Beware Biden’s Ghost-Gun Protocol

S ince before the United States existed as an independent nation, Americans have been making firearms at home. If President Biden’s proposed limitations on “ghost guns” take the form that the gun-control movement hopes they will, this centuries-long practice will soon be brought to a close. Anyone who wishes to avoid the imposition of yet another federal fence around their rights should be watching this development with apprehension.

The gun-control group Everytown describes a “ghost gun” as a “a do-it-yourself, homemade gun made from easy-to-get, unregulated building blocks . . . made by an individual, not a federally licensed manufacturer or importer.” And, naturally, it wants them controlled. “Federal authorities,” its website declares, “must act to ensure that the core parts for ghost guns are defined as firearms and properly regulated.” Thus far, Biden has been focused on the “building blocks” part of this argument, having promised to do something about the “kits” that, he says, contain “nearly all of the components and directions for finishing a firearm.” And yet, as Everytown makes clear, that amateur gun-builders can obtain “core parts” without a background check is only half of the objection here. The other half rests on the mere existence of “fully functioning, untraceable firearms” — a “problem” that can be meaningfully “solved” only by outlawing homemade guns in toto.

Everytown wants Biden to “ensure that the core parts for ghost guns are defined as firearms and properly regulated.” But, as with most demands for stricter supervision, this is easier said than done. Attempting to explain “ghost guns” in the New York Times, Annie Karni writes that they

are sold online as D.I.Y. kits, and typically shipped as ‘80 percent receivers.’ That means the gun is 80 percent complete, and buyers have to assemble the final 20 percent themselves.

Legally, this is correct. But, because it conjures up images of a nearly complete firearm that just needs a little work done to make it whole, it is misleading nevertheless. Functionally, an 80 percent receiver is not really an “80 percent complete” firearm; it’s an “80 percent complete” small part of a firearm. It’s just that the part in question happens to be the bit that the government classifies as the “gun.” At present, the ATF considers only the “lower receiver” on an AR-15 to be the “gun” — irrespective of whether it has any other components attached to it. Under federal law, the barrel, the trigger, the stock, the upper receiver, and the magazine are all incidental under the law; if you are in possession of a finished lower receiver, then you are in possession of a firearm.

Thing is, the difference between a finished receiver and an “80 percent complete” receiver is small. Here, in visual form, is the ATF’s own explanation of the distinction:

In essence, the difference here is whether the receiver has “holes.” Indeed, as the ATF explains, “receiver blanks, ‘castings’ or ‘machined bodies’ in which the fire-control cavity area is completely solid and un-machined have not reached the ‘stage of manufacture’ which would result in the classification of a firearm per the GCA.” Why? Because in one case, the receiver is capable of being attached to other parts, and in the other it is not.

Advocates of stricter gun control will presumably look at these photographs and say, “Okay, so change the regulations.” Which, of course, is exactly what Biden hopes to do. But at some point, the attempt to tighten up what the federal government classes as “a gun” becomes absurd. How different, one must ask, would an “incomplete” lower receiver need to be before it was exempted from the rules? That’s a serious question, and, given that the federal government is presumably not going to start adding serial numbers to any commercially available rectangular block of metal that could in theory be machined into a different shape, it requires a serious answer. Is there one?

Biden’s essential problem is that he is attempting to use a set of federal laws that were passed solely to regulate commerce as a pretext to regulate noncommercial activity. The 1968 Gun Control Act, on which the ATF’s rules are primarily based, makes no mention of homemade weapons beyond noting that its terms apply only to those who are “engaged in the business” of manufacturing and selling firearms. As it stands, Americans who wish to manufacture weapons for sale or distribution need to obtain a federal license before they may do so, while those who are engaged in noncommercial production that affects nobody outside of themselves are permitted to do as they wish — yes, even if they buy key materials from commercial dealers across state lines. Writing in the Times recently, Gail Collins asked “how the founding fathers would have felt about the right to bear arms if they knew their nastiest neighbor had just installed a printer that manufactures guns in his basement.” But we know how they felt about forging firearms — and, indeed, we know how subsequent generations felt about it — because for all of American history has it been legal to do precisely that. It still is today.

From my libertarian standpoint, this is a good thing. It is a good thing because the federal government is supposed to be limited in its power by its charter of enumerated powers, and because, whatever absurdities the Supreme Court might have contrived in Wickard v. Filburn, there is still no way of arguing with a straight face that the private construction of firearms materially affects “interstate commerce.” It is a good thing because we should strive for as few federal laws as possible to touch that most sacred of places: the home. It is a good thing because it makes a mockery of self-sufficiency to tell people that they may own a given product, but that they may not make that product themselves. And, yes, it is a good thing because I think that George Orwell was correct when he said that “rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons,” and because I have no issue whatsoever with keeping the government in the dark about how many guns the population really has.

Alas, it is that lattermost concern that is really driving the Biden administration’s proposed crackdown. Today the focus is on those who are “engaged in the business” of making the most feared “ghost guns” possible. Tomorrow, though, we will move to stage two, to the redefinition of every term with which we have become familiar, to the click-click-click of the moving ratchet, and, eventually, to that old refrain: “well, we already. . .”