Plus, can Donald Trump really reduce energy costs by 50%?
I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”
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Today's read: 15 minutes.
More than Trump & Harris.
This year, voters are casting ballots on much more than Trump, Harris, or even Senate and House races. All across the country, voters are deciding on important and fascinating ballot initiatives — “yes” or “no” votes on specific issues — that could change state law overnight. These initiatives impact abortion access, drug law, petty crime, voting rights, education, and more. In tomorrow's Friday edition, we're going to share a comprehensive list of all the state ballot initiatives and break down the most interesting ones.
Also...
Quick hits.
- Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane, weakening to a Category 1 storm as it moved across the state. More than 3 million people lost power, and multiple localities have reported deaths. (The latest)
- The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for September rose 2.4% from the year prior, down from 2.5% in August but higher than economists expected. The core CPI, which excludes food and energy costs, increased 0.3% from August and 3.3% from one year ago. (The report)
- Federal prosecutors charged Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, an Afghan national who entered the U.S. on a special immigrant visa in September 2021, with conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack on Election Day on behalf of ISIS. (The charges)
- The Justice Department is considering whether to break up Google following a judge’s ruling that the company had illegally abused its search monopoly. (The case)
- The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. called on Israel to take immediate steps to address “catastrophic” humanitarian conditions in Gaza. (The remarks)
Today's topic.
Ghost guns. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Garland v. VanDerStok, a case challenging a 2022 Biden administration rule that regulated unserialized firearms, also known as “ghost guns.” A group of firearms owners, gun rights groups and manufacturers challenged the rule, arguing that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) exceeded its authority in issuing the regulation. During arguments, a majority of justices on the court seemed skeptical of the plaintiffs’ case, indicating that they would uphold the rule when they issue their decision in summer 2025.
Back up: While traditional firearms are manufactured by licensed companies and then sold through licensed dealers, ghost guns are sold in pieces — often as “do-it-yourself kits” that contain all the parts the buyer needs to assemble a gun on their own. Before the ATF’s 2022 rule, a buyer did not need to pass a background check to purchase a ghost gun kit, and the guns themselves were not required to have serial numbers (as traditional firearms are).
The ATF’s rule did not ban the sale of ghost guns, but it did regulate their sale to comply with the same standards as other commercial firearms. The agency justified the regulation under the Gun Control Act of 1968, which defines a “firearm” as “any weapon… which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” including “the frame or receiver of any such weapon.” The ATF said unfinished parts of a firearm, like the frame of a handgun or the receiver of a long gun that would be included in a ghost gun kit, fall within this definition, thus giving it the authority to regulate them.
The challengers, however, rejected this interpretation of the law and argued the ATF improperly stretched its authority in issuing the rule. They initially sued to block the ATF from enforcing the rule in federal court in Texas, where a judge sided with them. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals similarly ruled for the plaintiffs, but the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in August 2023 that the ATF could enforce the rule while it considers the challenge.
During oral arguments, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the rule was aimed at addressing a rise in criminal acts committed with ghost guns. She added that manufacturers market the gun kits as a way to evade federal gun laws, saying, “They’ve advertised the products, in their words, as ‘ridiculously easy to assembly and dummy-proof’ and touted that you can go from opening the mail to have a fully functional gun in as little as 15 minutes, no serial number, background check, or records required.”
Peter Patterson, representing the plaintiffs, argued the ATF’s interpretation of the Gun Control Act was flawed, as the law did not define firearm frames or receivers as something that “may readily be converted” to function as a framer or receiver. Further, he said the ATF deviated from its past standards in formulating the rule.
Numerous justices seemed unconvinced by Patterson’s arguments, with Chief Justice John Roberts pushing back on the suggestion that ghost gun kits were marketed for gun hobbyists. However, Justice Samuel Alito questioned the ATF’s argument that various parts of a gun kit constituted a firearm. “[If] I put out on a counter some eggs, some chopped-up ham, some chopped-up pepper, and onions, is that a western omelet,” he asked.
Today, we’ll look at arguments about the case from the right and left, followed by my take.
What the right is saying.
- The right criticizes the ATF rule, arguing that only Congress can make such a change to the law.
- Some say the court should rein in the ATF’s overreach.
- Others note the court has been sympathetic to the left on gun issues despite its conservative majority.
In National Review, Charles C.W. Cooke said “SCOTUS should strike down” the rule.
“Nominally, that case revolves around so-called ghost guns — firearms that, because they lack serial numbers, are more difficult for the state to trace. And yet, at root, VanDerStok is but one more in a seemingly interminable line of judicially mediated disputes that are testing the integrity of our constitutional separation of powers,” Cooke wrote. “Once again, the Biden administration has issued a rule that redefines a longstanding provision within federal law. And, once again, the people on the wrong end of that redefinition have had the temerity to notice.”
“Given its outright hostility to the right to keep and bear arms, one can comprehend why the Biden-Harris administration would covet this change. But that, as ever, is a separate matter from whether the law permits such a change to be made. And, much as the Biden administration might wish otherwise, the law does not,” Cooke said. “Indeed, there is nothing in the Gun Control Act’s references to ‘receivers’ or ‘frames,’ in the ATF’s previous definitions of those terms, or in the way that the words ‘receiver’ and ‘frame’ have been used in common parlance that even imply that those words can be read to include devices that are not, in fact, either receivers or frames.”
In The Daily Signal, Zack Smith and Jack Fitzhenry wrote “the ATF once again seeks an expansive view of its own authority.”
“At oral argument Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar (the Biden-Harris administration’s lawyer) made much of the supposed ease with which criminals might buy ghost-gun kits to avoid the background checks and serial numbers required for buying a fully assembled firearm,” Smith and Fitzhenry said. “That summed up the administration’s view of why the ATF’s regulation was desirable as a policy matter. But as Pete Patterson, representing the challengers, made clear, those policy concerns are for Congress to consider—not the ATF.”
“At bottom, this case provides an opportunity for the court to consider whether administrative agencies like the ATF can grant themselves regulatory authority over new objects and items simply through their own reinterpretation and expansion of statutory terms. Here, the ATF has sought to use wordsmithing to exert control over gunsmithing in a way Congress never intended.”
In Townhall, Tom Knighton suggested the Supreme Court is “not doing gun owners a lot of good.”
“For an anti-gun Biden administration, this [regulation] is par for the course. However, the overall feeling from many is that the supposedly conservative Supreme Court agrees. That makes me ask just what good is having a supposedly significant conservative majority doing for gun owners, anyway,” Knighton wrote. “Barrett looks like she'll side with Roberts—who has always been squishy on gun issues—and the three liberal justices to basically hand the case to the Biden administration.”
“So what is going on? Why is our supposedly conservative majority on the Supreme Court siding with gun control advocates here,” Knighton asked. “I'm sure you'll excuse me for no longer feeling a great deal of confidence where this court will land on any issue that actually matters, but especially on anything relating to guns. It's entirely possible that everyone is wrong and the Court will actually smack down the ATF for yet another overreach. But I'm not holding my breath on this one.”
What the left is saying.
- The left is pleased that the court seems poised to uphold the law.
- Some say the court may finally establish a limit for the level of gun access it is willing to tolerate.
- Others worry that the court’s ruling is far from certain.
In Slate, Mark Joseph Stern wrote “finally, the bad guys had a bad day at the Supreme Court.”
“Lawyers with bad arguments in defense of terrible causes are on a winning streak at this Supreme Court. The conservative supermajority often seems committed to laundering feeble and nutty arguments into plausible-sounding law on behalf of right-wing litigants,” Stern said. “It was therefore more gratifying than it should have been on Tuesday to hear the court regain its sanity… These justices did not mask their irritation with the lower court judges who tried to save the ghost gun companies, along with their criminal clientele, by warping the law beyond all recognition.”
“Tuesday’s arguments revealed two things: Roberts and Barrett have zero sympathy for the ghost gun industry, and they are unmistakably sick of this never-ending case. Again, the legal question is not difficult: Under federal law, parts that ‘may readily be converted’ to fire a bullet are a firearm, so their sale must comply with the usual regulations, including needing a serial number and background check,” Stern wrote. “A victory for ATF in VanDerStok will be a triumph for sane judging and commonsense gun safety laws; it will also literally save countless people’s lives.”
In Vox, Ian Millhiser suggested “the Supreme Court appears to have found a gun regulation it actually likes.”
“Few things are as chaotic as this Supreme Court’s gun cases. Just last June, the Court’s Republican majority legalized ‘bump stocks,’ devices that effectively convert ordinary semi-automatic weapons into machine guns,” Millhiser wrote. That ruling created “a test so confusing that more than a dozen judges have published judicial opinions begging the justices to explain what, exactly, Bruen means. Yet, while this Court’s approach to guns is frequently hostile to gun laws, a majority of the justices appeared to meet a gun regulation on Tuesday they are actually willing to uphold.”
“The biggest wild card in the case is Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who revealed that he voted in favor of ghost guns in 2023 because he was concerned that a gun seller who was ignorant of the law might accidentally sell an unregulated kit without realizing it was illegal to do so and then be charged with a crime,” Millhiser said. “But, as Prelogar told Kavanaugh, a gun seller can only be charged with a crime if they ‘willfully’ sell a gun without a serial number or if they knowingly sell a gun without a background check. So Kavanaugh’s fears appear unfounded.”
In Bloomberg, Noah Feldman said “the Supreme Court ghost gun arguments were cringeworthy.”
“Should so-called ghost guns — assembled at home from kits in as little as 20 minutes — be counted as guns for purposes of federal law? If you have an ounce of common sense, the answer is obviously yes,” Feldman wrote. “The relevant law defines a firearm as ‘any weapon … which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.’ The definition specifically includes ‘the frame ... of any such weapon.’ And the undoubted purpose of the law is to protect Americans from untraceable guns being used in crimes — a purpose that clearly applies to any functional firearm, which ghost guns are.”
“On Tuesday, the justices sidestepped discussion of the law’s purpose. Instead, they spent the argument deep in the linguistic weeds, arguing about whether the ATF was right to say that a partially disassembled gun frame is still, you guessed it, a gun frame,” Feldman said. “If this gives you a sense of horrified déjà vu, that’s because it echoes a case the court heard last term. In that case, the court had to decide whether the ATF was right to define bump stocks as machine guns… The absurdity of the bump stock decision is why I am not confident that the court will get the ghost guns issue right.”
My take.
Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.
- Anyone who’s read Tangle for a while knows that I enjoy guns but also want more commonsense gun regulation.
- From a practical standpoint, I want ghost guns to be regulated like all other guns already are.
- From a legal standpoint, the argument is much less clear — but I do think the ATF’s rule complies with the law.
Whenever we cover Supreme Court cases, we try to focus on two things separately: The effects of the ruling and the legal arguments themselves. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm supportive of what looks to be the most likely outcome here — ghost gun kits should be regulated like normal firearms.
I've made my case on gun control enough times that I can summarize my views quickly. I'm not currently a gun owner, but I'm a Second Amendment supporter who shot my first rifle when I was 14 and who very much enjoys guns, respects the right to own them, and appreciates why so many Americans are concerned about restricting the right to buy them. The vast majority of legal gun owners in America are rule-abiding citizens with good reasons for keeping a firearm at home.
If you'd like to read more about my perspective on gun regulation in general, I suggest this piece, which is one of the most popular pieces I’ve ever written (warning: It is not very uplifting).
As I describe in that piece I also think our gun rights are pretty well intact. We have more guns than people in our country, and 44% of Americans live in a house with a firearm. Buying a gun is not unreasonably restricted, and it’s really not that hard. Meanwhile, we have unique problems with violence and suicide that are indisputably related to the massive proliferation of firearms, a corrupted gun culture, and pervasive mental health issues (to disputable degrees). Part of addressing this problem involves creating more friction to buy firearms, which we can also justify by weighing the rights of others to live free of violence as greater than the right to unfettered firearm access.
So, amidst this, I find it fairly ludicrous that someone can buy a "gun kit" and, with a drill and about 30 minutes, have a fully functioning firearm free of the rules, regulations, and restrictions that already exist for other guns. Therefore, I'm glad the Supreme Court appears likely to allow the ATF to regulate ghost guns like we regulate other firearms.
As a brief aside, I’ll add that this Supreme Court continues to defy ideological expectations — mostly from the left, but from the right as well. I've argued again and again that — despite my frustration with a few of its most significant rulings — I think the ideological conservative caricature of this court continues to miss.
As for the legal argument, I’ll concede the answer is a bit muddier for me. Because I want this rule to be enforced, I also want it to be the case that the laws we have on the books clearly limit ghost guns. I'm not totally sure they do. The people who have created these kits have exploited a genuine loophole in previous rules, and there is a blurry line between using existing laws to limit these kits and infringing upon the freedom people have to create or build things at home (including gun hobbyists). Remember: This is not a case about the Second Amendment, it’s a case about whether the ATF is exceeding the scope of the 1968 Gun Control Act.
As I was reading about this case, I was reminded of when I was a kid looking up how to make a "potato gun" on the early internet. They may sound silly, but these potato cannons can fire a potato one hundred miles per hour and break a car window. They are genuinely dangerous, and also perfectly legal. So somewhere between a potato gun (which can do quite a bit of damage) and a genuine firearm is a line on what is legal to make at home and what isn't. I can't say that line is always perfectly obvious to me.
At the same time, I didn't hear a sterling defense of gun kits in the oral arguments or in response to the justices' questions. Justice Alito, for instance, made waves by asking, “[If] I put out on a counter some eggs, some chopped-up ham, some chopped-up pepper, and onions, is that a western omelet?”
The answer, quite obviously, is no. But the analogy is also pretty flawed. A more realistic question would be: If I beat some eggs; chop up some ham, pepper, and onion; heat up some butter in a pan; and then put all all those ingredients into the pan for you, hand you a spatula, give you instructions on how to mix those eggs up in the pan, tell you "when you're done you'll have a western omelet," and then I ask you for $10… am I in the business of selling omelets? Or are you a cook paying me for a service that teaches you how to make them?
But even that analogy I don’t think is quite right, so here’s a more apt food analogy. When I get a frozen TV dinner, all I have to do to make it is rip open a corner of the packaging, place it in the microwave for a few minutes, and then mix the ingredients up. Are we really arguing that I wasn't sold mac and cheese because I had to open part of the container and put this frozen food in the microwave? Of course not.
Ghost guns — according to the very advertisements used to sell them — aren't much more difficult to put together (though I’ll note that these advertisements are embellishing, ghost guns typically take hours to construct; but manufacturers have made their bed to lie in). As Prelogar repeated throughout oral arguments, the challengers' primary case is that "a single undrilled hole is enough to exempt a product from regulation." The ramifications of this are genuinely tough to wrap your head around and rather absurd to ponder.
So, yes, the ATF's rule for gun kits is obviously a new evolution, but I don't think the agency is overreaching in its interpretation of how Congress defined the objectives of its 1968 legislation. These kits are firearms for all intents and purposes in the same way a disassembled couch I order from IKEA is still a couch. They should be regulated, tracked, and addressed by the law in the same way. The ATF is reasonably doing its job to create rules to enforce gun laws.
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Your questions, answered.
Q: President Trump has stated that he would reduce energy costs by 50%. Is that even possible? Has he mentioned how he might do it? I’ve not seen any details.
— Clif from Colorado
Tangle: To catch people up, former President Trump has said on the campaign trail that he will reduce energy costs by 50% within 12 months of taking office. He has not released specific details about that ambition, other than to say he’ll call a national emergency to increase fossil fuel production. And no, it’s not achievable on that timeline — especially when you consider that energy costs have only risen over the past few decades. In that sense, it’s easy to dismiss this claim as fanciful, but I want to give it the best possible read and you can see how it holds up.
A common defense of some of Trump’s more bombastic language is that he’s a negotiator — he starts high to get a deal short of what he says but somewhere around where he wants it. So if he comes out and says “cut energy costs by 50%,” we shouldn’t interpret that literally but more as an ambitious goal that will light a fire under the energy sector and get us moving in the right direction.
We have a good idea of how he’d try to do it. First, he’d declare a national emergency to cut regulations for energy manufacturing and to increase supply. Second, he’d push for more natural gas and oil production (oil production is already at an all-time high in the U.S., but it could go higher). That’s all within the 12-month window, but looking farther out, he’d plan to explore more areas to drill and more sources of energy to harness, namely nuclear energy. No industry is more regulated than nuclear energy, and while in office Trump clearly showed that unleashing nuclear is a big priority of his.
If he becomes president, can he make meaningful progress in the availability of nuclear energy in 12 months? Not really. But he could get the ball rolling. And if he sets a high bar, it’s possible he can at least make energy prices start to go down, which would be a new trend that would have enormous ripple effects throughout the whole economy.
Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.
Under the radar.
Major U.S. companies have paused or abandoned programs intended to support black- and Hispanic-owned small businesses launched in response to the George Floyd protests and the Covid-19 pandemic. According to an analysis by Skip, an online platform for small-business owners, 40% of the roughly 60 small-business grant programs that in 2023 included race or ethnicity in their criteria no longer exist or are defunct, while an additional 27% no longer use race or ethnicity in making awards. The exact nature of the changes vary, but a multitude of legal challenges is driving companies to rethink their corporate diversity and equity initiatives. Tynesia Boyea-Robinson, founder of an impact investing and advisory firm, said, “People have changed behavior because they are afraid of being sued. If you lead with race, if you lead with gender even, and, sometimes, if you lead with sexual identity, you will be attacked.” The Wall Street Journal has the story.
Numbers.
- $500. The average price of a ghost gun kit, according to an ATF estimate.
- 1,758. The number of ghost guns seized by U.S. law enforcement in 2016.
- 25,785. The number of ghost guns seized by U.S. law enforcement in 2022.
- 4,000. The approximate number of ghost guns recovered at crime scenes in 2018, according to Justice Department data.
- 20,000. The approximate number of ghost guns recovered at crime scenes in 2021.
- 1,083%. The percent increase in the number of suspected privately made firearms, defined by the ATF as an unserialized firearm that has been recovered in a criminal investigation, submitted to ATF for tracing between 2017 and 2021.
- 692. The number of reports of suspected privately made firearms recovered by law enforcement in homicide or attempted homicide investigations between 2016 and 2021.
- 42 of 43. The number of unlicensed manufacturers of ghost gun kits that would go out of business if the ATF’s rule goes into effect, according to attorney Peter Patterson.
The extras.
- One year ago today we released our edition on the October 7 attacks.
- The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the ad in the free version for the AquaVault charge card.
- Nothing to do with politics: A deep dive into the rivalry between Grazer and Chunk, two bears in Katmai National Park.
- Yesterday’s survey: 1,785 readers responded to our survey asking about Elon Musk’s future impact as a surrogate for Donald Trump with 52% saying he will help. “I think Musk's impact is that money talks and he has truck loads of money,” one respondent said.
Have a nice day.
When Nash Coté was undergoing chemotherapy to treat a rare form of cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma, he decorated his radiation mask to resemble Deadpool from the Marvel movie franchise. It just so happened that Nash’s mom Angie Poirier, an Ottawa TV broadcaster, and Ryan Reynolds, who plays Deadpool, follow each other on X — and when Poirier sent Reynolds a picture of Nash in the Deadpool mask, Reynolds said he wanted to meet. They organized a surprise get-together at Nash’s hospital in Boston, which included a call with “Wolverine” actor Hugh Jackman. National Post has the story.
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