Just as we predicted last week, the new rules against “ghost” gun frames may be enforced by the Biden administration, as we await the overall appeals outcomes.
Here’s that bit, via a Sam Alito order, and some of the last briefing we quoted on the topic:
…Recent advances in firearms technology have prompted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) to reexamine its rules implementing the GCA. In the past few years, the ghost gun industry has exploded, driven in large part by the online sale of weapon parts kits. These user-friendly kits typically contain nearly complete firearms parts and require a minor amount of assembly to become fully functional weapons. 87 Fed. Reg. at 24662. As these firearms kits have proliferated, so too have self-made, unserialized guns. Law enforcement officers went from recovering about 1,700 self-made guns in 2016 to over 19,000 in 2021, an eleven-fold increase. Id. at 24656. Altogether, officers recovered about 45,240 self-made guns during that five-year period — more than 40 percent of which were recovered in 2021 alone. Id. at 24656.
The rise of these kits revealed two problems. First, a person explicitly banned from firearm possession under the GCA could buy a kit and assemble a fully functional gun within hours. Second, because the finished product was unserialized, officers could not track the gun if it was later used in a crime. Indeed, of the 45,240 suspected ghost guns recovered from 2016 to 2021, only 445 could be traced — a less than one percent success rate….
[Mr. Biden’s] Final Rule is a vital backstop to states’ efforts to stem the flow of ghost guns and combat the violence engendered by prohibited persons possessing untraceable weapons. In response to the recent influx of ghost guns, at least 14 jurisdictions have enacted their own laws regulating weapon parts kits and partially complete frames or receivers. But absent federal enforcement, the number of unserialized guns has proliferated, leaving in its wake a spike in crime and violence. The Final Rule serves a vital coordinating function, consistent with the GCA, that states cannot exercise on their own….
Onward — now you know. Grinning into the gloaming….
नमस्ते
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