Posted on 11/13/2016 5:17:07 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee
Companies that make kits which allow buyers to assemble military-style, semi-automatic rifles at home have sprung up in recent years in at least one central Florida county, alarming some in law enforcement.
These so-called "ghost gun" kits have become popular with firearms rights activists because the parts have no serial number or other markings, making them untraceable.
Ghost guns can be purchased online from thousands of different websites without a background check.
It's legal because of the way the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives defines a firearm. Under the law, no manufacturer-stamped serial number is needed if you make a gun for personal use.
At least six of these gun-kit makers are operating in Volusia County, which has worried law enforcement, who say the unregistered guns can make it easy for criminals to arm themselves with untraceable weapons. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
Do not be so sure about that. Manufacturers started putting serial numbers on their products before the US Civil War. I believe it was for their own purposes, most likely inventory control.
I would also consider it very likely that even if some of the various guns both men used over their lives had serial numbers many had no more than a manufacture's mark (brand symbol).
“Done it myself. Legally you can make one, just one. My wife has to make her own, I can’t do it for her. Once made it cannot be sold or transferred it has to be destroyed to get rid of it.”
What happens if I lose it in a boating accident? Can I build another one?
A solid drill press and drill bits is all that is needed to ‘finish’ a 90 lower.
Would love to know how many criminals are caught each year because the authorities had a serial number?
I’ll bet it is incredibly few.
And if a gun is stolen, and the owner reports its theft as required by law, how does that help law enforcement to catch the bad guy using it? It probably was passed from bad guy to bad guy several times as they needed cash, and how does the serial number help with that?
what am I missing here?
Sometimes I am a dunce. But not usually........
If you follow the manufacturing process back far enough, an AR15 lower starts out as simple aluminum billet, and nothing in the BATF’s charter gives them purview over simple blocks of aluminum. They have pinned the point in the manufacturing process at which (by their definition) it ceases being a mineral deposit and starts being a firearm component at 81%. So a lower finished to just 80% of completion is not yet a firearm. You can buy 80% lowers just like any other block of aluminum, no Form 4473, NICS check, or any other paperwork required.
In addition to 80% lowers (now commercially available for 1911s & Glock handguns, as well as AR15s), they’re also selling molding kits so you can cast 100% finished polymer AR lowers in the comfort of your own man-cave. All they need — at most — is trimming off the odd sprue or a little flashing from the mold imperfections. The holed and all the “working parts” already are located correctly and to the proper dimensions. And since you do the entire process, from liquid to finished product, you become the lawful manufacturer of a lawfully unserialized firearm.
There’s also a Cad-Cam milling machine being sold commercially that has everything included (software, hardware and tooling) so a completely unskilled machinist can clamp in a properly-sized aluminum billet and the mill, switch it on, and it turns your billet into a 100% finished AR lower. But it’s a one-trick pony; all it does is mill AR lowers, by CAD-CAM, completely automated and unsassisted. Again, because the maker and the end-user are one in the same, it is completely legal to take it all the way to 100% finished.
3D Printers controlled by your home PC to print whatever gun component suits your own peccadilloes (except barrels, for now) can’t be far behind.
The only drawback is that all the (unserialized & homemade guns) are (technically) non-transferrable. I guess that when you die, it’s supposed to go in the hole in the ground with you. But then again, if it’s unserialized, who’s to know that wasn’t your surviving heir who made it to begin with? ;-)
So the libs can get over it. The toothpaste is out of the tube, and there ain’t no way to put it back.
A gun is a very simple device, easy to make something that functions as a gun from common household materials. “Banning” them is ludicrous.
Two words for ‘home defense’ : slam-fire shotguns
I still say suppressors should be deregulated for health reasons.
“Ghost guns can be purchased online from thousands of different websites without a background check.”
That’s a Federal Crime! While it’s perfectly legal to build your own firearm, you have to perform all the tasks associated with turning those parts of the firearm that are considered to be “the firearm” by the ATF into functioning pieces yourself. Furthermore, you cannot sell what you make for yourself.
What people are purchasing are “kits” that contain non-functional part (s) that you must convert yourself.
Just more journalistic stupidity on display.
You may have hit the wrong digit key. The unfinished receivers cannot be more than 80% completed in the situation we are discussing. It is still not an easy job for most people. Most people need a jig to get things right. A milling machine is actually the more appropriate tool but I have a 6” cross slide vice that I have been meaning to do a little work on to get ready to make one of these.
Interestingly enough I did find a supplier selling an 80% completed polymer receiver tonight, which I was not aware of previously. The link I provided previously was to a company which sells an inexpensive CNC milling machine which will do most of the work automatically after you bolt your receiver into it. They are suppose to be
“Hyperbole overload!! Criminals can get any weapon they want for a lot less effort it takes to convert one of these blocks of aluminum into a working firearm.”
Criminals are not the market here!
Well, I wasn’t sure, but made the smart remark anyway.
Thank you for this well written and illuminating overview.
True, but if you are going to sell/transfer you have to serialize it as I understand it.
Its true. You can by 40% and 60% milled AR receivers..... and finish milling them yourself using your home tools.
They even make jigs designed to finish milling out thise receivers.
If you make your own it is yours....like bajing your own cake for yourself.
The “ghostgun” stuff is newly named to scare people.
Yep...and FYI, if anyone has become interested in one of these projects due to this post....
DO NOT attempt to do the machining with a hand drill.
You need a good drill press and a good vice.
Buddy of mine here in CA screwed up a polymer and aluminum AR lower because he thought he could manage it with a hand drill and WalMart bits.
Nobody, but you is keeping track. . . there is no limit in the law. You can make as many for your personal use as you like. You don't report it to anyone. Polymer80 sells the 80% lower complete with jig, milling bit, and the two drills you need to complete the lower milling for as low as $59.95. You can complete one on a drill press or, if you are very carefull, in a vice with an electric hand drill, but I wouldn't advise it. Some have done them with dremel type hand tools, but that's only for the really patient. There are YouTube videos showing step by step how to do it by both means. They shoot well and are reliable.
Vice = vise. I hate auto correct.
“... Manufacturers started putting serial numbers on their products before the US Civil War. I believe it was for their own purposes, most likely inventory control. ...”
There was little point to serial numbers before the 1840s, except as Fraxinus mentioned above. Best guess is that inventory control might be needed for tax purposes.
Each gun was so unique that the parts would not interchange. Not much point to serializing items so unique they could not be swapped around. Repairs to military small arms always required individual fitting of parts.
The US War Dept strove for years to produce small arms with interchangeable parts, hiring inventor John Hall to be the Master Armorer at Harpers Ferry to make it happen. Hall spent the time and public funds developing his breechloading rifle and conning the War Dept into adopting it.
The first US small arm with completely interchangeable parts was the Model 1842 musket in 69 caliber. It was also the first US issue small arm to be designed with percussion ignition (all earlier one had originally been flintlock; may were later converted to percussion), and the last primary issue shoulder arm not to have rifling (many were rifled later).
The War Dept did not bother stamping serial numbers on small arms until the adoption of the M1873 rifle the “Trapdoor.” Accountability and the threat of theft from armories may have been the motivators: labor unrest, socialism, and anarchism intruded on the public consciousness in the 1870s.
For many decades, commercial gunmakers hid serial numbers under the grip panels or stock tangs. Not on every model: Colt’s numbers appeared on the exterior surface, and the Winchester M1873 bears its number on the tang - a separate part from the receiver. Curiously, budget gunmakers like H&R hid numbers under the grip panels by stamping them on the gripstrap. So did Remington, on their M95 Double Derringer, which enjoyed a long production run from the 1860s until 1935.
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