Though Lombardo turned his back on Nevadans’ safety, court has not

Good leaders react appropriately to rapidly changing circumstances. Great leaders correctly anticipate those changes before they occur. President Joe Biden demonstrated excellent leadership last April when he issued new federal rules to rein in the manufacture and sale of “ghost guns” — homemade firearms that lack serial numbers and are thus extraordinarily difficult to regulate or trace. Just imagine if Ikea sold firearms in a standardized, easy-to-assemble package you can pull off the shelf yourself — no background check required.

Now, the Supreme Court has at least temporarily upheld Biden’s regulations. In a 5-4 order coming from the court’s shadow docket, the justices allowed the Biden administration’s regulations to stand pending the outcome of an ongoing federal lawsuit.

While allowing a regulation to stand pending the outcome of litigation is relatively standard practice, it was surprising in this case given that, just last year, six of the same nine justices struck down basic licensing and permitting requirements for pistols in New York state. In their ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association vs. Bruen, a 6-3 majority of the court, split along partisan ideological lines, ruled that the ability to carry a pistol in public was a constitutional right under the Second Amendment. This left many legal scholars to speculate that almost any prohibition on the right to possess a firearm might be under threat.

It’s still possible that’s the case, as the nation’s highest court has yet to rule on the merits of the ghost gun case. But their willingness to temporarily uphold Biden’s regulations appears to suggest that at least two of the court’s conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, may recognize the unique dangers of firearms that are completely unregulated and untraceable. Unfortunately, shadow docket rulings don’t require a written opinion explaining the majority’s decision.

Until the court issues a final decision on the merits, the overwhelming majority of Americans who support serial numbers, background checks and limits on the ability of convicted violent offenders to own or possess firearms, Biden’s regulations and the court’s ruling are welcome news.

In 2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available, law enforcement reported just under 20,000 ghost guns to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. That’s only about 1% of guns recovered by law enforcement in criminal investigations. That may make it seem like ghost guns aren’t a big problem.

But consider that just five years earlier, in 2016, local law enforcement recovered fewer than 2,000 ghost guns as part of criminal investigations. That means that criminals were 10 times more likely to use a ghost gun in 2021 than they were in 2016 — an alarming rate of growth.

The rapid increase in the prevalence of ghost guns is clear to anyone looking at the data. Federal, state and local officials would be foolish to ignore it.

Also consider this simple reality: Producing a ghost gun is done specifically to evade gun regulations and specifically to avoid law enforcement oversight. In other words, you don’t make a ghost gun for a good reason. People who want to commit crimes are the people who want untraceable guns.

Fortunately, Biden took the proactive route and banned U.S. businesses from manufacturing or selling unlicensed and unserialized “buy build shoot” kits.

While U.S. manufacturers and gun dealers can continue to produce and sell home-assembly gun kits, under the Biden administration’s rules, serial numbers must be stamped on the kits’ frame or receiver. Commercial sellers of these kits must become federally licensed and run background checks prior to a sale — just like they have to do with other commercially made firearms.

In other words, criminals won’t be able to use gun kits to make an end run around background check requirements, and guns recovered at crime scenes will have serial numbers that can be traced via the ATF database.

The fact that those basic and reasonable regulations are being challenged at all demonstrates the absurdity of gun rights absolutists. These absolutists claim that guns are needed for self-defense and sporting, yet they are spending millions of dollars in legal fees fighting to legalize unlicensed, untraceable, unregulated firearms that seem custom-designed for criminals looking to escape the law.

To justify their claim, they’re arguing that kits that contain all of the pieces required to assemble a gun in 30 minutes or less do not qualify as “firearms.” It’s like arguing that the Ikea couch isn’t a couch because you have to screw the legs in yourself.

Earlier this year, Gov. Joe Lombardo sided with the people arguing that guns aren’t guns, vetoing legislation to close a legal loophole in Nevada’s ghost-gun ban. His campaign website still proudly proclaims that “Left-wing politicians are working hard to take away our right to create our own guns. As governor, Joe will veto any legislation that takes away that right.”

As a former law enforcement officer, we would hope that Lombardo would be sympathetic to the need for law enforcement to be able to trace guns used in violent crimes back to their owners. Instead, he’s trading Nevadans’ lives for the support of the gun lobby and gun-rights absolutists. It’s another shameful example of Lombardo pandering to the worst among us.

We hope that case currently moving through the federal court system takes the decision out of the hands of extremists like Lombardo and upholds Biden’s incredibly basic and reasonable regulations. Until then, kudos to Biden for having the foresight to try to proactively address a growing problem, and to the five members of the Supreme Court who are willing to wait to hear the merits of the case before opening the floodgates to untraceable firearms.

Criminals were 10 times more likely to use a ghost gun in 2021 than they were in 2016 — an alarming rate of growth.