By Andrew Malekoff
Many Americans became consciously aware of ghost guns for the first time in 2013. That’s when 23-year-old John Zawahri went on a killing spree on the campus of Santa Monica College in California.
Having failed a gun dealer’s background check, he assembled an ArmaLite rifle (AR-15) and proceeded to use it to murder six innocent people. Zawahri was killed after an exchange of gunfire with police.
What are ghost guns? They are privately manufactured, unregulated firearms that cannot be traced because there is no commercially applied serial number.
Ghost guns are invisible to law enforcement personnel charged with tracking legally sold, licensed firearms. No background check is required. Anyone can purchase the components, build one and, in so doing, sidestep firearms laws.
It is legal to privately produce firearms without a license. However, it is illegal to sell or give them away with no license to do so.
Gun historian Ashley Hlebinsky, who spoke before the Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on The Constitution during a 2021 hearing entitled: “Stop Gun Violence: Ghost Guns,” testified that “these privately made firearms have been around for centuries, basically since the first system was developed over 500 years ago.”
“It was private gun makers,” Hlebinsky continued, “that played an essential role in the American Revolution using locks and barrels the same way parts kits are sold today.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, an opponent of common sense gun reform, remarked at the hearing that “when you see countries enact registries of firearms, the next step is confiscation,” disarming law-abiding gun owners powerless to protect themselves and their families.
Cruz has repeatedly used this talking point as a fear tactic. In fact, a Public Policy Polling survey found that 83 percent of gun owners support expanded background checks on sales of all firearms, including 72 percent of all NRA members.
Unlike Cruz, there are many law-abiding gun owners who are not influenced by NRA money and understand that gun safety does not threaten their Second Amendment rights.
However, manufacturers are more than pleased to sell kits of gun components with undrilled receivers, called “80 percent receivers.” Online retailers sell a kit that enables a purchaser to assemble an AR15 rifle for $554.99.
“Brady – United Against Gun Violence” is one of America’s oldest gun violence prevention groups. The website emphasizes that once a ghost gun is assembled it “looks, feels, and functions like a traditional gun, whether a handgun or assault weapon, and is just as deadly and dangerous in the wrong hands.” Online tutorials are plentiful for novices.
Gun tracing is used widely by law enforcement to track firearms to the first retail purchaser. Andrew Kudlinski of the Arizona State Law Journal reports “today, more than 40 percent of crime guns recovered by ATF agents in California are ghost guns.”
Kudlinski stressed that many “have been used by mass shooters who were incapable of traditionally purchasing firearms.”
For example, on Nov. 14, 2019, 16-year-old Nathaniel Berhoe shot five classmates, killing two, before killing himself. The .45-caliber handgun he used was assembled from a kit.
On Aug. 15, 2019, Aaron Nathaniel Luther, who was barred from possessing or purchasing firearms under California law because of his criminal history, used a homemade AR15 to shoot three California Highway Patrol officers, killing one.
On April 11 the White House said “last year alone there were approximately 20,000 suspected ghost guns reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as having been recovered by law enforcement in criminal investigations – a tenfold increase from 2016.”
On April 8 President Joe Biden announced a new firearm regulation that aims to contain the use of privately made weapons, requiring federal firearms dealers to add serial numbers to ghost guns, including component parts, that they plan to sell. Dealers would also be required to run background checks before a sale, which is no different than what they do with commercially made firearms.
The new rules would not prevent law-abiding citizens from acquiring gun kits. The aim is to decrease illegal gun ownership and deter mass shootings and violent crimes. Although regulating ghost guns is an important step forward, there is still much more to do.
The to-do list includes raising the minimum age to buy guns, adding a waiting period before gun sales, having a no-loopholes policy for a mandatory background check of the gun buyer and banning high-capacity ammunition magazines and bump stocks.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, we’re only halfway through April 2022 and 450 children ages 0-17 have died by gun violence. Another 1,083 have been injured.
