AMNY: It Turns Out ‘Ghost Guns’ Are Traceable After All

1. 𝑫𝒐 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒏 𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒚 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒊𝒏𝒗𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒚? 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕’𝒔 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝑰 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒋𝒐𝒃 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑵𝒐𝒘 𝑰 𝒂𝒎 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 $200 𝒕𝒐 $300 𝒑𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒒𝒘𝒆03 𝒅𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒉𝒐𝒎𝒆.
   𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒍𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒘 𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆__________ 𝑾𝑾𝑾.𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒃𝒛.𝑪𝑶𝑴

   • You can make as much money in prostitution also without investing money. You can find evidence of this by looking at the past 4,000 years of history.

     • There are probably clay tablet shards from ancient Babylonia with a message content similar to the rovov’s. Hucksterism is the world’s second oldest profession.

     • Try the past 4 million years.

       • Yes, T-rex was the first customer…. short arms

     • BWAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!! Well said.

     • The first prostitutes were probably paid in bananas and coconuts..

   • get out of here rovov51439. We don’t take kindly to scammers and spammers.

   • If I make anymore money I’ll lose my food stamps. What fool would trade work for free stuff?

     • Even if a firearm has a serial number does not mean the serial number leads to the perp. It could lead to the gun store and to the owner where it could have been sold, given away or most likely stolen. What actually ties a firearm to the perp are fingerprints, DNA, ammo, ballistics, witnesses, etc. And there are little things like records of zip code shipments which can land in the vicinity of a crime, etc. If anyone thinks using a firearm with no serial number is going to keep them out of prison they need to think again.

       Whoever did not check “ghost gun” at the door and allowed the label to stick is the culprit. As are the morons who approved the word “Untraceable” in their 80 ads…Ads which have suddenly disappeared. At first sight “Untraceable” did not sail by me and I made my voice heard on this forum and elsewhere. It’s like put out one fire and another clueless jackazz starts another.

     • Possums are foragers….caught ya!

       • I’m half possum, dont rub it in I’ve got human blood in me.
         Even Spock had his weaknesses.

   • Pushing porn to children and getting 0.000001 cents per email? There’s a special circle of hell for you.

2. I notice NOTHING in the article even implying that they can trace a “Casper” back to the original manufacturer, much less the guy who pulled the trigger.

   Sounds like more of the CSI and other forensic shows that over-play their ability to find the perp by pretending the crime lab is a bunch of super-genius lab rats with technology that criminals cannot defeat.

   I think it’s bluster for the masses and probably doesn’t result in finding, arresting or convicting the shooters. At most they might be able to track down and arrest an underground manufacturer by his credit cards receipts for on-line purchases of components.

   • they can still compare fired bullets into a capture medium to determine rifling etc.
     so … find a thug or politician (but i repeat myself) with a home made firearm suspected of a crime … and the gun can still be tested.

     the simple fact is guns cannot be traced if the person using them does not want it traced.
     even registered guns.

     simply by destroying the firearm after using it in a crime.

     it is people who keep the guns who get caught.

     • Most of the ‘untraceable’ guns are deep in the muck at the bottom of a river or lake.

   • A gun having a serial number also doesn’t result in finding, arresting or convicting the shooters. That takes that thing called “police work”.

     All a serial number does is decide where the gun was manufactured and/or originally sold or who may have originally owned it. A serial number is useless for guns that are stolen and used in crimes and/or in posession of criminals because it has to be proven they pulled the trigger and a serial number does not prove that. Its not like a prosecutor can go into court and say “the serial number proves he pulled the trigger. The prosecution rests.”

     • Don’t tell lil’d that. To him serial numbers and universal gun registration are holy talismans that will not only solve all crimes but even stop them from happening in the first place.

   • Doesn’t matter if they can find them. In New York they turn around and let them go.

   • Try reading the piece again, this time for comprehension.

     THey clearly explained how ANY firearm which has fired shots will leave micro marks on both the [rojectile and the ejected casing. These marks are like fingerprints are to a parson.
     They might not know who “owns” that gun, nor who had it when it was fired at that scene. But they DO know which one it was. And when it pops up gain having fired more shots. Eventually the shooter is very likely to be caught with the specific gun, they can then easil PROVE this weapon was used here, there over ]yojnder, and hither as well. Serial number is no “magic bullet” to make it opo up out of nowhere tagged wiht the name of the perp who fired it at the crime scene.

     Chicago had a case a few years back where a given handgun was identified as having fired shots in multiple crimes.. worked a neightbourhood for a time, then went dark, popped up again.. almost three years, over two hundred “incidents” all tied to THAT GUN. All they knew was its calibre.. a nine by nineteen. Finalll they found THAT GUN at a scene, proved it was “the one> The serial nmber, plain to see for anyone with even onehalf functioning eyebell, then traced to a fairl large gun store breain and theft in INdiana some four ears earlier. SO.. even i if they HAD the stuid number, it would have only turned up on the inventory list from the gun store having been stoolen on such and such a day. Still VERY “untraceable”. Even after they f=had hands on THAT GUN, they stil had no idea WHO had owned it, one after the other, over the three years it was active”.

     So WHAT is all the kerfuffle over un-serialised firearms about anyway? Even having a number this gun was well and truly a “ghonst gun”. Further proof that all is smoke and mirrors, whihing ubpon a star, etc. Good excuse to waste tax money tilitng at windmills, reaching for stars, bellowing in the wind. Stupid politicians anyway. The crime labs WILL eventually unlock most of those cases, but the REAL issue is the misfits with their fat finners on them bangsticks are NOT locNoipe, they are just small salmon cought, then released to lather rinse repeat. And the Dems wail and whinge for more money to “fix” the imaginarly chumeric “problem” they create out of whole cloth.

     • What you are describing is not “tracing” as commonly hoped, but “comparison”. Even that word implies that when a non-serialized firearm is used several times, the person actually found to possess a firearm used in several crimes is likely, or actually responsible for the prior shootings.

       What is always missing in discussions of firearm “tracing” is the abysmal record of actually solving violent crimes in the first place. Solving crimes where firearms are used seems to be no better. The public is left to believe that somehow firearm serial numbers are a guarantee that a perp will be caught and punished. An additional benefit that is to be perceived is that by outlawing non-serialized firearms, more crimes will be solved, and over time criminals will stop using non-serialized firearms, thereby magically reducing violent crime, and crimes where firearms are used, to a remarkably low level.

       “Tracing” firearms to criminals is more political theater, based on the delusional theory that criminals will follow laws.

       • Yes, very well put tack driving point of the whole fraud… “The (dumbass ignorant brainwashed)public is left to believe that somehow serial numbers are a guarantee that a perp will be caught…”
         When the only thing it will really guarantee-just like the ’68GCA guaranteed that they will eventually permanently disarm everyone simply by making enough felony laws and other permanantly ‘prohibited’ categories–is another incremental illegal registration step toward their rabid pursuit of this mass disarmament of the population agenda, which is a mandatory prerequisite for their statist goal of totalitarian government despotism.

3. I find it hard to believe that a 8th grade dropout would be able to make a ghost gun. The process, even with the appropriate jig, is not easy. And since these people only want things the easy way, buying a stolen weapon would still be their choice, if not stealing it themselves.

   • the problem with the entire argument is the term “ghost gun” implying home-made firearms.
     a ghost gun is simply a firearm with the no serial number, the serial number removed,
     or a firearm that cannot be traced for a variety of reasons …
     also, anyone can buy a steel pipe with inside diameter of .22, stuff a .22 rf in the end.
     and smack the primer.
     it will be rudimentary … but can be lethal.

     • Yes, the preferred street gangfight ‘gat’ was a “Readily” made snapped off car antenna, most of which fit a .22 and a fist-sized rock for the primer that could also be used to smack your enemy gang banger if you missed with the zipgun

       And manufacturers in the past decades like Mossburg did Not serialize their firearms out of the factory because it was none of anyone’s business who owned private firearms or what they owned. Sears and most other stores that sold a lot of ‘unserialized’ guns that were cash and carry no paperwork just like any other tool.

       Of course, these were the days before the current Rights depriving criminal ‘authorities’ decided to violate the GOPA anti-registration laws and demand, under this crime prevention hoax, that all firearms be serialized, and lately more to come, non-firearm PARTs for no other reason but to illegally create REGISTRATION databases on every purchase and gun owner.

       We’ve come a loooong way, baby.

     • merlin grayman:
       “…anyone can buy a steel pipe with inside diameter of .22…”
       They used to call those “zip guns” in my neck of the woods (Detroit). I can remember in the 1950s reading about teenagers stealing telescoping radio antennae off of cars for that purpose.

   • ” I find it hard to believe that an 8th grade dropout would be able to make a ghost gun”. Well no shit, especially when you stop to realize that the average 8th grader today has about a 3rd grade equivalent education !!

     • No one today needs anything further than a secund grade ejamacations, i only made it all the ways past the furst grade and it aint kep me from NUTHING !

   • Uhhhhh – the 8th grade dropout just might be better at machining than some engineer with a college degree. Never equate formal education with either intelligence, ability, aptitude, or motivation.

     Note that I’m not claiming that all high school dropouts are capable of any of that. I’m only saying that you shouldn’t dismiss the dropout out of hand.

     • Paul:
       Amen

   • @George

     It might seem hard to you but it isn’t.

     A guy locally here, seventh grade drop out – has his own private machine shop, does contract work for companies big and small and individuals, personal annual income ~ $250,000.00, self-taught machinist. Completes an 80% lower in about 30 minutes from opening the package to ready-to-fire. Makes his own handguards, weight about 6 ounces and better than anything you can buy. Makes his own iron sights, you want an expensive set of iron sights from company XYZ then he can make the for you at a fraction of the cost and they are perfect. Makes the most exquisite triggers, custom each one tuned just for you, and they are better than anything you can buy, I have some of them and they are a joy to use. He does lots of gun “parts” stuff for people here locally.

     Not too bad for a seventh grade dropout. You talk to him you would think he was educated in the finest Ivy League universities. Sometimes he even discusses physics with me when I talk about a project I’m working on, and he has a very firm grasp on physics.

4. Sounds like they are admitting that they are including guns with obliterated serial numbers in with ” ghost guns”, as there are methods to (very expensively) come up with a usable trace. Big effing deal, they’re likely to let a perp go or plead down anyway, even when they caught him standing directly over the victim’s body with the still-smoking weapon in his hand. This whole hysteria over the ghost gun “epidemic” is laughable, largely made up shit by the news outlets to sell advertising copy . It reminds me of the hysterical lead up to Y2K…. eat it up dacian ilk.

5. The majority of so called ghost guns are not home built or 3D printed guns, but likely stolen guns with the serial numbers obscured/obliterated. As with any gun, the usual way to trace a gun is not by serial number, but by forensic, ballistic evidence. Markings left on the spent casings, or on recovered bullets.
   While the BATFE, or other police agencies can run down the sales of serialized commercially produced firearms, chances are, the individual firearm has changed hands several times once it get into the hands of a criminal.
   Add in the time frame involved with firearms. A revolver produced a century ago is just as effective now as it was then. An old .38 produced in the 19-teens still works just as well as a new pistol. How many times has that old handgun changed hands in the last 100 years?
   The next question. Honestly, how many of those who would use a firearm to commit a violent crime are going to order parts, wait for them to be delivered, learn how to put them together and make a working firearm instead of a grenade, and spend the cash up front to either buy a 3D printer, or spend more for the parts than it would cost to buy a stolen, or other black market weapon? Most who would go with the intent of violence are not going to put the time and effort or expense of a home built firearm when it is faster, cheaper and usually harder to track to just buy a hot or already available on the street weapon.

6. Yes virtually anything can eventually be traced or identified with unlimited resources. Even firearms may contain forensic evidence, be it DNA from skin cells or tool marks that are recoverable using advanced recovery techniques. Its just a question on how important it is and how long and deep those inquiring minds want to dig.

7. I was talking to a Fed at local gun shop just before the pandemic hit, he said they could normally track a ghost back to the original purchaser of the parts, it just took a little bit longer. I had known the guy for a while and doubt he was lying. Then he mentioned that the original purchaser, who, in theory was to be the end user, would quickly pass along the buyer info to avoid charges or to lessen charges.

   • And if we’re stolen?

   • This is why you use cash. No paper trail.

8. This is a no-answer answer. Its political double speak.

9. Ghost gunm kits got serial numbers, the company’s hide them under the steel inserts. The feds can xray the gunm and see the numbers.
   They dont tell you this because it would ruin the allure of having a ghost gunm.

   • Hahahaha!

10. A lot of what I read in the above comments is correct, but it’s complicated. Yes, you can match ballistic evidence from the scene to the weapon, ghost gun or not. If you have the weapon and the ballistic evidence, especially the bullet, isn’t too damaged for a match. What about the casing, you ask? Glad you did. Guys, I hate to break it to you, but revolvers are alive and well. I have recovered semi-auto cases. Tool marks on the brass can be tied to the firearm. Unless, the crime scene is a street or parking lot. The evidentiary value of spent brass is diminished after being driven over by a motor vehicle. Matching the ghost gun back to the shooting suspect or builder can be done, but they are not necessarily the same person. First, have the weapon. Today the best hope is fingerprints/DNA were left on the weapon. Next, hope the suspect’s fingerprints/DNA are in the system. If not, let’s hope they show up. In the meantime you pound the pavement. Everything I described applies to serial numbered firearms as well. Okay, I’ve had a few ATF traces done. Those that led back to the original purchase also led to a stolen firearm report. Most of the above apply to other weapons without serial numbers that I’ve encountered at homicides I’ve worked. I’d have to guess knives were #1. Runner up, blunt instruments. Baseball bats were popular. But, whatever is at hand will do. I’ve seen a brick, a cast iron frying pan, a bowling trophy, a green pine limb that had came down in a thunderstorm. Ligature. Lamp cord to rope, it all works the same. Mostly a domestic thing, but I did see it once in a dope deal gone bad.
    About the only good I was able to do with a serial number was recover a stolen firearm and return it to the owner. Serial #. Write them down along with make, model, caliber, finish, barrel length and accessories. That information returned a 6″ stainless Python to me.

    • Serial numbers are good for recovered firegunms and gunms that fck up, that’s about it. What does it really matter that gunm x was used in a crime unless it’s to tie a person to another crime , even then the system would have to prove the perpetrator committed both crimes.
      Serial numbers work for the BATFE everytime you fill out a 4473, that filling out that paperwork is registration. The background check should consist of , .
      * RING* “Hello, this is the government infringement agency.”
      Yes, this is gunmshop , is possum on your prohibited list?.
      “No.”
      And that should be it.
      Why does the feds need to know if I’m black, white, hispanic or other?

    • You are presenting way too much reality to the narrative and the fact that you are exactly correct on all points re evidence gathering is a constant frustration to the nerdier sorts in the criminal justice field. The only high tech solutions I have seen that remotely work (expensively inefficient) is x ray crystalography and while that can lift some prints from meticulously cleaned metal surfaces as well as pick up compression zones of stamped serial numbers in a readable manner it is in all but the most ideal of cases hilariously inferior compared to competent investigative techniques (and this is coming from the nerdier sort)

11. Anyone can construct a ghost gun, commit murder and simply drop it at the scene of the crime and if you have disguised your appearance even with all the surveillance cameras on every street corner you stand a very good chance of getting away with murder. Having a ghost gun and a silencer and you could higher yourself out as a professional assassin.

    All this is rather moot as Biden has already outlawed them by ordering the ATF to do so with an end run around Congress that has become a do nothing, corrupt, nest of prostitutes to lobbyists.

    A PARTIAL LIST OF LUNATICS AND CRIMINALS WHO BUILT GHOST GUNS AND USED THEM IN CRIME OR MASS MURDERS.

    Are ghost guns frequently used in violent crime?????????????????????????

    Yes, ghost guns are increasing being used in shootings across the country.

    In July 2020, an individual who was prohibited from possessing guns allegedly murdered two people in Pennsylvania using a homemade 9mm handgun.9

    In November 2019, a 16-year-old shot five of his classmates at Saugus High School in California—two of them fatally—using a homemade handgun, before fatally shooting himself.10

    In August 2019, a shooter used a homemade gun kit to build a .223-caliber firearm that he later used to fire 41 shots in 32 seconds in a bar in Dayton, Ohio, shooting 26 people and killing nine.11

    In 2017, in Northern California, a man prohibited from possessing firearms ordered kits to build AR-15-style rifles. On November 13, he initiated a series of shootings that began with fatally shooting his wife at home, followed by a rampage the next day during which he fired at multiple people in several different locations, including an elementary school, killing five people and injuring dozens more.12

    In 2013, a shooter opened fire in Santa Monica, California, shooting 100 rounds, killing five people, and injuring several others at a community college using a homemade AR-15 rifle. Reporting indicates the shooter had previously tried to purchase a firearm from a licensed gun dealer and failed a background check, potentially indicating why he opted to order parts to build a gun instead.13

    Law enforcement officials around the country are sounding the alarm about the dramatic increase in the recovery of ghost guns at crime scenes in their communities. ATF reported that approximately 10,000 ghost guns were recovered across the country in 2019.14 Ghost guns have also been illegally trafficked to Mexico.15 In addition:

    In 2019, Washington, D.C., police recovered 115 ghost guns, a 360 percent increase from 2018, when they recovered 25 ghost guns, and a 3,733 percent increase from 2017, when only three such firearms were recovered.16

    In 2019, ATF reported recovering 117 ghost guns in Maryland with almost 25 percent recovered from Baltimore alone. Ghost gun recoveries in the state then tripled in 2020.17
    According to law enforcement in Philadelphia, ghost gun recoveries in that city rose 152 percent from 2019 to 2020.18

    The special agent in charge of the ATF Los Angeles Field Division reported in January 2021 that 41 percent of the division’s cases involve ghost guns, and a May 2019 statewide analysis in California found that 30 percent of all guns recovered in connection with a crime in the state did not have serial numbers.19

    In addition, an investigation by The Trace found that ghost guns are increasingly becoming the weapon of choice for violent white supremacists and anti-government extremists.20

    In conclusion the ATF is a law unto itself and as in the past it rules at 8:00 AM and it is then a new “regulation” (disingenuous term for new law) is now the law of the land at 5:00 PM.

    No Judge Conservative or Liberal will declare the ATF ruling illegal or Unconstitutional because ghost guns are a danger to the people of the country and even the much ballyhooed Scalia decision with the usual double talk and smoke and mirrors declared “The Courts had the right to regulate firearms” (slick disingenuous term for ban or restrict firearms).

    In conclusion your right to own a weapon rests with the rulings of the courts, not the Constitution, and history has proven this reality like it or not.

    No sane person would want ghost guns legal and no other civilized nation tolerates them.

12. I have made 100 DLR every hour in one day. That was my ideal day in my life and my boss b was very content with me.. CNN is additionally intrigued from my work and is very happy..

    For more__________ Click My Profile

13. “Tracing a firearm”

    Continuing display of the sloppiness of American English. As noted several times, the public perception is supposed to be that without serial numbers, police cannot “trace” a firearm to the perp. However, the public is supposed that serial numbers always lead to solving a crime. None of the articles proclaiming that serial numbers discuss just how low is the closure rate of crimes ( of any sort). If the number of crimes “solved” because of a serial number was of real note, that stat would be heralded in every story about guns without serial numbers.

    If a perp keeps a non-serialized gun after a shooting, that gun cannot be traced (just like the ones remaining in the river cannot be traced). Indeed, a little work with a taper file can even distort the riflings in a gun barrel (yes, accuracy will suffer, but accuracy at distance may not be of interest to a perp).

    In the mind of the public, a serial number leads to manufacturer, then to first purchaser, and eventually to the first illegal transfer…which always leads to the criminal.
    Bottom line? The public must be made afraid that not only will they be randomly shot, but be shot by a non-serialized firearm, which is orders of magnitude worse.

14. I know that I always leave my guns at the scene whenever I murder someone to make it easier for the police to identify. Unfortunately; the police still haven’t succeeded in identifying me as a murderer. This is because I always kill people that I don’t know and I’m always careful to do my killings in jurisdictions such as Chicago where barely ten percent of murders are solved.

    • Gee Elmer, I thought that your primary target was Bugs Bunny. Have you strayed off the reservation?

15. Ghost gunms are easy to trace, you just lay them on a piece of paper and go around them with a pencil.

16. It’s called “police work”.
    All officers used to know how to do it. They took fingerprints and talked to people. There’s DNA and video from businesses and narcissistic crowds looking to go viral. CIs will hear something because idiots that do things can’t shut up.
    That was the good part about my career starting in a smaller place without all those other departments. We did it all

17. This is all bullshit.

    All the ATF has to do to start “tracing” these so-called “ghost guns” is raid the offices of 5D Tactical, 80% Firearms, Tennessee Arms, or any other company that sells unfinished receivers, frames and/or jig sets, take their sales records, and — VOILA!– they’ve got their goddamn registry list. They’ve already done this at least three times I’m aware of.

18. 𝑫𝒐 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒏 𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒚 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒊𝒏𝒗𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒚? 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕’𝒔 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝑰 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒋𝒐𝒃 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑵𝒐𝒘 𝑰 𝒂𝒎 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 $200 𝒕𝒐 $300 𝒑𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒒𝒘𝒆03 𝒅𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒉𝒐𝒎𝒆.
    𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒍𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒘 𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆__________𝒏𝒆𝒕𝒄𝒂𝒔𝒉𝟭.𝒄𝒐𝒎

19. @jfkjr
    “The (dumbass ignorant brainwashed)public is left to believe that somehow serial numbers are a guarantee that a perp will be caught…”

    “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby …. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.”
    – H.L. Mencken, September 18, 1926 edition of Baltimore’s major daily newspaper, The Sun.

20. UUUM SERIAL NUMBER ON THA BARREL ??

21. The one and only reason the government wants to outlaw “ghost” guns is because they are not on any registry therefore will not be easy to find when they decide to confiscate all the guns. All licensed gun dealers are required by law to record and retain the serial numbers of every gun they sell, trade or even passes threw there shop to be sent back to the manufacturer for repairs along with all the personal information of it’s owner. Serial numbers have absolutely nothing to do with fighting crime or finding criminals.

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