs filed during the Biden administration, contends the definitions in the ATF regulation don’t extend beyond the GCA.

What is this all about?

The challenge focuses on the definitions of “firearm” and “frame or receiver.”

Notice the word “clarifying” in how the attorney general, in a brief filed during the Biden administration, frames the issues: The GCA has a firearm definition; ATF “issued a regulation clarifying that certain products that can readily be converted into an operational firearm(,) or a functional frame or receiver(,) fall within that definition.”

Having framed the challenged regulation as a clarification, the attorney general then quotes the regulation and says the challenge presents the following questions:

Is “a weapon parts kit that is designed to(–)or may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted to(–)expel a projectile by the action of an explosive” a firearm under the GCA?

Is “a partially complete, disassembled, or nonfunctional frame or receiver” that is “designed to or may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted to function as a frame or receiver” a frame or receiver under the GCA?

Why do these questions matter?

Because, as one set of challengers explains, what the regulation includes is “subject to substantial federal statutory requirements, including serialization requirements for manufacturers and background check requirements for retailers and purchasers.”

Now back to the word “clarifying”: The challengers respond that the challenged regulation doesn’t clarify the GCA. Rather, it expands the GCA.

Whether expanding the GCA is good policy is beyond the challengers’ point. They contend that whether to expand the GCA is for Congress, not ATF, to decide. The challengers contend that by expanding the GCA, ATF exceeded its authority.

To state this in more detail: The one set of challengers acknowledges “an ongoing policy debate about whether privately made firearms should be regulated by the federal government. ATF insists that they should be, pointing to firearm tracing figures allegedly showing an increase in criminal misuse of such firearms. There are reasons to question ATF’s claims, but those claims are not at issue. Rather, the decisive fact in this case is Congress’s decision, in the GCA, to focus on the commercial firearm market rather than the private making of firearms for personal use. Accordingly, the GCA does not reach the items used in private firearm making that ATF attempts to regulate. To the extent changed circumstances call for a changed regulatory approach, that change must be made by Congress, not ATF.”

The other set of challengers puts it this way: The ATF regulation is “unlawful because ATF’s expansive ‘firearm’ definition exceeds the ‘firearm’ definition that Congress set.”

Now let’s see how the court decides this challenge.

Dr. Randy Elf will stay tuned for this decision.

COPYRIGHT (c) 2025 BY RANDY ELF