Highlights: Late Monday afternoon, the Supreme Court handed down a very brief order establishing that sellers of “ghost guns,” weapons that are sold dismantled in ready-to-assemble kits, must comply with the same gun safety laws and anti-crime laws as any other gun seller.

Judge Reed O’Connor, a former Republican Capitol Hill staffer known for handing down dubiously reasoned opinions that benefit Republican causes, effectively tried to neutralize the Supreme Court’s August 2023 decision.

While the Court’s August order was a 5-4 decision, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the Court’s three Democratic appointees, no justice publicly dissented from the order handed down on Monday — which suggests that even the four justices who dissented in August may have viewed O’Connor’s most recent ruling in favor of ghost gun sellers as an act of defiance that needed to be quashed.

  • FireTower@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This really isn’t that big a ruling. It was basically just on whether an injunction should be in effect during the course of a lawsuit. In practice it just means the two plaintiffs can’t sell their products until at least the end of the case (assuming they win). If they lose they’d be barred from making those sales, but that would have always happened regardless of the SC stepping in.

  • cristo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Wasnt this always a thing? If you buy a firearm kit and have to do absolutely no machining yourself, it still counts as a firearm. Companies would sell 80% lowers that you would still have to mill some metal off of before it was a fully functioning reciever for a firearm. Does this ruling just say what was already the case again?

    • FireTower@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The items in question still need to be substantially altered to become a firearm. This article isn’t very good. Also they only thing the SC decided is if an injunction would be in effect while a case was on going. The case still has yet to be decided.

  • Jeremy [Iowa]@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    Leave it to Vox to make a lot of noise about nothing significant. I’m looking forward to their next reversal of tone back to but Bruen was a disaster etc.

    • jeffw@lemmy.worldOPM
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      1 year ago

      Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s a big deal that a lower court judge tried to set new precedent immediately after a SCOTUS ruling. That’s insane to do.

      • Jeremy [Iowa]@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Oh, it absolutely is. We’re seeing much of the same in the 9th Circuit.

        I didn’t take that as the point of the article, though.

    • cbarrick@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s frowned upon to editorialize titles. OP reused the title of the article, which is the correct thing to do.

      It’s from Vox, an American media company. The URL starts with vox.com/scotus. You should expect American media companies to refer to the SCOTUS as simply “the Supreme Court.”

      Just like if I were reading the CBC, I would expect the “Supreme Court” to refer to the Supreme Court of Canada.

      • jabathekek@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Why is it frowned upon? I agree the title shouldn’t change, but I would appreciate “[American] Supreme Court” instead of just guessing which country the title refers too: Behold!