What are Ghost Guns and Why Do They Pose Such a Risk?

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On a late August afternoon in 2019, California Highway Patrol officer Andre Moye, Jr., aged 34, stopped a pickup truck on a freeway for illegally driving in the carpool lane. The driver, 49-year-old felon Aaron Luther, had an expired license and no registration. Moye decided to impound the truck and was in the process of completing the paperwork when Luther grabbed a semi-automatic rifle from his truck and opened fire on him.

Officer Moye succumbed to his injuries, and when additional CHP officers arrived at the scene, Luther fired over 100 more rounds at them before he was shot and killed by police, as reported by the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

Luther, who had served a decade in prison for attempted second-degree murder and other crimes, was legally prohibited from purchasing a firearm. However, this legal restriction did not stop him from acquiring one.

What Is a Ghost Gun?

According to law enforcement sources cited by CNN and NBC News, Luther's rifle was a 'ghost gun.' These firearms are assembled by individuals from parts or kits that include an unfinished component—typically the frame or receiver—that requires some modification to become fully functional. Due to a loophole in federal gun laws, these homemade guns do not require serial numbers, and the parts or kits can be sold without a background check, which is otherwise mandatory for firearm purchases from federally licensed dealers.

Ghost guns are becoming an increasing concern for law enforcement, especially when they end up in the hands of criminals. A 2020 study by Everytown for Gun Safety, a grassroots organization advocating for stricter gun laws, revealed that 68% of online gun dealers began selling ghost gun parts after 2014. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), law enforcement across the U.S. reported recovering approximately 20,000 suspected ghost guns in 2021—an increase of tenfold compared to 2016.

David Chipman, who served 25 years with the ATF and is now a senior policy advisor for Giffords, the gun control group co-founded by former Arizona Congresswoman and shooting survivor Gabrielle Giffords, explained in a 2020 interview that it's easy to find individual gun parts or complete kits online, offering everything needed to assemble a firearm.

'Building a gun at home has always been legal, but it wasn't a major issue in the past because gunsmithing requires skill and specialized equipment,' Chipman said. 'The people who did it were mostly hobbyists with a lot of free time.' These homemade firearms, he noted, rarely appeared in criminal cases.

However, Chipman now states that constructing an untraceable firearm has become simple for almost anyone. 'This is happening every day — it’s becoming common for criminals and gun traffickers,' he said. 'They used to rely on straw purchasers and then destroy or alter serial numbers. Now, savvy traffickers simply build their own guns.'

In February 2020, for instance, a man from North Carolina was sentenced to 15 years in prison for trafficking in firearms, methamphetamine, and cocaine. According to a U.S. Department of Justice press release, five of the seven guns he was transporting from North Carolina to Virginia were ghost guns.

Chipman also noted that in addition to street criminals, individuals such as domestic abusers, terrorists, and extremist groups could exploit the ghost gun loophole. 'These are people who either cannot pass a background check in a store or those who want to accumulate firearms without the government's knowledge,' he explained.

When Is a Gun Not a Firearm?

The ATF, where Chipman served, prefers the term 'privately made firearms' to describe these weapons. However, the criteria for determining whether a DIY gun falls under regulation is far from clear. It depends on the specific legal definition of a firearm frame or receiver, which the Code of Federal Regulations describes as 'the part of a firearm that houses the hammer, bolt, or breechblock, and firing mechanism, and is typically threaded at its front end to receive the barrel.' (This component looks something like this.)

'The design features that the ATF assesses to decide when a frame or receiver blank, casting, or machined body qualifies as a frame or receiver depend on the type and model of the firearm,' explained ATF representative CeCe Gwathmey in a 2020 email.

She provided the example of an AR-15-type rifle receiver blank, which is shown on the ATF website. 'In this example, if the receiver blank has a solid, un-machined cavity with no holes or dimples ('indexing') for the selector, trigger, or hammer pins, it doesn’t meet the definition of a 'firearm' under the GCA [Gun Control Act of 1968],' she clarified. 'However, if the fire-control cavity is partially machined or has holes or dimples for the selector, trigger, or hammer pins, then the receiver blank has been processed enough to be classified as an AR-15-type frame or receiver.'

Guns and Serial Numbers

Although it's relatively easy to make parts that slip through the legal loophole, some companies, according to the ATF website, sell what they claim are blank receivers or frames that are, in fact, sufficiently finished to meet the criteria for regulated firearms.

'Depending on the situation, ATF may launch a criminal investigation or take other enforcement actions if they become aware that an individual is conducting firearm sales without a license, including unlicensed sales of firearm frames or receivers online, or to out-of-state buyers,' Gwathmey explained.

It wasn’t always this complicated. The Gun Control Act of 1968, which followed the tragic assassinations of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., required that firearms be stamped with serial numbers on their frames or receivers for law enforcement tracking. However, the law didn’t mandate serial numbers on the other parts of the firearm.

'Congress decided they weren’t going to regulate every single part, but instead, they’d focus on regulating the receivers to prevent people from circumventing the law,' said Rob Wilcox, director of policy and strategy for Everytown for Gun Safety.

The ATF, however, determined what counted as a finished, regulated frame or receiver, based on its enforcement letters. According to Wilcox, the ATF initially focused on how easily a blank part could be turned into a functional receiver. 'Is it simple to assemble, like Ikea furniture, or does it require actual machining skills?' Wilcox explained. Later, the ATF shifted its focus to technical features, like whether the necessary holes were drilled in the right locations.

Gun control proponents argue that this shift allows for the sale of gun kits and parts that are easy to assemble, even by someone without gunsmithing experience, as long as they can use basic tools like a drill and follow instructions from online sources like YouTube.

'We don’t think it’s difficult,' Wilcox said. 'A gun is a gun, whether it’s bought as a kit or fully assembled. It causes the same harm when it ends up in the wrong hands.'

Regulating Ghost Guns

In May 2020, legislation was introduced in the Senate that would have mandated serial numbers on all frames and receivers — even unfinished ones — and required DIY gun builders to visit federally-licensed dealers in person to purchase these parts, subjecting them to the same background checks as buyers of fully assembled firearms. However, the bill was stalled in committee.

In April 2022, President Joe Biden, along with the Department of Justice, introduced a new rule that expanded the definition of a 'firearm' under the Gun Control Act to include weapon parts kits. This new regulation subjects these kits to the same federal laws as other firearms. It bans the sale of certain ghost guns, such as unserialized 'buy, build, shoot' kits that anyone can purchase online or in stores without a background check, and then assemble into a functional firearm at home. As a result, commercial manufacturers of these kits will need to be licensed and must include serial numbers on their frame or receiver parts.

"We are encouraged by the ATF's decision to close the loophole that has allowed ghost guns to spread," said Lindsay Nichols, federal policy director at Giffords, in a statement. "These untraceable firearms represent a serious danger to our communities and families, which this rule addresses. This important regulatory change will also assist the ATF in tackling gun trafficking, through which firearms are diverted from the legal market to the illegal one."

Gun rights organizations, however, are threatening to take legal action against the new regulation. Andrew Arulanandam, managing director of public affairs for the National Rifle Association (NRA), told Fox News Digital, "the president is unveiling another ineffective plan that will not stop this violence. His gun control measures will certainly appeal to his wealthy gun control supporters, but this action sends the wrong message to violent criminals, as this 'ban' will have no effect on them."