What Are Ghost Guns And Why Are They So Dangerous?

As law enforcement sources told CNN and NBC News, Luther's rifle was a "ghost gun." Such weapons are assembled by individuals from parts or kits or that include one unfinished piece — typically the frame or receiver — that requires the purchaser to do some drilling to make the gun fully functional. Because of a loophole in federal gun regulations, these DIY weapons don't need to have serial numbers, and the kit or individual pieces can be sold without the background check that someone who purchased a gun from a federally licensed dealer would have to undergo.

Ghost guns in the hands of criminals are a growing problem for law enforcement. Research conducted in 2020 by Everytown for Gun Safety, a grassroots organization that pushes for more regulations of firearms, found that 68 percent of online gun sellers today began selling ghost gun parts after 2014. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) says law enforcement around the U.S. reported they had recovered approximately 20,000 suspected ghost guns in criminal investigations in 2021 — an increase of 10 times since 2016.

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It's easy to find both individual parts for guns and complete kits for sale on the internet that provide everything needed for assembly, David Chipman explained when we interviewed him in 2020. He served for 25 years in the federal ATF and is now a senior policy adviser for Giffords, the gun control organization co-founded by former Democrat Arizona Congress member and shooting survivor Gabrielle Giffords.

"Building a gun in your home has always been lawful, but it wasn't a big issue, because being a gunsmith requires some serious skills and equipment," Chipman said. "The people who did it were mostly hobbyists, who had a lot of time on their hands." Such homemade weapons seldom showed up in crimes, he said.

But now, according to Chipman, it's easy for just about anybody to build an untraceable firearm. "This is literally now happening every day — it's becoming routine for criminals and gun traffickers," Chipman said. "They used to have to use straw purchasers and then obliterate the serial number or alter. Now, smart traffickers would just build the guns."

In February 2020, for example, a North Carolina man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for simultaneously trafficking in guns, methamphetamine and cocaine. Five of the seven weapons that he was transporting from his state to Virginia were ghost guns, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release.

In addition to street criminals, Chipman said that domestic abusers, terrorists and extremist groups also could take advantage of the ghost gun loophole — "people who can't go into a store and pass a background check or people who want to amass guns and not have the government know about it."

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