NRA Blasts ‘Ghost Gun’ Hysteria

The NRA posts America’s 1st Freedom, where various folks talk about the right to keep and bear arms. While I might be critical of the organization from time to time, I’ve often referenced the work there.

One thing I’ve long wanted the NRA to wade into more was the topic of so-called ghost guns, perhaps better termed as privately made firearms. These are guns that people make on their own, either with their own metalworking skills, a 3D printer, or some other means. They’ve been legal in this country since before it was this country, but over the last handful of years, some people started freaking out over them.

However, I haven’t caught wind of a lot of effort by the NRA to talk about them. I may well have missed it, admittedly, but I wanted to see more discussion, particularly at somewhere like America’s 1st Freedom.

Well, I got it.

Gun-control advocates and anti-gun politicians thrive on much of the public’s ignorance of gun laws and policy. How many times have Americans been lectured about the supposed “gun-show loophole” for firearms sales? Of course, federal firearm-transfer laws are the same at gun shows as anywhere else. Then there’s the effort to ban so-called “assault weapons.” Anti-gun activist Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center wrote in 1988 that “the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons … can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”

A similar story is playing out in the context of what gun-control advocates term “ghost guns.” When discussing this issue, the media conflates three distinct issues under the same spooky branding. There’s the matter of “undetectable” firearms, which the U.S. Congress has repeatedly addressed. Then there are homemade firearms. Finally, there are firearms with parts manufactured using relatively new 3D-printing technology. For instance, the anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg-backed outlet The Trace covers all three of these issues under the category “ghost guns.”

Following a rash of misconceptions concerning the advancement and popularity of polymer-framed pistols like the Glock in the 1980s, Congress enacted the Undetectable Firearms Act in 1988. Since then, the act has been renewed a handful of times—most recently in 2024 with NRA’s assent.

The legislation called for the creation of a “security exemplar” consisting of 3.7 ounces of stainless steel in a shape resembling a handgun. The law then made it illegal to manufacture or possess a firearm that is less detectable to a walk-through metal detector than the security exemplar. Moreover, the law made it illegal to manufacture or possess a firearm with a “major component” that is undetectable to “the types of X-ray machines commonly used at airports.” “Major component[s]” are “the barrel, the slide or cylinder, or the frame or receiver of the firearm.”

Therefore, this type of so-called “ghost gun” is already prohibited outright. Manufacture or possession of an undetectable firearm is a felony that carries up to five years imprisonment.

Yeah, trying to lump all of these into the same category might make sense to those who know nothing about firearms, but they’re all distinctly different. As noted above, those have been banned for years, and those bans were based on a misconception about polymer handguns that totally freaked out anti-gun lawmakers.

However, there does seem to be a fourth category that gets used as a “ghost gun” from time to time, and those are traditionally manufactured firearms that have had their serial number obscured in some manner so that it can’t be traced. These fall into the same category in some reports simply because they’re now “untraceable.”

Like undetectable firearms, though, this practice is illegal as well.

But what proponents of “ghost gun” bans don’t seem to get is that just like gun control has failed pretty much anywhere and everywhere in the past, this isn’t going to stop bad people from doing bad things.

In states that have prohibited the practice, we still find plenty of people being arrested for making guns and trying to sell them–that’s also illegal, of course. Those laws aren’t stopping anyone from doing anything.

The truth is that this is a battle we need to have, in part because if they take our right to make guns on our own with materials that are perfectly legal, there’s absolutely no chance it will stop there.

Just look at what New York is trying to do by requiring background checks for 3D printers, for crying out loud.

But then again, if they had any sense, they wouldn’t be anti-gunners.