Ghost Guns: A Case Study on the Tension Between Public Exigencies and Statutory Construction

Administrative agencies often navigate public policy issues while simultaneously handling complex and highly technical matters. When facing a public emergency, how should courts interpret these agencies’ authorizing statutes? What rules of thumb exist to guide the courts? This Comment answers these questions through a case study on ongoing litigation pertaining to a recent ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) regulation. The regulation, targeted towards ghost guns (also known as “privately manufactured firearms”), seeks to incorporate these weapons within pre-existing definitions in the ATF’s authorizing statute, the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA). In spite of challenges to the regulation, this Comment argues that the GCA should be interpreted flexibly to include ghost guns and thereby remedy a growing interstate crisis. More universally, public-interest statutes should likewise be interpreted flexibly where they authorize an agency to act, and the agency is responding to an emergency in the course of its statutory operation.