On Wednesday, the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited ruling in Bondi v. Vanderstok, upholding the Biden administration’s 2022 rule that allows the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to regulate so-called “ghost guns.” But while headlines may frame this as a Second Amendment loss, that’s not the real story here.
The real story is this: the administrative state just scored another narrow, but important, win—and once again, it did so not through an act of Congress, but through bureaucratic interpretation.
Let’s walk through what actually happened.
The Case Wasn’t About Gun Rights—Not Directly
To be clear, Bondi v. Vanderstok didn’t challenge the constitutionality of any gun ownership or the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. This case was a challenge to the ATF’s rule under the Administrative…
