President Joe Biden holding an 80% pistol frame during an earlier anti-gun speech. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

In 2008, Darren Peters founded a full-service machine shop in Florida with a vision of excellent quality and sterling-class workmanship. His small business has expanded its product line, adding professionals to his team and building a reputation for excellent service and products. In every sense, Darren’s workshop fulfills the American dream. But now, thanks to a bureaucratic rule from the Biden administration, that could all come to end.

What is Darren’s great crime? His business, Tactical Machining, creates American-made high-quality parts for guns and products for the home gunsmith. Darren helps others help themselves, and for that, the government might kill his business. One of President Biden’s campaign-trail promises was to crack down on so-called ghost guns. One of his very first recommendations to Congress was to pass sweeping gun-control laws, in part targeting firearms parts and kits that help citizens manufacture their own tools of self-defense. When Congress refused to do so, Biden turned to the administrative state to get the job done through bureaucratic rulemaking instead.

On the list of such policies is a recently enacted sweeping regulation — referred to as the Final Rule — drastically expanding the definition of what constitutes a “firearm” under federal law. Issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), the regulation clocks in at a whopping 364 pages. If allowed to stand, the Final Rule would wreak chaos in the firearms market, create confusion among consumers about what items are regulated as firearms, and shutter the doors of countless small businesses such as Tactical Machining. Perhaps worst of all, however, it would undermine the historic and precious pastime and right of Americans to build their own firearms.

Individuals have been crafting and customizing personal firearms since before the American Revolution. The mass-production of firearms is relatively new. Fewer Americans today need to manufacture their own arms, as is the case with nearly all other mass-produced items we use regularly. Nevertheless, in the same way that we can grow food in our own gardens or sew our own clothes, our right to build our own guns is not negated by industrialization. Crafting a gun is no more unusual or sinister than any other act of self-sufficiency.

— Erin M. Erhardt in The Biden Administration’s Custom-Gun Grab

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

67 COMMENTS

  1. It’s common knowledge that “bangers”, hold-up arists, car-jackers and criminals in general have their own super-secret workshops where they have enslaved Latina/Latino illegals working 24/7 churning out those dreaded “ghost” guns in an effort to stymie any investigations into their nefarious activities because everyone knows that in spite of ballistics tests, mechanical markings (firing pin, extractor, ejector) and fingerprinting technology that without a serial number it is impossible to link a particular firearm to a crime.

    • Unfortunately when nitwits label their product as a Ghost Gun and describe it as Untraceable a whole lot of the mess lands on those who approved the ad campaigns to sell 80 percents.
      Instead of advertising Test Your DIY Skills, etc. the ad interpretation was more or less taken as, “Here’s a way to get away with murder.”

      When you give Gun Control zealots an inch they’ll take a mile and they did and the photo of Jim Crow Gun Control joe holding an 80% proves it.

      Those like Gun Control’s shannon watts who are carrying around an agenda that History confirms is rooted in racism and genocide spotted an opening for their rot to look good and took advantage of it…Thanks for that goes to politically inept dumbbell history illiterate gun owners who said not a damned thing when Ghost and Untraceable were haphazardly attached to the Second Amendment.

    • so how does the serial number help trace the gun to a crime….unless the criminal wrote the SN# down at the scene of the crime for the LEOs to find? Serial numbers on guns are BS.

      • Need to turn up the gain on your “sarcasm” radar. It was a fucking joke, maybe work on comprehension skills and read more carefully? Two days in a row of trying to explain myself? Fuck it, why bother?

      • I had business cards with the serial numbers of my 3 favorites printed up just for such occasions. If it’s a day I’m carrying something unusual hopefully the vic… I mean customer has a pen.

    • Recently have seen several relatively high profile cases where various “testing” protocols have linked a single gun to a series of criminal acts involving the firing of guns at people. So they KNOW a single gun was used in the commission of a signficant number of crimes. But the gun in question sis UNTRACEABLE. In most all of these cases, sooner or later the ACTUAL gun in question is secured, and testing PROVES that is THIS gun they’ve been looking for. guess what? ALL of them have serial numbers. Once found they can be traced to the original owner, or sometimes even a recent purchaser. NOT ONE has been unserialised. Nor with factory numbers obliterated. So “ghost guns” are simply those they cannot readily locate, whether with or without the Magickal Nummber.

      Smoke and mirrors, and weeping and wailing and gnashing of government dentures because WE CAN”T FIND THIS GUN (yet). Current case is the dirtbag, arrested in the past couple days in Stockton California, at least five cold blooded “random” murders committed wiht the same gun, per balistics testing, roven to be the same one in all five cases. They caught him WITH the gun in u\question so now have the Mgickal Nummbers to learn more about that former Ghost Gun’s provenance. The history of that firearm will be interesting. Felon in possession, into the bargain, if memory serves aright.

      All this manufactured crocodile tears to provide a thin excuse to take away our guns.

      READ the US Constititon, dimwits. You DO know how to read, right? It says plainly ALL LAWS whall be enacted by a federal legislture comprising two chambers, the Senate, and the House. That means even laws concerning firearms.

      These dirtbag BATF clwons need to be brought up on charges for failing to uphold their oath of office. And FedGov MUST end this unelected poohbahs making laws nonsense. Hitler would be proud, and Moose-oh Leany as well.
      A dictatorship we are NOT.

      • I’ll assert the comparison of fired bullets and linking to a particular barrel is just more FBI BS. They get away with it because “we all know it’s possible”/saw it on TV.

  2. Just recently, As Judge Joseph R. Goodwin wrote . . .

    “Firearms with no serial number are just as “bearable” as the same firearm with a serial number, and there is no “common use” issue here as the presence or lack of a serial number makes no difference with respect to whether the type of weapon is commonly used. Finally, I can find no authority for the idea that a firearm without a serial number would meet the historical definition of a dangerous or unusual firearm.”

    From TTAG: https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/breaking-us-district-court-rules-ban-on-possession-of-gun-with-serial-numbers-removed-is-unconstitutional/

    Hopefully more Judges will come to realize that the problem is not guns, but rather the person holding the gun. It is a joy to see a word from the 2A thrown in the face of the liberals. I’ll be 80 in a few weeks and hope I can live to see more of the trash shoved down the liberals throat or up their asses.

    • That’s the problem. The courts are going to have to start taking a hard look at the ” he drew first cases” because with everyone making or buying a gunm shootings are going to escalate. It’s only a matter of numbers. 15,000 people with out an auto accident, doable, 150,000 getting iffy. An armed society will build a polite society if the law dont use the courts to make money. Defendant ” Your Honor, he drew first.”
      Witnesses 2&3 agree.
      Court requests but does not demand a small financial contribution in burying the deceased.
      Case dismissed.

    • “It is a joy to see a word from the 2A thrown in the face of the liberals.”

      By a liberal judge no less. Goodwin is a Clinton appointee, and his son by Obama. 1995 and 2010 respectively. Which I felt obligated to point out in the thread you linked, mashing Minor’s nose in the stench of his whole cloth fabricated fairy tales.

      • Fifth generation Virginian/West Virginian here. The Goodwins are a pack of central West Virginia, Democrat Lawyers, but they are not the progressive gun grabbing sort. They are more conservative. Picture Joe Manchin before he was perverted by the DC money, klieg lights, and Chuckie Schumer. The Goodwins will probably remain Democrat while all of their neighbors, friends, and clients miraculously have become Republican leaning MAGA like Governor Jim Justice.

        • I know of them indirectly, the statement went directly to countering Minor’s claim of the judge being a conservative Republican (and hypocrite), which is patently false.

          Nothing unusual from Minor in the slightest. Apparently thinks wrongly that fact checking is solely a skill of the left.

    • A gun with a body on it is now “bad mojo”. It used to be that a family might get a gun back that was involved in a family shooting, if they wanted it. I don’t think that is true in any state now. I guess when good guns go bad, they are bad forever.

  3. What? Oh, are some people still paying attention to the gun laws and regulations?

    Probably the same people I see driving around alone in their own car with a face diaper on.

    • “Oh, are some people still paying attention to the gun laws and regulations?”

      You’re free to stumble through life blissfully unaware if you like, I choose to be informed about things that could potentially have me locked in a cage for a decade or more.

      But hey, you do you. Knock yourself out with your obstinate ignorance… 🙂

    • Saw a guy riding a motorcycle with no passenger , wearing a k 95 mask ! Talk about brainwashed fudd.

      • Never know when a leftover WuFlu bug might be hanging around in your path. Must have been doing the “slow ride” I could not keep a mask on for five minutes (estimated not attempted) when I’m riding…

  4. Slow Joe & the dims hate small business unless it is a satan approved baby murder mill or a pot shop. Keep that in mind and vote R even if you have to hold yer nose!

  5. This evil administration is using regulation to bypass congress and the courts. This is the beginning of tyranny. And it ain’t only about guns.

    Emergency declarations to mandate poisonous jabs for federal and healthcare workers.

    Extending vaccine mfg. liability exemptions while they kill and maim several orders of magnitude more people than die or are injured from gunshot. (Talking specifically about the Covid jabs. Don’t tangle your panties by arguing about Smallpox and Polio).

    Pushing CRT and child sex-grooming through the Dept. of Education.

    Withholding Federal funds from schools that do not comply.

    Identifying parents who object as terrorists. (Hey, did you see that Sccool Board meeting in Michigan that was shut down by Muslim parents objecting to porn in the school library and curriculum? I dare the Dept. of Injustice to label THEM as domestic terrorists).

    Shutting down domestic oil and gas production.

    Selling our strategic petroleum reserves to China.

    Sending billions of dollars to the corruption that is the Ukranian government.

    Causing skyrocketing inflation by insane monetary policy.

    Etc, etc, etc.

    Yup, I am angry. Dealing with it through prayer, preparation, and being politically active.

    • “This evil administration is using regulation to bypass congress and the courts.”

      The high Court has given indications they are interested in taking a swing at deep-state bureaucratic over-reach…

      • Yep, bureaucratic overreach has become so much a part of the federal government that most of the alphabet bunch and the entirety of the Democrat party believe that it is the right of the government to impose their will upon the American people whether we like it or not. Why, because some animals are more equal than others, and DEI, ESG, Global Warming, Ozone Layer, Save the Whales, Pronouns, Gender Identity, Chemical castration of children.

    • Still drilling new wells and running work over rigs where i live. Biden has no authority on our private property to regulate our industry. There is no shortage of oil or natural gas. The first time someone says the word shortage on anything, the stock market goes panic and raises the value like it is diamonds or gold.

      • That’s nice, but Prudhoe Bay and ANWR are practically shut down and folks in Alaska are paying 17.00 a gallon for gas and over 18.00 for heating oil. So y’all drill more or get these Wind/solar/EV dumbasses out of the way, our economy cannot recover until they are gone. Biden may not have authority over your “PRIVATE” property, but the EPA does (air and water quality), and Dept of Energy absolutely REGULATES your industry and what they DON’T regulate is covered by the various states. Guessing you folks are not OPEC members.

        • Where are they paying that ? In one of those need to fly in for access areas? Even Juneau is under $5 a gallon according to gas buddy.
          Give California a few years and they might hit $17 a gallon but at the moment unless its brought in by floatplane gas is not that expensive way way up Nawth.

    • Been slowly growing and building ever since a former corporate railroad laywer decided to invade a sovereign foreign nation about a hundred fifty years ago. The long-standing glacial pace has, indeed, redically accelerated these past few decades. Reaching near warp speed these days, but its the same old thing that started way back then. Or earlier.

  6. Tactical Machineing. –
    Some manufacturers should reconsider their worded advertising or choice of buisness names.
    It ain’t right but it is what it is.

    • What sounds more easy to construe as evil if you were a left wing word twister.
      Black Clouds Duck Death or
      Eco Friendly Waterfowl Shotshells.

      • Possum,
        How about:

        — Duck Heaven Ammo
        — Feed the Family Firearms
        — Transgender Trigger Club
        — Woke Weapons for Low-Testosterone Warriors
        — Climate Change Chootin’
        — Biden’s Bullet Bonanza
        — Electric Powered All-Natural Projectiles

  7. The rules will stand until the lawsuits start. I expect much of ATF’s “rulemaking” to come undone by West Virginia vs EPA and Bruen just might unravel the entire ATF one day. Also Michael Bloomberg seems to be behind a lot of gun control and the little guy can’t last forever.

  9. Biden’s new law will not run anyone out of business. People can still buy parts and frames and the fellow mentioned in this article can still sell them parts and frames. All the seller has to do is put a serial number on his frames and be a licensed manufacturer if one is going to sell frames.

    Building guns without serial numbers has to end and end soon and selling guns without going through a background check is only common sense to keep guns out of the hands of felons and nut cases who right now can buy all the firepower they want 365 days a year with no paperwork. Now if this is not insanity what the hell would be. No civilized nation on earth permits such madness.

    • There are no civilized nations on earth. As for madness? You keep showing up here knowing that not one person here buys into your nonsense. But here you are anyway. That is madness and if this country was ‘civilized’ by your faulty logic you would be in an institution.

    • nut cases who right now can buy all the firepower they want 365 days a year with no paperwork.

      And what law is going to change that? Even with “universal” background check who is going to enforce it AND what fucking CRIMINAL is going to pay any attention to ANY laws. More dacyboy drivel, but thanks for the entertainment.

      • To Mad Man to the Max

        The sea of second hand guns and stolen guns would be drastically reduced almost overnight by the passing of Universal Background Checks and Safe Storage Laws.

        Right now states with lax gun laws via gun runners ship in thousands of second hand guns with no paperwork into high crime areas and high crime cities. THIS IS PROVEN FACT BY LAW ENFORCEMENT TRACINGS. There is indeed an IRON PIPELINE again documented by law enforcement tracings. No amount of lying by demented paranoid far right can refute this proven evidence.

        When tough gun laws are passed the average law abiding citizen is not going to sell his gun under the table to his friends or especially strangers because to do so would risk heavy fines, imprisonment and loss of gun rights for life. Tens of thousands of second hand guns would no longer be going to felons and nut cases on a daily basis. Again no civilized nation on earth allows such insanity.

        • You simply cannot seem to understand that Criminals Do Not Obey Laws…..Not the laws presently on the books, nor any new laws of any size shape or description. Nothing will change by adding laws.

        • The sea of second hand guns and stolen guns would be drastically reduced almost overnight by the passing of Universal Background Checks and Safe Storage Laws.

          Are you REALLY that dense? I ask you again, WHO will enforce that law and how, cops can’t protect people in the city waiting for a goddamn subway train how the hell are they going to watch for every back-alley gun sale in the country (I guess they could use those new “armed” IRS agents)? Criminals are NOT buying guns from people like me, they are buying their shit from other CRIMINALS. You talk about safe storage, run a search on how many POLICE and MILITARY weapons go missing every year. A safe or a padlock will not stop a determined criminal. So, when and if all that bullshit gets passed and NOTHING changes what do you blame then?

        • Lol iron pipeline, you mean the gangs that either steal guns and sell them illegally or unprosecuted straw purchasers who give the guns to their friends to sell illegally sometimes reporting the gun stolen. When the atf starts going after the gang connected individuals that supply gaming members with guns I will begin to give a damn about anything being said about addressing gun trafficking as anything you or any politician has proposed will be utterly ineffective let alone unconstitutional.

    • “Building guns without serial numbers has to end and end soon…” Every fascists’ began his speeches stating something had to end, and you are of the same cloth.

      Your ideas do nothing to curb violence as these “solutions” do nothing to address the causes of the violence.

      Until you address the causes of violence and hold those accountable for committing the violence, you will accomplish nothing. You must hold those who enable the violence responsible as well. Of course you will rant against it, because making excuses for criminals is enabling them and you are guilty of that.

    • Building guns without serial numbers has to end and end soon
      This has been going on for four centuries and is just now becoming a “thing”? Get real.

      and selling guns without going through a background check is only common sense to keep guns out of the hands of felons and nut cases who right now can buy all the firepower they want 365 days a year with no paperwork.
      Yup, they can and do…. they simply do NOT use the BATF approved standard supply chain. Theft, borrowing, “community” guns, gun store heists, snaffle them from parked CIA and FBI vehicles, car prowls in the car parks of bars where guns inside are prohibited, so the thieves KNOW they are in the cars out back…. every rough neighbourhood in any large Dem run city have their “gun shops” operating out o fhte trunks of cars, back roooms in bars and card rooms and hoorhouses, neighbourhood underground pot shops.. remember the guy flew from England to the US, two days later was in Texas, two days later had a gun (no residence permit so illegal through the channels YOU approve) and used that gun in a race-driven kidnapping. On the ground in two days in totally strange circumstances, had a gat and bullets, and went to work. No prior contacts or referrals. HOW yagonna stop that?
      Meanwhile when I, a law abiding citizen with NO criminal record, not even a traffic ticket for thirty years, have to go pay a hefty fee to an “approved store’ to run a backgound check on me if I want to borrow my neighbour’s .22 rifle to deal with four legged predators in my yard, and whicih backgound check I already HAVE because of my Mother May I Carry a Handgun card, THEN after paying the prescribed fee, the dealer MUST retain the firearm I am BORROWING from my neighbour for ten days, to make REAL SURE I’m not a bad guy gonna do a shootemup at the local WalMart… which, if I were so perverted as to want toDO that (I am certainly NOT) I could simply postpone until the ten days have passed and my neighbour’s gun which he has never ceased OWNING, is released to me and then go “do” the WalMart.. IF I were so incinded which I am certainly not.
      See how insane this is? Meanwhile the dirtbag who WANTS to go”do” the WalMart will simply find his gun, no rraceability possibilie, and go do what he has determined to do.

      So ya see Dackie Boy, all this restricting we who have no evil intent is a bloody nuisance, and costly, and insulting, and NOT effective (and we all know it to be so) and is totally optioinal to those who do not uphold the laws anyway, and thus does NAUGHT to dissuate them from using firearms (or cars, or propane tanks, or machetes, or hammers or chainsaws or….. bare fists) to perpetrate harm on innocents.
      (this:) Now if this is not insanity what the hell would be. No civilized nation on earth permits such madness. Reference to what I have just written, these words of yours are spot on.

    • Ok, I’ll ask the obvious question. How does a serial number make a firearm any more or less lethal? And how does the magic number make a firearm somehow easier to track down?
      The next issue is the simple fact that nearly anyone with basic ability to look up and follow basic directions can build a firearm. Not really all that difficult. People have been making, and modifying all sorts of things. From cars, motorcycles, bicycles, washing machines to firearms and knives.

      • The only reason for serial numbers is to create a registry to tie guns and owners. The only reason to do that is to hold the owner responsible(even if the gun was stolen) or to know who to come to when it is time to take them away.

  11. More like bloody idiocy when firearms are so readily available and cheap.
    The only reason for me to do so would be if I did not want anybody to know that I even had a firearm and the only reason for that is if I was ‘POTENTIALLY’ intending some illegal action.
    I mean with COMPUTER CONTROLLED automatic lathes and milling machine hoe hard canit be ANSWER it isn’t. Just a few miles from me in HAILSHAM EAST SUSSEX UK [ you can access details on the web] a guy with exactly that gear WAS turning out copies of the 1919/21 MODEL BROWNING SLP. . He was apprehended before more than few got to market [at I believe £UK1500 a shot] but the Police found over a hundred in the pipeline and several hundred rounds of 9mm ammo -and at £UK 10.00 [$US 12.00] a round that’s a fair slice of cash.
    The guy later topped himself in Prison

    • 9mm ammo -and at £UK 10.00 [$US 12.00] a round that’s a fair slice of cash.

      What fucking moron is paying $12.00 a round for 9mm…

    • several hundred rounds of 9mm ammo -and at £UK 10.00 [$US 12.00] a round that’s a fair slice of cash.

      you were borderline believable to the more gullible till this popped up. Ten bucks a ROUND! Hah. Even in today’s overpriced market I can buy a thousand rounds of 9 x 19 mm FMJ brass case all new ammo for around US$300.
      How stupid/unobservant do you really think we are here?

      Does not matter whether in the US, the UK, MX, FR, CD, IT, DE, ES, WHY is a macine shop a crime?
      By the bye, just for a bit of personal enlightenment go and find a CNC milling machine or lathe and its supporting systems on offer within an hundred miles of your residence. Find out exactly its cost to becoe YOURS. Then come back here and tell us how many YOU can afford. You and ten others more wealthy than you are could not acquire a decent qualty unit such as this. Far too dear. THEN you would have to spend a year or three learning how to “drive” it before you could even make an innocuous front sight or optical mount, which would be a stupid waste of time when you can find a chap like the one in Florida who can whisper sweet codes to his machine and whaddya know sweet “nothings” fall out into the catchbin every few minutes. It matters not whether they are bits for building guns, pushbikes, carburetters, bilge pumps… we Yanks have been making our own things since we firsr came over back in the early sixteen hundreds And if you think we are going to leave off suc condudt you and your ilk are very much mistaken. but then, this would not be the first time you lot that side the Puddle have been”very much mistaken” concerning our mettle this side the Puddle. Remember, it was our capabilities, mettle, innovative spirit, pluck, can-do attitude, that kept the Jerries from overrunning your little puny Island back about 1939 or so. You lot were caught short, pantaloons about your ankles, very near to throwing in the towell altogether, and it was our American ingenuity and can do bent that shifted things round and prevented you being swept right off that largish rock just across from France. READ your history, Lad. And YOU would tie both of our hands behind our backs, every one of us, because it makes yuo and your ilk feel safer? May your chians rest lightly upon you as your liberties are removed from you, handsful at a go. YOUR King, George the Kid, sent orders to his minions this side the Puddle to disarm we Yanks. That was the ONE THING up with which we REFUSED to put. There are many of us who, today, in this place, have that self-same mindset. And your whinging will not shift us one nanometer. Whinge on… we are not listening.

  12. Considering that the ability to make firearms has existed over 900 years, people will not stop now.

    The war on drugs didn’t stop people growing plants, or the ability to get the proper lights and fertilizers from specialty stores.

    What the war on drugs did was increase profitability of drug dealers, manufactures and smugglers. So much profit they found it necessary to increase violence on competition and narcs. Firearms will be no different, except the violence will reach farther.

  13. “Safety” dictates that you must affix a serial number and be an accredited something-or-other!

    And don’t forget to register your veggie garden with the FDA!

    Raw milk should bring a death sentence!

    Those who refused the jab need to be tossed into a volcano to save the child…er, grandma!

    It all makes sense because reasons!

    • And those “reasons” are all arising out of the self-appointed poohbahs who have deternined to say so.

      Remember the command given to Captain John Parker’s men as tney were formed up on the Commons at Lexington early on Wednesday 19th April 1775. the orders from Gage’s appointed commander: “lay down your arms and disperse” The response of the Lexington Militia was to disperse… WITH their arms still with them.

  14. Seems to me if a court has ruled the presence of a law prohibiting a firearm with a removed serial number is unconstitutional then this should nullify the anti-80% administrative prohibitions. Doesn’t make much sense to enforce such a law now.

  15. I’m just a blacksmith. But, I have a 1940″s vintage milling machine, and a 1930″s vintage lathe. Both government surplus sold to the public in the late 1950’s. I purchased them on an estate auction in the late 1980’s. The tools, and other things needed to make the parts to build a firearm are not hard to source and the raw steel in pretty commonly available. A simple jig to cut the rifling in the barrel is not hard to set up. A few simple hand tools and the ability to read diagrams and measurements is all that is really required to build a firearm of any kind. It just takes a little longer by hand.
    If some Afghan goatherd can make working AK-47’s or some Filipino peasant can make a working 1911, what says I or any number of slightly handy garage hobbyists can’t make whatever firearm we might want with or without government permission or approval?

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