You have to go to court and just sit there and listen to the stuff being said. You sit there and go huh? Jack would understand what I am saying. Making sense is not necessarily a part of deciding law. Perfect example being rifles and pistols acquired or purchased shall have a serial number. In fact, I would take it further to include other parts making the weapon function.

Here we are talking about guns or weapons which are bought partially finished. The buyer finishes the construction of them. There is no serial number for the mechanism which projects the bullet. It is still a bullet-spewing weapon, purchased, and completed. It is no different than buying a finished weapon. An agency assigned by Congress through the passage of a law is in charge. The Court believes Congress should decide this and what every blade of grass of law also. It makes no sense and the majority of the court is on a mission to obstruct for political purposes.

Jackson Steps Back Into Her Lonely Role and Breaks The Fourth Wall

– by Kate Riga

TPM the Weekender

Since she joined the Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has taken on a singular, likely uncomfortable mantle. She’s often the only one willing to relitigate fights already lost to the conservative supermajority. Often, she does this alone, either out loud or in writing. 

A perfect example of this cropped up during oral arguments on Tuesday. The Court was considering whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ decision that ghost guns (guns you assemble from a kit) must be regulated like normal guns passed muster. 

Her colleagues debated the intricacies of the guns and the rule. Jackson stayed quiet until the round-robin section, when it was her turn to question Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. 

“Justice Kagan talked about the problem of the agency potentially taking over what is Congress’ business, and I guess I’m worried about the different concern, which is about the Court taking over what Congress may have intended for the agency to do in this situation. All of my questions — the reason why I didn’t really engage with the other part of this is because all of my questions for you stem from that concern.”

The other liberals had moved on to trying to get their colleagues on board with rejecting the gun manufacturers’ frankly insane request to let these untraceable guns promulgate. Jackson was stuck on the underlying issue — why are they litigating this at all? The agency in charge of knowing about guns and how to regulate them, the ATF already observed a problem (the explosion in the use of ghost guns to commit crimes) and addressed it, requiring those guns to have serial numbers and background checks.

She’s fighting a lost battle; this Court is unapologetically hostile to federal agency power, unabashedly committed to the right-wing cause of dismantling the regulatory state. Its overturning of Chevron  deference last term was just the opening salvo.

So what Jackson is doing may seem fruitless. She has no chance of winning over her right-wing peers on this argument. But when one political party is stuck in the minority on the Court, this is what they can do: lay the groundwork in dissent for ideological reorientation that can become possible in the future, when that bloc amasses enough justices and the majority swings left. 

And in the meantime, in the years before that happens, she can provide an important service too: the equivalent of a main character in a sitcom breaking character, locking eyes with the camera and saying . . . “you guys see that this is all bullshit right?”