Gun Control

At least two national gun rights groups are contemplating lawsuits to challenge the new federal regulation on privately made firearms, or so-called “ghost guns.”

The final ruling, published by the ATF on Apr. 11, essentially expands the definition of a firearm to include partially complete and readily convertible firearm receivers (also called frames).

Once the ruling goes into effect, those receivers will be regulated just like regular firearms, subject to requirements such as serial numbers and background checks.

This week, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) finalized a rule tweaking a number of firearm-related regulatory definitions. The rule targets legitimate problems, including that privately made “ghost guns” have played an increasing role in gun crime lately. It also draws attention to how vague the federal laws in this area are, giving presidential administrations great discretion to rewrite the rules as they see fit.

The Problem Is Ordinary Killers, Not Exotic Guns

Finding a really nice classic Mustang is not always easy and is never cheap, and, for years, a handful of very committed car enthusiasts have been making an end-run around the classic-car market and the restoration industry both by more or less building entirely new cars from the parts catalogue. This is something that is a lot easier to do with very popular classics such as the Mustang than it would be with (alas!) the 1966 Volvo P1800 I very stupidly bought as a broke college student. In reality, building a new Mustang from the catalogue entails a lot more than ordering the parts and putting them together — there is a reason most cars are built in factories rather than in artisans’ workshops. But you can do it, if you really want to.

Joe Biden has announced an attempt to crack down on “ghost guns”, kits which can be bought without a background check, from which a working gun can quickly be made, and which have been used in an escalating number of shootings.

In a release, the White House said 20,000 “unserialized, privately made firearms” were reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2021, a tenfold increase on 2016.

Biden and Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general, were also due on Monday to announce the nomination of Steve Dettelbach, US attorney in Ohio from 2009 to 2016, to lead the ATF.

A mass shooting that killed six people and injured 12 in Sacramento last weekend predictably provoked immediate agitation for stricter gun control, including policies that seem utterly irrelevant to the facts of the case. That’s a familiar pattern in the gun policy debate, which consists largely of reiterating previous proposals in response to mass shootings, regardless of whether those ideas have anything to do with the most recent example.

The Sacramento Bee described the weekend’s apparently gang-related violence, which began around 2 a.m. Sunday in a downtown area where nightclubs had just closed, as “the worst mass shooting in city history.” The Los Angeles Times says “the shooting was California’s single deadliest in 2022,” although “there have been worse in the last year.” While these incidents supposedly underline the need for gun control, they simultaneously cast doubt on that argument, since California already has the strictest gun laws in the country.

It turns out that there is a COVID-19 side effect that won’t hurt you. In fact, it may save your life.

Since the nation shut down in March 2020 as the coronavirus crisis hit, 10 states have cleared the way for citizens to carry handguns.