President Joe Biden on Monday is set to announce a series of actions aimed at combatting so-called “ghost guns,” privately made firearms without serial numbers that are being found at crime scenes across the country, including naming a former federal prosecutor to serve as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
President Biden on Monday said that he is nominating Steve Dettelbach, an Obama-era U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The White House described Dettelbach as someone who won bipartisan praise and support from law enforcement for his tough stance on fighting crime.
“[Dettelbach] has a proven track record of working with federal, state, and local law enforcement to fight violent crime and combat domestic violent extremism and religious violence – including through partnerships with the ATF to prosecute complex cases and take down violent criminal gangs,” the White House said.
“Dettelbach also worked closely with local law enforcement and community leaders to develop and implement data-driven and neighborhood-based efforts to prevent and fight violent crime,” they added. “His leadership and his record of innovation in fighting crime and violence make him ready from day one to aggressively and creatively address these pressing issues at the Director of ATF.”
Biden was forced to withdraw his first nomination to run the bureau, former ATF agent and gun control advocate David Chipman, after opposition from Republicans and some Democrats.
Both Republican and Democratic administrations have failed to get nominees for the ATF position through the politically fraught process since the director’s position was made confirmable in 2006. Since then, only one nominee, former U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones, has been confirmed. Jones made it through the Senate in 2013 but only after a six-month struggle. Jones was acting director when President Barack Obama nominated him in January 2013.
For nearly a year, the ghost gun rule has been making its way through the federal regulation process. Gun safety groups and Democrats in Congress have been pushing for the Justice Department to finish the rule for months.
“The Biden administration is making sure these kits are treated as the deadly firearms they are,” a senior administration official said ahead of the announcement.
The rule will probably be met with heavy resistance from gun groups and draw litigation in the coming weeks.
On Sunday, the Senate’s top Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, implored the administration to move faster.
“It’s high time for a ghost gun exorcism before the proliferation peaks, and before more people get hurt — or worse,” Schumer said in a statement. “My message is a simple one: No more waiting on these proposed federal rules.” Ghost guns are “too easy to build, too hard to trace and too dangerous to ignore.”
According to data from the Justice Department, nearly 24,000 ghost guns were recovered by law enforcement at crime scenes and reported to the government from 2016 to 2020. It is hard to say how many are circulating on the streets, in part because in many cases police departments don’t contact the government about the guns because they can’t be traced.
Last year alone, the White House said, about 20,000 suspected ghost guns reported to ATF as having been recovered by law enforcement, about tenfold increase from 2016, the White House said.
“Because ghost guns lack the serial numbers marked on other firearms, law enforcement has an exceedingly difficult time tracing a ghost gun found at a crime scene back to an individual purchaser,” the White House said in a statement.
The new rule bans the business of manufacturing accessible ghost guns, including “unserialized ‘buy build shoot’ kits that individuals can buy online or at a store without a background check and can readily assemble into a working firearm in as little as 30 minutes with equipment they have at home,” the White House added. “This rule clarifies that these kits qualify as ‘firearms’ under the Gun Control Act, and that commercial manufacturers of such kits must therefore become licensed and include serial numbers on the kits’ frame or receiver, and commercial sellers of these kits must become federally licensed and run background checks prior to a sale – just like they have to do with other commercially-made firearms.”
The final rule, the administration said, will also turn some ghost guns in circulation into serialized guns.
“Through this rule, the Justice Department is requiring federally licensed dealers and gunsmiths taking any unserialized firearm into inventory to serialize that weapon,” the White House said. “For example, if an individual builds a firearm at home and then sells it to a pawn broker or another federally licensed dealer, that dealer must put a serial number on the weapon before selling it to a customer. This requirement will apply regardless of how the firearm was made, meaning it includes ghost guns made from individual parts, kits, or by 3D-printers.”
Gun control advocates cheered the Biden administration’s rule.
Ghost guns look like a gun, they shoot like a gun, and they kill like a gun, but up until now they haven’t been regulated like a gun,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement.
“Since the start of the pandemic, about 100 million additional weapons, plus the unknown number of ghost guns have been added to American streets,” said Fred Guttenberg, who became an advocate after his daughter, Jamie, was killed in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
“I am thankful for the additional measures, to include an ATF announcement, happening today,” Guttenberg, who shared a photo of himself at the White House ahead of the announcement, said, adding: “With the failure of the Senate to pass any legislation, he is using every tool he has through executive actions to save lives.”
“If you can put together an IKEA dresser, you can build a ghost gun,” Mia Tretta, a leader with Students Demand Action who was shot and wounded with a ghost gun in a school shooting in 2019, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it is that easy to get a weapon that has not only changed my life but has done the same thing to thousands of others. Finalizing this rule is a critical step to making sure no one else has to go through what my family has had to go through. I’m thankful to the Administration for its leadership in this space.”
For years, federal officials have been sounding the alarm about an increasing black market for homemade, military-style semi-automatic rifles and handguns. As well as turning up more frequently at crime scenes, ghost guns have been increasingly encountered when federal agents buy guns in undercover operations from gang members and other criminals.
Some states, like California, have enacted laws in recent years to require serial numbers to be stamped on ghost guns.
The critical component in building an untraceable gun is what is known as the lower receiver, a part typically made of metal or polymer. An unfinished receiver — sometimes referred to as an “80-percent receiver” — can be legally bought online with no serial numbers or other markings on it, no license required.
Police across the country have been reporting spikes in ghost guns being recovered by officers. The New York Police Department, for example, said officers found 131 unserialized firearms since January.
A gunman who killed his wife and four others in Northern California in 2017 had been prohibited from owning firearms, but he built his own to skirt the court order before his rampage. And in 2019, a teenager used a homemade handgun to fatally shoot two classmates and wound three others at a school in suburban Los Angeles.
