As a teenager growing up in Michigan, Guy Boyd had never seen a firearm, much less a ghost gun — an untraceable weapon self-assembled from kits sold online with no legal restrictions.
That all tragically changed in May 2021 when Boyd’s then-best friend, just 17 years old, pulled out a homemade gun at a high school hangout and accidentally shot Boyd in the face.
“Everything was red. All I could see was red,” Boyd, 20, told ABC News in an interview about the ordeal that nearly took his life. He lost his right eye and now suffers from chronic seizures, memory issues, depression and anxiety.
Americans under the age of 18 are prohibited under federal law from purchasing a gun, but they face no barriers to obtaining a gun kit to assemble at home, sometimes in a matter of minutes.
“Ghost guns. It’s in the name: it’s a gun. It’s a firearm. It’s a projectile,” he said of the weapons which are not serialized or registered. “It’s something that can take somebody’s life, or almost take somebody’s life. It’s common sense, in my opinion, that they should be treated like a regular gun.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday will consider whether self-assembled guns, parts kits, and partially complete firearm frames or receivers — easily converted into a functional firearm — can be subject to the same purchase restrictions and registration requirements as traditional guns.
As the number of ghost guns recovered from crime and accident scenes soars, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) in 2022 reclassified gun kits and critical parts as firearms under the Gun Control Act of 1968.
The rule would require dealers and manufacturers nationwide to obtain a federal license, comply with paperwork and serialization requirements, and conduct a background check on buyers. It would also impose a minimum purchase age of 18.
A group of manufacturers sued the Biden administration, alleging the rule exceeds ATF authority because weapons kits do not meet the definition of “firearm” under the law. The agency argues that the law was written broadly to encompass fully functional guns and components that could be “readily” converted into one.
“That teenager (who shot Boyd) should not have been able to purchase a weapon like that, but he was able to order a gun building kit and build it at home,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director and chief litigation counsel at Everytown for Gun Safety. “The industry is really undermining parents’ ability to keep their kids safe and arming teenagers in a way that the laws are really set up to prevent.”
Ghost guns are also being recovered from crime scenes at an alarming rate, according to Justice Department data. In 2017, the ATF collected 1,600 guns without a serial number; four years later in 2021, the number was 19,000, a 1000% increase.
Gun safety advocates and gun kit manufacturers agree that the Biden administration’s 2022 regulation, which is currently in effect, has been effective at curtailing the proliferation of homemade weapons.
“If the Court strikes down the rule, it significantly limits federal regulation in this area,” said Deepak Gupta, a Supreme Court litigator and Harvard Law professor. “There’s a real risk that criminals will be able to order guns on the internet, and the entire gun control framework will not apply to them.”
Pro-gun groups challenging the rule say the dangers are being overblown and that the law simply does not apply to products that are not fully functional guns.
“There is a world of things under the law that are not ‘guns.’ There’s a world of things in the law that are guns. We can all agree with that. This is about drawing the line between those two worlds,” said Cody Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Defense Distributed, one of the largest manufacturers of gun parts kits and a plaintiff in the high court case.
“This rule is about taking physical articles in a state of near completion and regulating them and say, ‘Well, close enough,'” he said. “We don’t agree with them being regulated in the first place.”
Oral arguments in the case are expected to center on competing interpretations of the text of the 1968 law. The justices will then begin crafting their opinions, which are expected for release in early 2025.
“A minor or people with mental issues — there’s no reason to be able to buy a gun online that’s untraceable,” said Denise Wieck, Boyd’s mother. “For the kits to not be considered a gun is just amazing. Guns are just too easy to get out there, and a lot of them are ghost guns because people have bought them that shouldn’t have been able to buy them.”
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