Can Ghost Guns Be Banned?

ICU 812's Avatar
Ghost Guns

This term is commonly used to refer to home crafted firearms that may not have a serial number. Current Federal law allows the home manufacture of a firearm, but not its sale or transfer to another person . While this legal situation may change, the creation of firearms in a home workshop will always be possible.

One major part of this controversy is that companies have made parts of pistols and AR style rifles that are incomplete. They sell these unfinished parts along with fixtures, jigs and the cutting bits that allow the home craftsman to finish the parts with home workshop tools such as a drill press or router. Banning this sort of thing will still leave options for shop crafted firearms. Additive manufacturing (3D printing) is now widely available, relatively affordable, and more sophisticated than ever. The same is true for table top milling equipment. Both modalities are CNC controlled from a lap top. The software and data files for many firearms prats have been widely distributed. That horse left the barn years ago.

More basic in approach than machining is the field of bolted together home workshop AR receivers. A quick Google search for “Bolted Together Lower” will come up with functioning AR style guns made by cutting flat plates to shape and bolting them together to make the whole lower receiver. Not ideal in terms of functionality, reliability, or durability, yet many of these efforts result in a fully functioning gun.

Legal or not, “Ghost Guns” will never disappear.
offshoredrilling's Avatar
AHEM they are Sir, well in NY anyways
ICU 812's Avatar
^^^

Banned? Well maybe on paper, but they will always be possible.

IN the 1950s, it was common for a so-called "zip gun" to be made from junk yard parts and rubber bands . . .OK, so it was a single shot .22 made from an auto radio aerial, but it makes the point.

Today with the tools legitimately available to the home shop, more sophisticated weapons will be out there any time someone perceives the need.

Look up the improvised weapons made for the IRA during "the troubles" in Northern Ireland.
Sure, booze was banned during prohibition, right?