New Ghost Gun Laws 2021
In the North Dakota case, the lawsuit, which challenged the new federal rule, said gun owners would “expose intrusive, unlawful and unconstitutional violations of their right to own and bear arms.” Ghost Guns, an umbrella term for non-serialized and homemade firearms, first appeared in the late 1980s as a creation by hobbyists and home gunsmiths. But in recent years, aided by a rapidly growing gun industry, they have become more widely available and popular, favored by criminals. They are inexpensive, easy to obtain, and have long been around outside the regulatory eye of government. Ghost gun assembly kits – which provide buyers with most of a firearm`s parts – are the basis for the vast majority of ghost guns sold to the public and used in crime. The Biden administration`s new regulations, which take effect Aug. 24, require that all parts used to make ghost guns be serialized and that buyers undergo background checks. While the rule will govern all future ghost gun sales, it will not affect the potential millions of ghost gun kits already in circulation. Ensure ATF has the leadership it needs to enforce our common-sense gun laws and combat gun crime. The proliferation of privately manufactured firearms (PMCs), also known as ghost guns, is a growing problem for law enforcement efforts to reduce violent crime. Recent federal lawsuits filed by the Chicago Firearms Trafficking Strike Force show the impact: D.C. Wins $4 Million Verdict Against “Ghost Gun” Parts Manufacturer Gun safety interest groups and some law enforcement officials have been calling on the government for years to crack down on ghost guns. either by legislation or by other measures.
But most efforts to pass gun laws on Capitol Hill have failed in recent decades, amid the congressional stalemate and strong opposition from the gun rights lobby. Lawmakers passed modest gun control laws this year after several high-profile mass shootings. They wrote in a document that their cities had seen a “dramatic increase” in ghost weapons used in criminal activities. The new rule, they said, was “absolutely necessary to stop the dangerous spread of ghost weapons and promote public safety.” A group of states wrote in a separate document that the rule would help them update their own gun laws. Congress must do its job by passing this budget and other important legislation to reduce gun crime, including legislation requiring background checks for all gun sales, ensuring that no terrorist can buy a gun in the United States, the sale and possession of non-serialized firearms — ghost guns, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and abolishing gun manufacturers` liability protections. In response to a request for comment, the ATF pointed to new rules that now define ghost gun parts kits as finished firearms. “There are no such requirements for someone who sells items that are not defined as firearms, frames or breech boxes,” said ATF spokesman Erik Longnecker. States and cities have also targeted manufacturers and sellers of parts kits in court. Last year, the Los Angeles County Sheriff`s Department filed a lawsuit against Polymer80, a ghost gun parts manufacturer, after a man carried a gun from one of the company`s kits to ambush two lawmakers. Baltimore and New York took similar routes, with the NYPD revealing that 90 percent of the ghost guns it found contained parts of the company.
Washington, D.C., sued Polymer80 after finding its products at local crime scenes and recently received a $4 million judgment. The ATF has long struggled to find an effective strategy for monitoring non-serialized weapons. In fact, the agency`s internal decisions paved the way for a massive increase in ghost gun kit sales, when the Firearms Technology Directorate clarified in 2013 and 2017 that partially finished container parts should not be treated as firearms and should not be subject to background checks. The Biden administration ordered the ATF to regulate ghost guns after they were used in a barrage of high-profile shootings and mounting evidence emerged that homemade weapons were being used in crimes. A recent ATF report found that ghost gun recovery increased by 1,000% between 2016 and 2021. A total of 45,000 non-serialized weapons were seized during this period; Nearly 700 have been linked to homicide or attempted homicide. The call to action on ghost weapons has increased dramatically in recent years, and Everytown has been at the forefront of the fight. Today, the President and Deputy Attorney General will also announce that the U.S. Department of Justice has issued a final rule to curb the proliferation of “ghost guns” — privately manufactured, non-serialized firearms that law enforcement is increasingly finding at crime scenes in cities across the country.
Last year alone, the ATF was informed of the seizure of approximately 20,000 suspected ghost guns by law enforcement as part of criminal investigations, ten times more than in 2016. [1] Because ghost guns do not have serial numbers on other firearms, it is extremely difficult for law enforcement to trace a ghost gun found at a crime scene back to a single purchaser. The latter rule would shut down many of the ghost gun manufacturers that have flooded the market with untraceable ghost guns deliberately designed to circumvent regulations. On August 24, the Biden administration`s requirement to serialize ghost guns and require background checks for their sale goes into effect. But the regulation does not apply to the millions of weapons already in circulation. A federal lawsuit filed in North Dakota – by plaintiffs, including a gun store in the state; a group of Republican attorneys general; and Gun Owners of America, a gun lobby group, said the rule “violates the principles of federalism” and “will wreak havoc on much of the gun community.” Cracking down on ghost guns – the weapon of choice for many violent offenders “Every year was much worse than the last. So if the federal government hadn`t stepped in to do something, the problem only got worse,” said David Pucino, associate chief counsel at Giffords Law Center. The nature of the arms trade and the great distances that weapons can travel mean that local efforts are struggling to be effective. “These trials weren`t really effective because they weren`t proposed. They didn`t reach the parts used to make ghost weapons,” he said.
“And what this rule does is it goes up the supply chain.” After a series of high-profile shootings, including mass shootings and domestic terror attacks, the Biden administration changed the rule in an attempt to get the situation under control. He was quickly reprimanded by gun rights organizations. During a 90-day public comment period, the ATF received nearly 300,000 responses to the ghost gun rule, most of them for a rule change in the agency`s history. As explained in the final rule, from January 2016 to December 2021, the ATF received approximately 45,240 reports of alleged CMRs seized by law enforcement, including in 692 homicide or attempted murder investigations. With the background checks required for selling gun kits, officers now say they will have a clue to investigate when they are used in crimes. The final rule will also help convert some ghost guns already in circulation to serialized firearms. Through this rule, the Department of Justice requires state-licensed dealers and gunsmiths to include any non-serialized firearm in the inventory to serialize that weapon. For example, if a person manufactures a firearm at home and then sells it to a pawnshop or other state-licensed dealer, that dealer must affix a serial number to the gun before selling it to a customer. This requirement applies regardless of how the firearm was manufactured, i.e. it includes ghost guns made from individual parts, kits or 3D printers. There are no known estimates of the number of ghost guns in circulation or the effectiveness of existing laws in regulating their ownership.
California was the first state where all ghost guns had to be serialized. The Attorney General`s Office did not respond to several inquiries about the effectiveness of the law or provide compliance data. The latter rule prohibits the company from making the most accessible ghost guns, such as non-serialized “Buy Build Shoot” kits that individuals can buy online or at a store without background checks and assemble into a functional firearm in just 30 minutes using the equipment they have at home. This rule specifies that these kits are considered “firearms” under the Firearms Control Act and that commercial manufacturers of these kits must therefore be licensed and include serial numbers on the frame or receiver of the kits, and that commercial sellers of these kits must be government-licensed and conduct background checks prior to a sale – just like other commercially manufactured firearms. The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) announced a final rule that would stop the proliferation of untraceable ghost guns by clarifying that their basic components are firearms under the law — to ensure they are traceable and that authorized dealers conduct background checks before they are sold.