The Biden Administration allegedly plans to announce new regulations on so-called “ghost guns” on Monday, in an effort to further crack down on Second Amendment rights.
According to CNBC, three anonymous sources in the administration said that the restrictions will target the practice of privately manufacturing firearms without serial numbers. These and other gun control measures have been put on hold while the administration struggles to confirm a new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) after Biden’s previous nominee, David Chipman, was forced to withdraw his nomination after intense scrutiny before the United States Senate.
The same anonymous sources allege that Biden plans to name his new appointee as Steve Dettelbach, a former U.S. attorney from Ohio.
Although an exact date for the formal announcement of the rules has not yet been set, Democrats and far-left advocacy groups have been demanding that the administration pick up the pace with its gun control policies. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) publicly called on Biden on Sunday to do so, claiming that “it’s high time for a ghost gun exorcism before the proliferation peaks, and before more people get hurt — or worse.”
“My message is a simple one,” Schumer continued. “No more waiting on these proposed federal rules.” Schumer called ghost guns “too easy to build, too hard to trace and too dangerous to ignore.”
The Department of Justice claims that around 24,000 such guns have been recovered by authorities at crime scenes across the country over the course of four years, between 2016 and 2020.
As such, it is expected that the new rules will include a significant redefinition of the term “firearm” at the federal level; instead of a whole, fully-functioning weapon, the term will now encompass individual parts, such as a handgun frame or a long gun’s receiver. The ATF also requested that the new regulations include a requirement that all manufacturers and dealers who sell ghost gun parts must be licensed by the federal government, and that all such federally-licensed dealers must add a serial number to any guns they sell.
Some of these proposals have already been enacted in states controlled by Democrats, such as California. But the pending announcement has already been met with backlash from conservatives and pro-Second Amendment groups, and the new rules are likely to be challenged in court shortly after they are rolled out.