LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Pres. Joseph Biden last Thursday announced a host of executive actions meant to combat the “international embarrassment” of gun violence in America. Among them was a crackdown on the homemade firearms that are sometimes called ghost guns.
Biden is calling on the Justice Department to issue a rule “to help stop the proliferation of these firearms,” according to the White House.
Ghost guns are often built from kits that are easily found online. The main building block is called an 80% receiver, or 80% frame, because when they’re sold, they’re 80% built. Buyers must complete the other 20% to yield a working firearm. Ghost gun can also refer to 3D-printed firearms.
Because they’re not working guns when they’re sold, 80% receivers are not required to have a serial number. The Biden administration and dozens of state attorneys general say this makes them untraceable and attractive to criminals.
National statistics on the use of ghost guns are hard to come by because they’re difficult to track by nature. But some large American cities have reported a dramatic spike in their use in recent years. In Philadelphia, police recovered 99 ghost guns in 2019. That number was up to 250 in 2020. Baltimore saw the number of recovered ghost guns more than quadruple between 2019 and 2020, from 29 to 126. Chicago and Washington, D.C., have also reported spikes in the recovery of ghost guns.
But ghost guns have not reached Louisville in a meaningful way, said Officer Beth Ruoff, spokesperson for the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD), which does not track ghost guns.
“We aren't seeing a sizable amount of them here yet,” Ruoff said. “But I would anticipate seeing it.”
Imri Morgenstern, owner of Louisville’s Prime Combat Training, said while he doesn't know local numbers, ghost guns are “quite popular” throughout the gun world.
These weapons are not new, but they’ve become more common over the past 15 years. The surge in popularity was prompted in part by a 2006 ATF rule change that said 80% receivers would no longer be considered firearms. That meant that the 1968 Gun Control Act, which requires permanent serial numbers on firearms, no longer applied to the devices.
Not only does this make the guns built from the 80% receivers more difficult to track, it means they can be sold without a background check. In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last month, the attorneys general of 18 different states wrote that this “allows criminals, domestic abusers, and other individuals who legally cannot possess firearms to evade common-sense gun laws.”
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron did not sign the letter. “Attorney General Cameron is committed to standing up for the Second Amendment rights of Kentuckians, and our office is currently reviewing the most recent announcement made by the Biden Administration,” Cameron’s spokesperson, Elizabeth Kuhn, said in an email.
Congressman Thomas Massie, who represents northern Kentucky, tweeted his opposition to Biden’s move Sunday. “It has always been legal, since the founding of this country, for a person to make his or her own gun,” he wrote
Morgenstern also defended ghost guns, saying they've been “oversimplified and vilified.”
“In my opinion, the number of people that get one of these in order to commit a crime is incredibly low,” he said. “Think of the immense amount of work that they have to put into having a gun that's ‘off the books,’ when it is incredibly easy to go out and buy an illegal, non-marked gun already on the black market.”
The type of gun he's referencing, with the serial number removed and often stolen, is "fairly common" in Louisville, Ruoff said. They're also a much bigger problem than ghost guns.
But, Ruoff added, LMPD does anticipate the proliferation of ghost guns in Louisville, "like we anticipate any crime trends that are occurring in larger cities.”