Kids get "ghost guns" through legal loopholes, and they're killing other kids

[MU82]

Teens buying ghost guns online, with deadly consequences

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/07/12/teens-ghost-guns-deadly-shootings/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most

At 18, Zachary Burkard was too young to buy a handgun from a licensed gun store, and he was an admitted drug dealer with mental health issues, court records show. So he went to the website of 80P Builder, a seller of “ghost gun” parts with no serial numbers, bought a gun kit and assembled a complete pistol himself.

About two months later, Burkard watched a fistfight unfold between two schoolmates at a friend’s house. He entered the Springfield, Va., home’s garage and began shooting. Ersheen Elaiaiser and Calvin Van Pelt, both 17, were killed by bullets from Burkard’s homemade ghost gun. Neither of the victims was armed. Van Pelt was shot twice in the back as he ran away.

In court, an audio recording was played of the 2021 shooting, while the parents of both victims listened in agony. “You can hear our son, saying, ‘Hey cool it,’ like ‘Fight’s over, we good,’” Calvin’s father, Michael Winfield, said. “That’s Calvin. I mean, even in the face of death, he was being a leader, trying to calm things down.”

Van Pelt had never met Burkard, and Van Pelt’s family was stunned to learn how the gun wound up in Burkard’s hands.

“They’ve just made it entirely too easy to get these guns,” said Winfield, sitting next to his wife, who during a recent interview wore a necklace with a picture of their late son smiling. “A child can buy one. There’s no background checks. You don’t even need a bank account. You can go to 7-Eleven and get a debit card, put money on it and buy a gun.”

The families of the two teens, with the help of the anti-gun-violence group Everytown for Gun Safety, are now suing the distributor of the parts Burkard used to make his ghost gun, 80P Builder of Florida, and the manufacturer, Polymer80 of Nevada, for gross negligence in providing a teenager with a weapon when he was not legally able to buy a handgun from a federally licensed dealer.

The case, those who track the weapons say, demonstrates a frightening phenomenon that has compounded the Biden administration’s struggles to rein in the soaring use of ghost guns in violent crimes: Teenagers have discovered the ease with which they can acquire the parts for a ghost gun, and they have been buying, building and shooting the homemade guns with alarming frequency. Everytown for Gun Safety compiled a list of more than 50 incidents involving teens and ghost guns since 2019. Among them:

++ In Brooklyn Park, Minn., police arrested two teens with ghost guns in December after authorities said one of them attempted to shoot someone outside their car but instead killed their friend inside it.

++ In New Rochelle, N.Y., a 16-year-old created a “ghost gun factory” in his bedroom last year, police said, before killing another 16-year-old.

++ In one week last year in Prince George’s County, Md., a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old were arrested in their schools while carrying ghost guns, authorities said.

++ In Montgomery County, Md., a teen using a ghost gun shot and seriously injured another student inside the boys’ bathroom at Magruder High School last year.

Polymer80 did not respond to a request for comment, but said in response to the lawsuit that it did not sell a gun kit to Burkard. 80P Builder, the company that sold the gun kit to the 18-year-old, did not respond to a request for comment, and its website no longer offers frames, receivers or full gun kits. The company that owns 80P Builder, Salvo Technologies, was also sued and declined to speak about the case.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) estimated that Polymer80 was responsible for more than 88 percent of the ghost guns recovered by police between 2017 and 2021, though there are nearly 100 manufacturers selling parts, or full kits, which can be made into unserialized guns, a list compiled by Everytown shows.

Teens are hardly the only users. Last year, police departments seized at least 25,785 ghost guns nationwide, the Justice Department said recently, and those are just the weapons submitted by police to ATF for tracing, even though they don’t have serial numbers and largely cannot be traced.

In 2021, the number of guns recovered was 19,344, meaning seizures rose 33 percent the following year. ATF has linked ghost guns to 692 homicides and nonfatal shootings through 2021, including mass killings and school shootings. An ATF spokeswoman said the agency could not provide data on incidents involving ghost guns and teens. Guns found at crime scenes can often be tracked to their last owner by the serial number, but ghost guns have no such identifier.

Ghost guns are created by using a metal or polymer “frame,” for handguns, or a “receiver,” for rifles. The frames and receivers, which have no serial numbers on them, are often referred to as an “80 percent lower,” meaning the lower part of the gun, which is 80 percent finished. The other 20 percent involves some drilling and machining so that the other parts — the slide, the barrel, the firing mechanism — can be attached to the frame or receiver.

Some companies sell the frames or receivers with a “jig” — in which to place the parts and help users drill and finish the gun — and some sell all the necessary parts in a complete gun-building kit. Online videos provide instruction on how to build an unserialized gun. Making a homemade gun isn’t illegal, but transferring an unserialized gun to someone else is illegal.

Because many ghost gun parts manufacturers do not consider their “80 percent” frames or receivers to be firearms, they do not believe they are required to conduct any background checks or to refuse to sell to teenagers. A full ghost gun kit can cost between $800 and $1,000, according to websites that sell them.

For years, the makers of ghost gun parts pointed to letters issued by ATF that ruled that an unfinished frame or receiver was not a gun.

To try to stem the ghost gun tide, the Biden administration and ATF last year published a rule that clarified that frames and receivers qualify as firearms under the Gun Control Act of 1968, and require serial numbers and background checks before being sold. The law has long defined “firearm” to mean any weapon that “is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile” or “the frame or receiver of any such weapon.”

But the parts makers quickly challenged the new rule in court. In two courts, they were defeated. But in the federal court of northern Texas — the same jurisdiction where a judge recently imposed a ban on abortion pills — the ghost gun makers found a sympathetic ear. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the new ATF rule exceeded the agency’s authority under the Gun Control Act, writing that “the liberty interests of law-abiding citizens wishing to engage in historically lawful conduct … outweighs the Government’s competing interest in preventing prohibited persons from unlawfully possessing firearms.” Late last month, O’Connor issued a decision vacating the rule.

The case is now likely to head to the Fifth Circuit, also widely considered conservative, and if the Justice Department loses there it could appeal to the Supreme Court.

Dudley Brown, the president of the National Association for Gun Rights, said he is against all regulation of privately made firearms, calling the practice of building weapons a “long and storied tradition in America.” Brown, who has built guns with 80 percent kits and molded lower receivers from blocks of aluminum, said he has encouraged companies that sell kits to sue the Biden administration over its ghost gun order.

“I believe it’s very rare that a 15-year-old will make a homemade pistol,” Brown said. “That is an extremely difficult process.”

[Uncle Rico]

*cracks knuckles*

What about Chicago?

[rocket surgeon]

illinois no cash bail law releases him so he can spend some quality time with his family and continue his schooling or job

[ZiggysFryBoy]

MU82 porn again.

[Pakuni]

illinois no cash bail law releases him so he can spend some quality time with his family and continue his schooling or job

1. The law hasn't gone into effect yet, genius.
2. When it does go into effect, those charged with violent crimes, especially with a gun, are more likely to be held without  bail than they are today.

[Uncle Rico]

1. The law hasn't gone into effect yet, genius.
2. When it does go into effect, those charged with violent crimes, especially with a gun, are more likely to be held without  bail than they are today.

Add it to “rocket MUBB takes” on threads, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook and Truth Social

[rocket surgeon]

1. The law hasn't gone into effect yet, genius.
2. When it does go into effect, those charged with violent crimes, especially with a gun, are more likely to be held without  bail than they are today.

  yo sparky, i know that but like your buddy reeko, just trying to get a rise outta ya...and i see it worked

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

nm

[Jockey]

The guns are just doing their jobs.

[Pakuni]

  yo sparky, i know that but like your buddy reeko, just trying to get a rise outta ya...and i see it worked

Sure, Jan.

[Uncle Rico]

  yo sparky, i know that but like your buddy reeko, just trying to get a rise outta ya...and i see it worked

9.5 out of 10

Ellipses, cute nickname and unadulterated lies.  A tremendous effort in so few words.

A true classic for the Reddit feed dedicated to your posts

[rocket surgeon]

9.5 out of 10

Ellipses, cute nickname and unadulterated lies.  A tremendous effort in so few words.

A true classic for the Reddit feed dedicated to your posts

     RENT FREE!! 

   5...4...3...2...

[Uncle Rico]

     RENT FREE!! 

   5...4...3...2...

Sure, Jan.

9.5 out of 10

Add this to Rocket MUBB takes

[ZiggysFryBoy]

Sure, Jan.

9.5 out of 10

Add this to Rocket MUBB takes

Searching rocket mubb yields some wild subs.  But nothing about your rocket fanboi page.  Share the sub, bro.

[rocket surgeon]

Sure, Jan.

9.5 out of 10

Add this to Rocket MUBB takes

slippin reeeeeko- that one took almost 10 minutes...you've gotta have an ipad or something for the chitter so you don't miss anything here.  i'd hate to try to imagine anything else that might keep you occupied away from scoop for more than 10 minutes other than tending to your gerbils and hamsters

[🏀]

Maybe if America could make proton packs more accessible, kids would need these guns to kill ghosts.

[MU82]

Maybe if America could make proton packs more accessible, kids would need these guns to kill ghosts.

Nice.

On a serious note, I guess I don't understand why the "all lives matter" folks aren't more concerned that any 14-year-old can make a gun by easily ordering these parts.

They're concerned enough about kids that dozens of states have crafted hundreds of laws to punish kids for being gay or trans, as well as laws forcing kids to give birth to kids they can't take care of, but not concerned enough to close loopholes that let kids legally acquire weapons to shoot other kids.

[21Jumpstreet]

I would think the responsible gun owner, pro 2A, pro enforce the laws we have on the books, pro concealed carry/self defense crowd would be staunchly against ghost guns and the illegality or legal gray area of them. I think it completely undermines a notion I happen to agree with, the ability to own a firearm and protect yourself. Candidly, I am intimately connected to this group, and I am neither a gun owner nor a black and white believer or non-believer in 2A.

[MU82]

I would think the responsible gun owner, pro 2A, pro enforce the laws we have on the books, pro concealed carry/self defense crowd would be staunchly against ghost guns and the illegality or legal gray area of them. I think it completely undermines a notion I happen to agree with, the ability to own a firearm and protect yourself. Candidly, I am intimately connected to this group, and I am neither a gun owner nor a black and white believer or non-believer in 2A.

Common sense is often in short supply in discussions related to firearms.

[brewcity77]

Nice.

On a serious note, I guess I don't understand why the "all lives matter" folks aren't more concerned that any 14-year-old can make a gun by easily ordering these parts.

They're concerned enough about kids that dozens of states have crafted hundreds of laws to punish kids for being gay or trans, as well as laws forcing kids to give birth to kids they can't take care of, but not concerned enough to close loopholes that let kids legally acquire weapons to shoot other kids.

They're only concerned if the 14-year-old in question is trans. Then they absolutely should not have a gun. Otherwise, that 14-year-old is just coming late to the god-given right that everyone get a gun as they come out of the womb.

[ZiggysFryBoy]

ChatGPT:  do a rocket level political rant,  but from a delusional, left wing POV:

They're only concerned if the 14-year-old in question is trans. Then they absolutely should not have a gun. Otherwise, that 14-year-old is just coming late to the god-given right that everyone get a gun as they come out of the womb.

[muwarrior69]

Common sense is often in short supply in discussions related to firearms.

...and bad behavior or when DAs don't enforce the laws already on the books.