President Joe Biden and the Department of Justice issued a rule Monday to ban home-made firearms, which the Biden Administration calls “ghost guns.”
Biden also announced the nomination of Steve Dettelbach as the permanent director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Dettelbach must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate before taking over as head of the ATF.
“President Biden has chosen yet another ATF Director candidate with ‘Gun Control Incorporated’s’ stamp of approval,” said Dudley Brown, President of the National Association for Gun Rights. “We’re currently mobilizing our 4.5 million members in opposition to his nomination – just like we successfully did with the previous failed nominees.”
Dettelbach is an advocate for reinstating the ban on so-called “assault weapons” and federal “Brady Registration” checks on private gun sales. He was the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio during the Barack Obama presidency.
Privately made guns have no federally tracked serial numbers on them. Last year, the administration said that 20,000 of these types of guns were reported to federal authorities as having been recovered by law enforcement in criminal investigations. The guns make it more difficult for law enforcement to track down the original owner of a gun, since it is effectively untraceable.
The Biden rule makes unserialized “buy build shoot” kits illegal. Gun plans and molding materials for 3-D printers are also illegal, as is making a firearm with a 3-D printer if there is no serial number on the firearm.
“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 Biden Administration said.
The Justice Department will require federally licensed dealers and gunsmiths taking any unserialized firearm into inventory to serialize the weapon. 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, the administration said. The requirement applies to guns made from individual parts, kits, or 3-D printers.
Further, the new rule ensures that firearms with “split receivers” are subject to regulations requiring serial numbers and background checks when purchased from a licensed dealer, manufacturer, or importer.
In the past, ATF issued a regulation defining the frame or receiver of a firearm as the part that is regulated by the Gun Control Act.
“However, we have seen the increasing popularity of firearms using split or multi-part receivers that house key components in multiple structures,” the White House wrote on Monday.
“Some courts have recently interpreted decades-old regulatory text in a way that, if broadly applied, could mean that as many as 90 percent of firearms in the United States today would not have a frame or receiver subject to federal regulation. The final rule updates the regulatory definitions of ‘frame’ and ‘receiver’ to ensure that firearms using split or multi-part receivers continue to be covered by our common-sense gun laws,” the White House said. The rule is meant to get around these court rulings that protect citizens’ Second Amendment rights.
Additionally, all federally licensed firearms dealers will be required to retain key records until they shut down their business. When they shut that business down, they put transfer their records to the ATF. Previously, dealers were permitted to destroy most records after 20 years. According to ATF’s National Tracing Center, on average more than 1,300 firearms a year are untraceable because the federally licensed firearms dealer destroyed the relevant records that were more than 20 years old, the White House said.
President Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget calls on Congress to deliver the funding needed to implement the president’s comprehensive strategy to seize guns from Americans and he said he will push to make gun manufacturers liable for crimes committed with the guns they sell.
