(José Niño, Headline USA) A Texas federal judge has struck down the Biden administration’s signature restriction on untraceable firearms, finding the regulation violates two separate constitutional guarantees roughly 17 months after the Supreme Court let it stand on narrower grounds.
Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of Fort Worth ruled that the 2022 measure breaches the Second Amendment and fails the Fifth Amendment’s due process requirement because its terms are impermissibly vague, Reuters reported.
The decision revives a fight the Supreme Court appeared to settle in March 2025. Justices voted 7 to 2 to uphold the rule that spring, reversing an earlier O’Connor decision in the same litigation. As Reuters noted, that opinion turned entirely on a question of agency power, asking whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had reached beyond what Congress authorized. The justices never took up whether the regulation squares with the Constitution.
Gun rights litigants moved into precisely that gap. The Second Amendment Foundation and Defense Distributed, an Austin company that sells equipment for completing unfinished firearm components, returned to O’Connor and asked him to halt enforcement on the constitutional theories the high court had left untouched.
The rule at issue treats partially finished frames and receivers as firearms under the 1968 Gun Control Act. Companies selling those parts and kits must stamp them with serial numbers, secure federal licenses and run background checks on buyers, the same obligations that already apply to conventional commercial gunmakers.
O’Connor, whom President George W. Bush placed on the bench, concluded that the requirements block Americans from obtaining the parts they need to build or fix their own weapons. The regulation, he wrote, “contradicts the actual historical tradition of personal gunsmithing.”
“Self-manufacture of firearms in America was common and indeed foundational to establishing our Nation,” O’Connor wrote.
The relief he granted is narrow rather than nationwide. The order bars enforcement against Defense Distributed and against Second Amendment Foundation members as to certain of the company’s products. Adam Kraut, the foundation’s executive director, welcomed the outcome and described the Biden era regulation as “a mess.”
Gun control advocates promised a fight. Eric Tirschwell, who directs Everytown Law, rejected the reasoning outright in a statement quoted by Reuters.
“There is no Second Amendment right to buy or sell an untraceable ghost gun kit without a background check. This decision is egregiously wrong, and we expect the Justice Department to promptly appeal,” Tirschwell said.
Headline USA reached out to Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson for comment on this judicial action. “The court got it right. ATF did not respect Bruen. There is no history or tradition of regulating privately made firearms in this country,” Wilson said.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
