ghost gun

ghost gun, gun or rifle that is assembled by the owner, either from separately purchased pieces or as part of a kit. These weapons can also be made using 3D printers, though such firearms can typically fire only one bullet. These weapons are controversial, because ghost gun parts can be anonymously purchased online without a background check; they also lack the serial numbers associated with traditionally manufactured firearms, making them virtually untraceable.

High-profile cases

Ghost guns have been used in a number of high-profile shootings. In November 2017 Kevin Janson Neal used two homemade high-powered rifles to murder five people in Rancho Tehama, California, including his wife, before he was killed by law enforcement. Neal had previously been ordered to give up his legally acquired guns because of a restraining order. Two years later a high-school student in Santa Clarita, California, killed two classmates and himself and injured three others with a homemade .45-caliber handgun. In 2022 a ghost gun was used to assassinate former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. (The perpetrator used a ghost gun most likely because of Japan’s strict laws regarding procuring firearms.) In July of the following year, a man in Philadelphia used an AR-15 rifle and a 9-mm handgun (both most likely assembled from purchased parts or a kit) to kill five people and injure two others. In response the city sued two manufacturers of ghost gun kits, Polymer80 and JSD Supply. In April 2024 the city settled for compensation of $1.3 million from Polymer80 and a guarantee that the company would not advertise or sell its products in Philadelphia or the surrounding counties. JSD Supply was banned from selling its ghost gun kits in Pennsylvania for four years.

Legal stipulations

Though some American states and cities had already proposed or passed restrictions on ghost guns, the most prominent challenge to their manufacturing and distribution came in 2022, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) issued a rule including ghost guns under the same category of regulation as any other firearm. The rule, which was originally proposed in 2021, also changed the definitions of frame and receiver (parts of a gun) to include a “partially complete, disassembled, or nonfunctional frame or receiver that has reached a stage in manufacture where it may quickly and easily” be assembled. The Biden administration reported that in 2022 law enforcement agencies reported recovering approximately 20,000 suspected ghost guns through criminal investigations—almost 10 times as many as had been confiscated in 2016.

In August 2022 Texas firearm owners Jennifer VanDerStok and Michael Andren, ghost gun manufacturer Tactical Machining, and gun rights group Firearms Policy Coalition filed a lawsuit in Fort Worth, Texas, challenging the ATF rule. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled in their favor in June 2023, blocking the ATF from enforcing the rule. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld O’Connor’s ruling. However, in August 2023, after being approached by the Biden administration for a preliminary ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the rule in a 5–4 decision, with conservative-leaning Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett joining with their liberal colleagues in favor of letting the regulations remain in place until the case could be formally heard by the Court.

Blackhawk Manufacturing and Defense Distributed, two weapons companies that had since joined the original challengers, requested an injunction that would bar the government from enforcing the restrictions, which O’Connor granted and the Fifth Circuit again upheld. The Supreme Court once again ruled in favor of enforcing the ATF rule while the Court waited to hear the full case. The Supreme Court began hearing the final case on October 8, 2024. Early reports indicated that it seemed likely to uphold the ATF rule.