The ATF needs two weeks to complete a gun trace. That, according to NBC, is just insanity. The ATF likes to blame this on the fact that they are not permitted to keep a registry of where all of the guns are. Any of us in the gun culture know that this is bullshit. How do we know?
The NFTR is a database of all NFA weapons: short barreled rifles and shotguns, machine guns, silencers, and AOWs. In short, a database that is supposed to be kept by the ATF of where every registered weapon in those categories is located. Dealers in those weapons are regularly inspected. ATF’s own inspectors reported to the Office of the Inspector General that 86 percent of the time, they find errors in the ATF database.
Of course, the point of the NBC article is that we must establish a nationwide firearm registry so we can make everyone safe. Did you know that last year, nearly 20,000 ghost guns were confiscated in criminal investigations around the country, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives? This sounds serious, right?
Except it’s misleading at best, outright bullshit at worst. ATF is including ALL weapons without serial numbers in its definition of “ghost gun” in order to make the problem sound worse than it is. Even so, the ATF traces half a million firearms every year. So the number of “ghost guns” being traced by ATF represents less than 4 percent of the total number of firearms being traced.
To make the article even more dishonest, CBS includes this picture of a confiscated firearm:
Ghost gun or not, this firearm is already illegal. It is a picture of what is either an SBR or an AOW. If you don’t know why I say that the ATF rules are arbitrary and stupid? Read this post.
Even when you DO comply with the law, the ATF will go to extraordinary lengths to put you away. There was a case where the ATF took a legal semiauto rifle, cut the welded FCG out of the rifle, and then replaced the entire FCG with a full auto FCG, which permitted the technician to fire it in full auto. They then prosecuted him for possession of an unregistered machine gun. The jury was not having it, and he was found not guilty. Imagine how much THAT cost in legal fees.
3 Comments
WallPhone · August 22, 2022 at 2:19 pm
My favorite image from a ghost gun PSH article showed a polymer 80 Glock in the nitrile-gloved hands of a technician.
The stamped Glock factory slide and barrel serial numbers from the donor Glock plainly and clearly visible in the photo.
Untracable. Ya. Sure it is.
John F · August 22, 2022 at 3:50 pm
Photo: SBR (legal if registered and tax paid), AOW (legal if registered and tax paid), or it’s an AR pistol (legal…for now anyway). There’s not enough information in that one photo to tell, and as near as I can tell none of the options are necessarily illegal.
Divemedic · August 22, 2022 at 4:09 pm
Except looking closely, you will see that it is an 80 percent lower. It can’t be a legal AR pistol because it has a vertical foregrip, which automatically make it either an SBR or an AOW.
In fact, if you look closely, you will also see that the vertical foregrip is actually one of those collapsible bipods. The only question is whether or not it has a stock.
Odds are that it is without serial number, which DOES make it illegal as an NFA weapon.
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