Homemade guns face scrutiny
Buying a fully assembled gun is a process subject to a host of regulations and restrictions, especially in states like California that tend to be more stringent.
But anyone can make a gun at home.
The do-it-yourself route is often favored by gun enthusiasts, including hobbyists and competitive shooters. It can also be a path to gun ownership for felons and people with mental illnesses or who have been convicted of domestic violence.
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, part of the gun safety group founded by Gabrielle Giffords, the former U.S. representative from Arizona who survived an assassination attempt in 2011, is calling on two internet service providers to disable websites that sell materials and tools to create homemade weapons. Such weapons, often referred to as ghost guns, were used in a mass shooting in Northern California this month.
The websites, ghostgunner. net and ghostguns.com, allow customers to bypass background checks and build unregistered firearms without serial numbers.
The guns are legal as long as they are intended for personal use, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Individuals cannot sell or distribute firearms unless they are licensed by the bureau.
Because homemade guns cannot be tracked, it is hard to know just how prevalent they are.
Even so, in the United States, there has been “a growing number of cases involving homemade guns, some of which were high-profile active shootings by precisely the sort of people who are prohibited from buying the weapons,” Mark A. Tallman, who teaches at Colorado State University-Pueblo’s Center for the Study of Homeland Security, said in an email.
It is a problem in other countries, too.
“In foreign jurisdictions with stricter controls, homemade guns are quickly becoming a more pressing problem,” said Tallman, who has spent the last several years studying tracing data and DIY weapons. “In Australia for example, homemade guns are now conservatively estimated at 10-20 percent of illegal weapons seized by police.”
Kyle Martin, the president of Ghost Guns, said in an email Sunday that his company follows all state and federal laws.
“We deal with a lot of customers that are hobbyists,” Martin wrote. “The customers we have come into contact with usually already own firearms, have the mechanical skills to complete the manufacturing process and come from all walks of life, including many military and law enforcement.”
A spokesman for DreamHost, which hosts ghostguns.com, said in an email Saturday that the legality of the website’s content was being reviewed.
Shopify, the web host for ghostgunner.net, would not comment on individual merchants, a spokeswoman said in an email Saturday, but will “investigate material reported to us and take action” if a merchant violated its policies.
Ghost Gunner, which sells various gun components and machines used for gunsmithing, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Cody Wilson, who runs the website, told The Associated Press that the company’s products comply with federal regulations.
“This is an attempt to apply pressure to deplatform a legal, American business selling legal products to law-abiding customers,” he said.