Garland v. Vanderstok Flashcards
A parts kit is not a weapon, so how can it be a firearm
The Oxford English Dictionary defines weapon something designed or used for inflicting bodily harm or physical damage. The weapon parts kit is clearly designed for inflicting harm. The reason people purchase it is to create a functional gun. Congress used the term weapon to signal that they are not regulating toys or industry tools.
There is also clear precedent that suggests a weapon part kit can be a weapon. In Footnote 6 of United States v. Thompson Center Arms, the Court found that a rifle, which is defined by the statute using the word weapon, has been made at the stage of a rifle parts kit. That clearly suggests weapon part kits can be a weapon, and there is no reason to deviate from this precedent.
Congress then defined firearms by it’s function, and include the “readily converted” language to suggest that a partially completed firearm is still a firearm. We need to only look at starter guns. They are not a functional weapon but Congress explicitly covered it. This clearly suggests that weapons need not already be functional.
Congress knows how to regulate weapon parts and have done so in other statutes, and previous versions of this statute.
It is clear that Congress changed the language to limit the scope of regulated items, but deleting the language about parts simply means that not all parts are regulated. Only those that can be readily converted to a functional firearm are. For example, if you just have a single trigger without anything else, it would be regulated in the old statute but not the new one. By including the readily converted language, Congress clearly indicates certain weapon parts are regulated, and there is no inconsistency with other statutes.
Every firearm in 923(a)(3)(A) must have a frame or receiver, because 923(a)(3)(B) says “the frame or receiver of any such weapon”
This is simply not consistent with the ordinary understanding of language. In our brief we gave a hypo about (A) all timekeeping devices, and (B) the hands of such devices. No reasonable person would argue that a digital watch does not belong in Part (A). I can offer you another hypo. If a law professor says the exam will cover (A) all cases in the textbook, and (B) all notes after such cases, no one would suggest that cases without notes are not covered. That’s how ordinary understanding of language works.
923(i) requires frames and receivers to be marked with a serial number so all firearms must have a traditional frame or receiver.
This couldn’t possibly be true because Congress explicitly defined a firearm to include “silencers” and “mufflers”, which lacks any such parts.
Something cannot be both a frame or receiver and be readily converted into a frame or receiver.
The Rule does not say such thing. The Rule basically defines a frame or receiver as something that can be readily converted to function as a frame or receiver. This is consistent with the ordinary public meaning of the words. If something needs to be fully functional to be a frame or receiver, then adding a small piece of plastic that you have to tear off makes something not a frame or receiver. If we require something to be fully functional, even a traditional frame or receiver sold in a box is no longer a frame or receiver because you have to open the box before using it. That couldn’t be what Congress intended, and it’s not how ordinary people understand words.
For example, a bike that has it’s seat disassembled is still a bike. An IKEA chair that comes in a box is still a chair.
If we accept ATF’s logic that something that can be readily converted to a frame or receiver is a frame or receiver, is an AR-15 frame or receiver a machine gun frame or receiver.
The Rule not only requires that something is “readily converted” into a frame or receiver. It also requires the item to be “clearly identifiable as an unfinished component part of a weapon.” This is in 478.12(c). An AR-15 frame or receiver is itself a functional item. It is not clearly identifiable as a part of the machine gun, even if it can be readily converted into one. The definition of the rule clearly tracks the ordinary public meaning or the words. No reasonable person would consider an AR-15 frame or receiver part of a machine gun, but the same cannot be said for the products marketed by the respondents, which even themselves often market as frames or receivers.
Why is ATF departing from it’s prior practice of classifying frames or receivers as items that have “reached a critical stage of manufacture”?
ATF’s new rule is a clarification of the old rule. Whether it’s readily converted, critical stage of manufacture, or any other definition, it’s still a qualitative standard. The Rule provides eight factors to guide future classifications of what is readily converted. We acknowledge that some individual prior classifications might not have used language that is precisely the same as these factors, but the qualitative test is consistent in principle with what the ATF’s position has always been.
The ATF did change one component of its rule. It now considers accompanying material such as templates and jigs.
Again, the consideration of templates and jigs is completely consistent with the qualitative standard of readily converted. Whether they exist or not affects how easy you can assemble the weapon part kit, and the amount of time needed. Going back to the IKEA bed hypo, if you receive a delivery of materials but the package has no instructions about how to assemble and it can’t be found online, most people will probably ask for refund or for the instruction to be delivered. It wouldn’t be unfair to say that the package is no longer a bed because an average person can no longer convert it into one. The same logic applies here.
The ATF is simply being transparent by mentioning jigs and templates. It is part of the eight factors for readiness, and while the jigs and templates are clearly not regulated by itself, it plays an important role as a whole.
The dictionary definition of frames and receivers of a firearm is the part that houses both the components that initiate the explosion and channel the resulting energy forward through the barrel, but the Rules defines as frames or receivers parts that only perform one of these functions.
First of all this argument challenges a different part of the rule and isn’t properly before this Court. Also, it is common that firearms today have multiple frames or receivers, and there is no evidence that the ordinary public meaning requires a firearm to have only one frame or receiver. Over 90% of currently regulated firearms have multiple frames or receivers. Under the respondent’s definition, they actually have no frame or receiver. However, that is not what an ordinary person would believe.
How does anticircumvention apply? In Garland v. Cargill, the Court did not accept this argument.
This case is different from Cargill. In that statute, Congress clearly defined machine gun by its function. The issue at stake in Cargill was whether bump stocks satisfied that functional definition. The anticircumvention canon serves as a tool when the statute is ambiguous. In this case, Congress did not define frames or receivers. Even though the government’s position is that the ordinary public meaning is unambiguous, if the Court does find ambiguity, the statute should be construed in a way that is not “self-defeating” because that is unlikely to be what Congress intended. As I have mentioned, this has been illustrated by this Court’s precedent such as Abramski v. United States.
Under the Constitutional Avoidance doctrine, shouldn’t we read the statute in a way that would not violate the Second Amendment?
First, I want to emphasize that the Second Amendment issue is not before this Court. The Fifth Circuit’s decision also did not rely on the Second Amendment.
But even if we reach the Second Amendment issue, this Rule only imposes reasonable conditions on the commercial sale of firearms, which was clearly recognized as constitutional in Heller and never questioned in Bruen. The Rule does not prevent a individual from building their own firearm, or from buying these weapon kits.
The historical analog under Bruen and Rahimi should be whether the government can regulate the commercial sale of firearms, which is clearly permitted.
Should the rule of lenity apply here?
First, the rule of lenity only applies when there is ambiguity and the government’s position is that the plain text is not ambiguous here.
Even if the Court does find ambiguity, this is not the place for the rule of lenity to apply. The rule of lenity, as defined by Scalia and Garner, is a doctrine that resolves ambiguity in favor of the criminal defendant. This is not a criminal case. There are no criminal defendants. The respondents want the rule of lenity to function like a reverse Chevron doctrine, deferring against the government whenever there’s ambiguity. But that’s not
Prior Statutes: The GCA’s predecessor, the Federal Firearms Act (FFA), regulated “any part or parts of” a firearm. But Congress removed that language.
Congress removed the language to limit the scope of things that are regulated. But that does not mean no parts of a firearm can be regulated. In the old scheme, a single trigger was covered by the statute. In the GCA it does not because it is not readily converted to a functional firearm. Congress included the “readily converted” language to precisely define the parts that they want to regulate, and there is no reason to doubt what Congress explicitly said.
921(a)(4)(C) says that any combination of parts either designed or intended for use in converting any device into any destructive device…
Even if Congress used different languages in different contexts, it does not change the plain meaning of the words. Congress is free to use different words to achieve the same goal, and they often do so.
Also, even the Fifth Circuit acknowledges that the GCA’s definition of firearm must include some parts, such as their holding that a disassembled shotgun is still a firearm. They made the arbitrary distinction saying that it has to be converted in mere seconds. But that is completely arbitrary and lack any textual basis.
ATF is relying on precedent from NFA cases (like United States v. Smith), but wouldn’t that allow AR-15s to me classified as machine guns
The Rule not only requires the incomplete frame or receiver to be “readily converted”, it also has to be “clearly identifiable as an unfinished component part of a weapon”. The ATF has no intention to say that something that does not resemble a machine gun is a machine gun, because that would be against the ordinary public meaning. If there are other classifications using the phrase “readily converted” that the respondent objects to, they are free to raise an as-applied challenge and we can argue about the merits in that case. This is a facial challenge and the ATF’s Rule is consistent with the plain text of the GCA
Why doesn’t the inclusion of starter guns govern how we should interpret reasonably converted.
By making this argument, the respondents are trying to smuggle in the ejusdem generis canon. But this canon doesn’t apply here. According to Scalia and Garner, the ejudem generis canon applies when general words follow an enumeration of two or more things. If Congress had said, starter guns, disassembled handguns, disassembled rifles, and anything else that can be readily converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive, I think it’s fair to interpret “readily converted” based on the list of examples that Congress provided. In this case, there’s no list of two or more things, so the canon doesn’t apply. If Congress wanted to give examples to define what “reasonably converted” means, they are likely to provide more than one item. Legislative history shows that Congress included starter guns because there were particular examples of people converting starter guns into functional guns, aand Congress felt the need to explicitly address this issue.. No canons of interpretation or regular understanding of English supports the position that the interpretation of “readily converted” should be based on the time it takes to convert starter guns.
