A federal judge in Texas ruled that the Biden administration's 2022 regulation on so-called ghost guns violates both the Second Amendment and the Due Process Clause, a decision that reopens one of the most contested firearms policy fights in years.
U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, sided with gun rights challengers on Monday, holding that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives overstepped when it tried to redefine what counts as a firearm under federal law. The ATF rule, adopted in 2022, required that commercial parts kits used to self-assemble firearms carry serial numbers, that buyers of those kits pass background checks, and that homemade guns be treated like any other firearm under the Gun Control Act of 1968.
O'Connor found the regulation clashed with what he called the nation's "historical tradition" of personal gunsmithing and self-manufacture of firearms. He also determined the rule was so vaguely written that it violated the constitutional guarantee of due process, the basic requirement that laws give ordinary people fair notice of what is and isn't legal.
In his ruling, O'Connor wrote:
"The Court cannot conclude that the Final Rule's imposition of ambiguous and far-reaching regulations, which would restrict access to component parts thereby inhibiting home gunsmithing, comports with the Second Amendment."
The decision lands in the middle of a long-running legal saga that has already reached the Supreme Court, and signals that the constitutional questions the justices once set aside are now squarely on the table.
The ATF ghost gun regulation has been challenged, blocked, reinstated, and litigated across multiple courts since it took effect. Last March, the Supreme Court upheld the rule in a 7-2 decision. But that ruling was deliberately narrow: the justices addressed only whether the ATF had statutory authority under federal firearms law to issue the regulation. They did not reach the constitutional question, whether the rule violated the Second Amendment or the Due Process Clause.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, acknowledged the limits of the court's decision:
"Future cases may present other and more difficult questions about ATF's regulations. But we take cases as they come and today resolve only the question posed to us."
O'Connor's ruling this week answers one of those questions. Where the Supreme Court found the ATF acted within its statutory lane, O'Connor held the regulation crashes into constitutional guardrails the justices never examined.
Earlier in the case's history, the Supreme Court had voted 5-4 to keep the ghost gun regulation in effect while appeals played out. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices in that interim order. Fox News reported that the ATF rule banned so-called "buy build shoot" kits and expanded the definition of a firearm to cover unfinished parts, requiring background checks for purchasers.
The regulation grew out of a sharp rise in homemade, untraceable firearms showing up at crime scenes. AP News reported that local law enforcement agencies seized more than 19,000 ghost guns at crime scenes in 2021, a more than tenfold increase in just five years. Ghost gun submissions to the ATF climbed over 1,000 percent from roughly 1,600 in 2017 to more than 19,000 in 2021, National Review noted.
Critics of ghost guns, firearms assembled from parts kits that lack serial numbers and bypass the federal background check system, argued the weapons created a regulatory gap that endangered public safety. The Biden ATF's answer was to stretch the definition of "frame or receiver" in the Gun Control Act of 1968 to cover unfinished components and kits, effectively pulling homemade firearms into the same regulatory framework as factory-built guns.
But gun rights groups saw the move as federal overreach, an agency rewriting the law Congress passed rather than enforcing it. Two groups, including the Second Amendment Foundation, brought the challenge that O'Connor decided this week.
Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, praised the ruling in stark terms:
"The Court rightly held that the Biden ATF's rule not only sought to outright prohibit Second Amendment protected conduct but was written in such a vague and vaporous manner as to chill that protected conduct by making it impossible to even know what was legal and what wasn't."
That vagueness argument carries weight beyond the gun debate. When a federal regulation is so unclear that ordinary citizens cannot tell whether their conduct is lawful, courts have long held it fails the basic due process test. O'Connor's ruling leans heavily on that principle, finding the ATF's definitions were ambiguous enough to chill constitutionally protected activity.
The challenge also drew support from a broader coalition of Republican-led states. Just The News reported that West Virginia led 27 GOP states in asking the Supreme Court to strike down the rule during an earlier phase of the litigation. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey framed the case as part of a pattern, saying the Biden administration used "bureaucratic agencies, this time the ATF, to act as legislators instead of enforcing the laws Congress passed."
That argument, that unelected regulators have no business expanding the reach of criminal law beyond what Congress wrote, has become a recurring theme in conservative legal challenges. And it is one the courts have increasingly been willing to hear.
Gun control advocates responded with alarm. Emma Brown, executive director of Giffords, the gun violence prevention organization, warned of real-world consequences:
"Under the logic of this injunction, people ineligible to possess guns could get an untraceable ghost gun without any background checks or training. No one wants to live in a country where gun violence is easy to commit and almost impossible for police to solve."
Brown's use of the word "injunction" points to one of the ruling's unresolved questions. The precise form of relief O'Connor granted, whether a permanent injunction, a declaratory judgment, or some other order, is not spelled out in the available reporting. Nor is the geographic scope of the decision clear: whether it applies nationwide or only within the judge's jurisdiction.
Those details matter. A ruling limited to one federal district would leave the ATF rule intact elsewhere. A broader order could effectively gut the regulation across the country, at least until an appeals court or the Supreme Court weighs in again. The long legal history around transparency and accountability in federal governance suggests these procedural questions will shape the next phase of the fight.
The Department of Justice offered little indication of its next move. A spokesperson said Wednesday that the department is "evaluating the impact of the court's ruling." That careful phrasing leaves open whether the DOJ will appeal, seek a stay, or let the decision stand.
O'Connor has been at the center of this fight before. Breitbart reported that in September 2023, O'Connor issued an earlier injunction blocking the ghost gun rule, arguing that redefining gun parts was Congress's job, not a federal agency's. The Supreme Court vacated that injunction in October 2023, allowing the regulation to remain in force during appeals. O'Connor wrote at the time: "Because Congress did not define frame or receiver, the words receive their ordinary meaning."
Now, with the Supreme Court having resolved the statutory question in the government's favor, O'Connor has shifted to constitutional terrain the justices left untouched. Whether the high court will take up those questions next remains an open issue.
The Biden ATF tried to do by regulation what it could not get through Congress. A federal judge just reminded them that the Constitution still applies, even when the cause sounds urgent.
