The Supreme Court is poised to hear arguments on Tuesday about whether the Biden administration overstepped in regulating so-called ghost guns, untraceable firearms assembled from kits bought online.

Administration officials have argued that the kits should be subject to the same reporting requirements as other firearms because ghost guns have soared in popularity in recent years, becoming tools for criminals who cannot pass background checks or other requirements for purchasing firearms.

Although it centers on guns, the case before the court is not about the Second Amendment, but rather about the limits of the power of administrative agencies. At issue is whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives acted outside its bounds in issuing a regulation in 2022 to expand the definition of “firearm” under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Under the regulation, gun makers and sellers must be licensed to sell the kits, the products must be marked with serial numbers so they can be traced and would-be buyers must pass a background check.

The dispute is the latest challenge to the federal government’s limited attempts to address gun violence, particularly as legislative efforts have stalled in Congress.

In the previous term, a majority of the justices struck down a federal ban on bump stocks, devices that attach to firearms to enable semiautomatic rifles to fire at speeds rivaling those of machine guns. The Trump administration had banned the devices after a massacre at a country music festival in Las Vegas in 2017.

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