A federal judge delivered a major victory for gun-rights advocates this week, striking down a Biden-era regulation targeting so-called “ghost guns” and finding that the rule ran afoul of both the Second Amendment and the Constitution’s Due Process Clause.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled against the 2022 regulation, which required certain privately assembled firearms and firearm component kits to be treated more like traditionally manufactured guns under federal law.
At the heart of the case was a basic question that gun owners have been raising for years: How far can the federal government go in regulating Americans who build firearms for their own personal use?
O’Connor’s answer was not very far, at least not under the sweeping approach taken during the Biden administration.
🚨BREAKING🚨
Judge Reed O'Connor strikes down Biden's "Ghost Gun" ban after SCOTUS upheld it on statutory grounds in Vanderstok v. Garland.
"[T]he Final Rule is unconstitutional under the 2nd Amendment & void for vagueness under the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment…" pic.twitter.com/b7kiIOSA0o
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) August 18, 2026
“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,” O’Connor wrote.
That is a pretty serious rebuke of the government’s attempt to turn firearm parts and home gunsmithing into another sprawling federal regulatory project.
O’Connor held that the rule conflicted with the nation’s “historical tradition” of personal gunsmithing and self-manufacture. He also determined that the regulation was unconstitutionally vague under the Due Process Clause.
That second part matters because constitutional rights are not supposed to come with a guessing game attached. Americans should not need a squad of lawyers standing beside the workbench just to determine whether buying a particular collection of firearm components could suddenly place them on the wrong side of federal law.
The ruling comes after the Supreme Court addressed the same Biden-era regulation in a different context. In a 7-2 decision, the justices upheld ATF’s authority to issue the rule under federal firearms statutes. But that case dealt with whether the agency had statutory authority, not whether the regulation itself violated constitutional protections.
O’Connor’s latest ruling attacked the regulation from that constitutional direction.
Gun-rights groups argued that the Biden administration’s rule placed sweeping restrictions on conduct Americans have historically engaged in, including purchasing parts and assembling firearms for personal use.
Supporters of the rule have argued that unserialized firearms can make criminal investigations more difficult because they cannot be traced through the same systems used for commercially manufactured guns.
But critics argue that Washington used the “ghost gun” label to justify restrictions far broader than the crime statistics warranted.
The material cited in the dispute points to 2024 figures indicating such firearms represented about 1.5 percent of recovered guns at crime scenes across more than 30 cities. ATF reportedly received approximately 19,000 ghost-gun trace requests in 2022 out of roughly 620,000 overall firearm trace requests.
Those numbers hardly settle every question about criminal misuse, but they certainly complicate the idea that privately manufactured firearms somehow represent the centerpiece of America’s violent-crime problem.
The broader constitutional issue is even more important.
Americans have manufactured and modified their own firearms since long before anyone in Washington dreamed up an agency rulebook thick enough to stop a rifle round. The historical tradition surrounding private gunsmithing is precisely why Second Amendment advocates viewed the Biden rule as more than an ordinary technical regulation.
It was another example of federal officials attempting to expand government authority until a court finally asked where that authority actually ends.
For decades, gun-control advocates have pushed increasingly creative interpretations of what the government should be allowed to regulate. When direct restrictions become politically difficult, attention shifts to ammunition, components, manufacturing, serialization, accessories and every other inch of territory surrounding firearm ownership.
O’Connor’s decision puts a constitutional roadblock in that path.
The ruling will undoubtedly face additional legal scrutiny, and the fight over privately manufactured firearms is unlikely to disappear.
But for Second Amendment supporters, the principle at stake is straightforward. Constitutional rights do not become less protected simply because technology changes or because government regulators invent a new label for something Americans have been doing for generations.
The Biden administration tried to bring private gunmaking under a much broader federal regulatory umbrella.
This week, a federal judge told Washington that the Constitution still gets a vote.
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