Can You Register A Ghost Gun

A 9mm pistol build kit with a commercial slide and barrel with a polymer frame is displayed at the White Business firm. Carolyn Kaster/AP hide caption

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Carolyn Kaster/AP

A 9mm pistol build kit with a commercial slide and barrel with a polymer frame is displayed at the White House.

Carolyn Kaster/AP

The Department of Justice said Mon that it had submitted to the Federal Register a last rule designed to adjourn the proliferation of then-called "ghost guns" — untraceable firearms that don't have serial numbers.

In 2021, near 20,000 suspected ghost guns were recovered by law enforcement in criminal investigations and reported to the Bureau of Booze, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The effigy marked a tenfold increase from 2016, according to the White House.

With the latest announcement from the Biden administration, here'southward a look at what's behind the White Firm'south latest steps designed to curb gun crimes.

What's a ghost gun?

Ghost guns are firearms that are privately assembled and untraceable. They can exist assembled from "buy build shoot" kits or from other parts or they can exist 3D-printed. Unlike other guns, these weapons don't have serial numbers. The Department of Justice's "Frame or Receiver" final rule focuses on these "purchase build shoot kits."

Anyone tin purchase these kits, said Alex McCourt, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Direction at Johns Hopkins Academy's Bloomberg School of Public Wellness who studies firearm policy. Y'all don't demand a background cheque to buy one.

"Until they're put together, they're not considered guns," McCourt said. "And and so everyone that is prohibited from purchasing a gun or possessing a gun tin get one of these kits."

Those with a history of domestic violence or convictions for other fierce offenses can purchase ghost guns. Even children can order and build them, McCourt said.

The White Business firm says the weapons can be assembled from a kit in as little as xxx minutes. But it takes some tools and could take some time, McCourt said. It'due south not similar building with Legos, he added.

What will the final rule modify?

The rule won't ban gun kits themselves or strengthen penalties for crimes committed with ghost guns, but it will bring the regulation of ghost guns to be more in line with traditional guns.

"Information technology recognizes that these guns are indistinguishable and should be regulated like traditional guns," McCourt told NPR. "At present, they volition need to go through the same process."

Nether the rule, the kits volition need to be produced by licensed manufacturers. And anyone buying the guns will have to pass a background bank check.

The rule will as well require series numbers on the gun kit'south frame or receiver, which is the principal piece of the firearm that all of the parts are attached to, McCourt said.

Equally for the ghost guns that are already in circulation, the rule volition crave that licensed dealers add serial numbers any ghost guns that are a part of their inventory. This applies to all ghost guns — whether produced in a kit, assembled from parts or 3D-printed.

In addition, the dominion will require federally licensed gun retailers to agree onto records for the length of time that they're licensed, according to the Department of Justice. Throughout the past decade, the ATF has struggled to trace firearms considering the records had already been destroyed.

"These records will continue to belong to, and be maintained past, federal firearms licensees while they are in business," the DOJ said in a release.

How oft are these guns used? And where are we seeing them?

While data on ghost guns is express, McCourt said, the weapons have been cropping upwardly across the country.

Earlier this year, police found a ghost gun at a Maryland high school after a student allegedly shot another student. And in 2019, a 16-yr-old used a ghost gun to shoot 5 students before shooting himself at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, Calif.

In Philadelphia, 571 ghost guns were recovered in 2021. And in Baltimore, police seized 345 ghost guns in 2021 — compared with 12 seized in 2018.

On the West Coast, San Francisco police seized more than 190 ghost guns in 2021, amounting to twenty% of all guns seized past the department. And in Los Angeles, 24% of the 8,121 guns seized in 2021 were ghost guns.

Moving forward, McCourt said that policymakers should take a closer look at 3D-printed ghost guns, which were not the focus of the last dominion.

There's a question of whether the latest efforts to fight the proliferation of ghost guns made with kits could lead to increased production of ghost guns made through 3D-press, McCourt said.

"We've seen that applied science moves very quickly and policy tends to move a little flake more than slowly," he said. "As these new technologies popular upwardly, policy needs to be able to respond much more chop-chop than it has."