URochester's Scott Grimm describes how language science helped the Supreme Court decide that gun kits should be treated like firearms.
Sales of gun kits, also referred to as "ghost guns," have surged in recent years-rising from 1,600 in 2017 to more than 19,000 in 2021-a nearly twelvefold increase, according to data cited by the Supreme Court of the United States. Because these kits were hard to trace, they made it possible for convicted felons, minors, and those with restraining orders-all of whom are prohibited from purchasing guns-to get their hands on working firearms.
That's why in 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) began to treat these kits just like readily assembled guns, the latter of which are regulated by the Gun Control Act of 1968. The act requires those who import, manufacture, or deal with guns to keep sales records, conduct background checks, and mark their products with serial numbers.
But gun kit manufacturers pushed back against the ATF, arguing instead that parts do not necessarily make a whole. The case ultimately reached the US Supreme Court, where the justices sided with the ATF in its March ruling in Bondi v. VanDerStok. That decision also carried a surprising and direct link to the University of Rochester.
The justices used a 2017 paper by Scott Grimm, an associate professor of linguistics, and Beth Levin, his former PhD advisor at Stanford University, to conclude that gun kits are intended to be used as guns and as such fall under the rule applied by the ATF.
The case hinged on the idea of so-called artifact nouns. In the court's ruling, Justice Neil Gorsuch-writing for the majority-cites the linguists' work: "The term weapon is an artifact noun-a word for a thing created by humans. Artifact nouns are typically 'characterized by an intended function,' rather than by some ineffable 'natural essence.'"
Grimm was initially stunned.
"This came as a massive surprise that our work, which really engages with linguistic and cognitive questions, ended up being so relevant and something so practical and far-reaching," he says.
Q&A with Scott Grimm
What is an artifact noun?
Grimm: It's a basic distinction between types of things in the world. On one hand you have all the natural kind entities, like water, or tiger, or rock. And then on the other hand you have artifacts. An artifact is anything that is man-made, designed, or refashioned in some way. It boils down to this basic metaphysical distinction. As linguists, we are interested in how these differences are reflected in language, and, in fact, nouns that encode artifacts behave very differently from nouns that encode natural kinds.
Does an artifact require a specific function?
Grimm: It's been a long-standing observation that an artifact has a function, like a hammer that wasn't invented without reason: A hammer exists to perform the function of hammering a nail or various other things, and so without a function, typically, objects don't qualify as an artifact of that type. But that distinction can be very slippery, because there are some objects, which are designed to fulfill a specific function, like a door stop for instance. But you can also use a box of books as a doorstop. In those cases, anything that is immediately fulfilling the function also qualifies as one of those artifacts.
By the way, what exactly does a linguist do?
Grimm: Well, people often ask me how many languages I speak. [Grimm chuckles] But that's not it. We try to understand the structure of human language, from the types of sounds produced in speech to the types of meaning categories convey-and see how these structures vary across the 7,000 languages spoken in the world. One challenge is that language is so familiar to us we take it for granted. It's at the center of human interaction and is the vehicle for thought.
How did you find out the Supreme Court had used your research?
Grimm: There was an amicus brief, supporting the ATF, written by several linguists from Georgetown, Brandeis, and Stanford. One of the coauthors of the amicus brief notified us as the Supreme Court decision came out. That was the very first I heard of it.
What was your initial reaction?
Grimm: I was certainly surprised. And then, of course, I was happy to see this as one of those cases-people working on basic science have few expectations that their work will be applied to a completely different area of society, but it happens, and it happens more frequently than we think and certainly more than we publicize.
How does your work on artifact nouns apply to this case?
Grimm: The law allows the government to regulate firearms. The question the court was trying to decide was whether these ghost guns fall under firearms. Part of the question is: What qualifies as a weapon? That is where our work on artifact nouns is relevant.
I should also mention that, of course, our work didn't happen in a vacuum. There were several other linguists who had thought about artifact nouns and written about them. I think the key was that we were more explicitly talking about an artifact noun's intended function, rather than just noting that there was a function. In the paper, we made the link to the intended function and gave a very explicit analysis of how that worked.
Why? Because usually things are designed with a function in mind, even if it's not serving that function at every moment. For instance, a chair is designed to be sat in, but someone doesn't need to be sitting in it the whole time. It's the intended function, which is important. Likewise, if you are special ordering a ghost gun kit, the intended function of that object, once you assemble it rather easily, is to function as a weapon.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented while still referring to your work. How so?
Grimm: I think Clarence Thomas's point is that the majority opinion is referring to ordinary language use in how to interpret the law. He explicitly says that in statutory drafting we're not considering colloquial language usage. I think he's saying we should interpret the words "frame" and "receiver" with respect to the statutory history, rather than with a more ordinary language approach.
However, I think it's the kind of distinctions that are being drawn here that cut directly to the heart of how people understand our terms for things in the world. These are the meanings we traffic in, whether it's in statutory law or ordinary conversation. I think his approach is trying to relegate the linguistic work to be only about ordinary conversation, which, of course, it applies to, but is not limited to. In fact, linguistic work can help us greatly in contexts of high precision, such as legal contexts.
Based on your work, did the justices get the ruling right?
Grimm: I would say in adopting this distinction, yes. I think they understood and applied what we were arguing for in a straightforward fashion. But I don't think it's proper for me to say whether it's correct or not. I simply don't have the expertise to pass judgment on the judges.
Meet the expert
Scott Grimm is an associate professor with the University of Rochester's Department of Linguistics and the director of the Quantitative Semantics Lab. His research interests range from semantics and linguistic fieldwork to lexicography and African languages, such as Gur languages-a major branch of the Niger-Congo language family in West Africa. Among other publications, he is the coauthor of a Dagaare-English dictionary in the African Language Grammar and Dictionary Series (Language Science Press, Berlin, 2021).
