Biden’s Ghost Gun Rule Is Dead On Arrival Thanks To 0% Receiver

Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,

Yesterday, President Biden, the Department of Justice, and the ATF announced the details of their new 364-page rule for the redefinition of “frame or receiver.” In doing so, they have decided to attempt an illegal rewrite of the 1968 Gun Control Act. 

If you’ve been paying close attention to headlines the past few weeks, you may have noticed a surge in articles pertaining to “ghost guns.”

The corporate media has been setting up Biden for an easy “win” on guns with this new rule. Likely because of Biden’s low poll numbers headed into the midterms. 

Initially announced in April of 2021, almost a full year later, we’re finally able to see what sort of egregious gun control has been put together for the law-abiding gun owner. 

The rule stems from the gun control lobby’s obsession with home-built firearms. The problem here, though, is that to regulate privately made firearms, or “PMFs” as they’re defined in the new rule, the ATF had to cast an extremely wide legal net. 

In the 364-page rule, we can see that the Biden admin intends to ban “ghost guns” by creating a new class of highly regulated items by redefining the term “firearm” to include parts and collections of parts that the ATF now considers to be “readily” convertible into functional firearms. 

The example used in the press conference was a Polymer80 kit, which quickly sold out of all available models after the announcement of the rule change. 

It’s important to note that from what we can tell from the rule change and the opinion of others in the know, this rule does not ban possession of firearms made from 80% kits. It also does not mandate the serialization of those already made firearms or 3D printed items for personal use. What it does do is require the serialization of 80% kits that are in possession of Federal Firearms Licensees (also known as FFLs) and manufacturers. It’s interesting because the expected outcome of this rule, as Biden pitched, was the complete and absolute ban of “ghost guns” altogether. 

The rule also changes and complicates the definition of “frame or receiver.” What was once a simple short definition has changed to include multiple pages of diagrams, new terms and more. In addition, the ATF has added new definitions for “unfinished frame or receiver,” which ATF now considers to be firearms themselves, but only under certain, unclear conditions. 

In addition, ATF has commanded Federal Firearms Licensees to hold 4473 records on-site indefinitely. This small change may go unnoticed by many, but this is a significant step towards a legitimate registry. This action shouldn’t surprise many gun owners, who already know that these rule changes are not about saving lives; they’re only about the consolidation of power.

Many in the anti-gun lobby and corporate media class say that these actions are justified because privately made firearms are “untraceable.” This idea that a trace is some magical crime-solving tool is a misconception dreamed up by those who have little understanding of the difference between how legal and illegal firearms sales occur. 

It’s not to find the gun when an agent “runs a trace,” despite what images the misleading name might conjure up. Instead, it’s to find who originally bought the firearm and from what dealer. This gun trace often leads to the fact that many guns are stolen or reported stolen and then used in crimes. Because of this, the trace ends with the original buyer who had their firearm stolen. Criminals aren’t filling out 4473 forms and submitting to NICS checks. It’s important to note here that many stolen firearms used in crimes may have their serial number removed completely, resulting in an “untraceable” gun, even though those guns wouldn’t fall into the “ghost gun” category.  

Firearms Policy Coalition had this to say: 

“Far from “clarifying” anything, the rulemaking tortures simple terms from law into multi-part definitions, with newly injected sub-terms like “readily” having their own lengthy definitions. This is clearly an attempt to sidestep Congress, as Biden even indicated in his remarks today.”

Here’s the irony of the situation, though. Regardless of how overly complex it is or how wide a legal net the ATF decides to cast, this rule change will have little to no effect. 

That’s because of the 0% Receiver. 

In response to the announcement of the Biden Admin’s proposed rule change, Defense Distributed decided to shift its focus to the creation of 0% receivers. 

Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed had this to say about the new rule:

“The receiver rule is an illegal attempt to rewrite the GCA outside of Congress. Nevertheless, Ghost Gunner anticipated this maneuver and is now shipping Zero Percent receivers which perfectly defeat the rule from day one. Americans will always be able to build firearms in the privacy of their homes.”

This rule change has caused a surge in demand for Defense Distributed’s Ghost Gunner 3. The Ghost Gunner is a small CNC Machine that users can insert a bar of aluminum, press a button, and after the machine mills out the metal, have a completely legal, privately made, non-serialized firearm frame ready to go. 

Because all the Ghost Gunner 3 needs is a block of aluminum to produce the firearm frame, the Biden Admin & ATF would need to regulate blocks of aluminum to stop people from producing privately made firearms. While the DOJ may be able to convince a judge that an 80% lower is likely to be made into a gun, a block of aluminum is a much harder sell. 

The same can be said for 3D printing. Are we to assume that PLA plastic is to be regulated as a firearm? 

Because gun control has a hard time passing in the legislative branch (even with all three branches of government controlled by democrats currently), the Biden admin has resorted to governing by executive fiat, using the executive branch to pass new “regulations” using existing law. 

As of right now, the rule change has 120 days to take effect after it hits the federal register. Many groups such as Gun Owners of America & Firearms Policy Coalition have already announced their intent to sue the Federal Government over these new rule changes.

TMGN’s Steph and her team analyzed hundreds of pages of the new ghost gun rule and determined uppers won’t be serialized and more…