The Rise of Untraceable 'Ghost Guns' by Zusha Elinson
Excerpt: Axel Galvez had a deal: $7,500 for five untraceable semiautomatic rifles. And he had a buyer: a felon who planned to ship them overseas. Now, he just needed weapons that would be invisible to regulators. To avoid background checks, Mr. Galvez bought rifle parts, then assembled the five guns at the Los Angeles machine shop where he worked. He offered to build his buyer 100 more for $130,000. An underground gun-making industry that enables criminals to elude background checks and bypass gun regulations is creating a growing trade of “ghost guns,” weapons that can’t be traced by police, authorities say. Mr. Galvez’s buyer turned out to be a government informant; the 36-year-old machinist pleaded guilty in November to unlawful firearms manufacturing and dealing, according to court documents. (As I tell the high school kids I get to lecture sometimes, one thing about freedoms is that someone will always find a way to abuse any freedom. Letting individuals build their own rifles seems like a reasonable thing to me, but clearly there are some very serious abusers of this practice. Note the one guy sold 92 rifles, silencers too! I can see the answer to this gap soon at ATF, no more receivers as just unregistered parts. It's be more reasonable to say a person can only buy one such every ten years, then they can't go into the manufacturing business, but that would be tough to enforce and some would still find ways to abuse it. Personally I think the sentence should figure in the number of guns sold, adding two years for each. That would take care of the guy who sold 92 for sure. --Del)
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