Law enforcement sees rise in ghost guns used by criminals
Ghost guns, or privately manufactured firearms, are un-serialized weapons a person can make with easily attainable materials.
COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Privately manufactured firearms, or ghost guns, have been around for a while.
Creating your own gun at home is completely legal in most cases.
But the problems come with how they are sometimes used and how hard to trace they can be.
Some modifications even make normal guns more dangerous with machine gun conversion devices like Glock switches.
Privately manufactured firearms, or ghost guns, are often partially 3D-printed and can be assembled in as little as 30 minutes.
Parts that can’t be printed at home, like springs and hammers, can be bought online, or manufactured using CNC machines.
According to Joshua Jackson, the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives New Orleans Field Division, they seem to be the weapon of choice for criminals.
“So the suspects that we are investigating, these individuals are generally prohibited from possessing firearms,” Jackson said. “They’re engaged in shooting events, violent gun crime. But their weapon of choice disproportionately seems to be the privately made firearm.”
District 41 State Representative Kabir Karriem, thinks PMF’s should play by the same rules as commercially produced weapons.
“It makes you not feel safe,” Karriem said. “Guns are an issue, especially the illegal use of guns. And there needs to be some type of regulations on ghost guns as it is on regular guns.”
Federal regulations require commercial gun makers to put serial numbers on their weapons, but not individuals.
That makes these weapons harder to trace if they’re used in a crime.
Karriem said he doesn’t want to make it easier for young people to deal in criminal activity.
“We don’t want our kids or people that deal in criminal activity to just be able to manufacture their own guns especially those high powered weapons,” Karriem said.
Jackson said the most dangerous and prevalent PMF’s are machine gun conversion devices.
“Those privately made firearms are the most dangerous and the biggest threat to law enforcement, the public, the community right now,” Jackson said. “Because those machine gun conversion devices, they turn a semi-automatic pistol or rifle into a fully automatic firearm making it extremely dangerous.”
The ATF uses ballistic data pulled from shell casings, DNA, and documents people and places where ghost guns are found to investigate potential manufacturing operations.
That data has led the bureau to recognize a massive increase in ghost guns used by criminals.
Jackson detailed how critical this data is in solving crimes.
“Those three leads are critically important to preventing, reducing, and solving violent gun crime throughout your cities, counties, parishes, states, and the United States,” Jackson said. “That’s where we’re able to tell there’s been 1,000% uptick in the use of privately made firearms in crimes around America.”
Karriem believes educating the public about the issue is the first step in addressing it.
“So we don’t want to take that right away from anyone,” Karriem said. “But there has to be some type of a regulatory, stipulations on these particular guns that just can be manufactured and you can just order different parts, from different people or different manufacturers and produce a gun that’s that’s not safe.”
There is currently no federal legislation on ghost guns and only 15 states have legislation on the books.
About 20,000 suspected ghost guns were recovered in 2022 according to the ATF.
