What’s Spookier: ‘Ghost Guns’ Or Unchecked Agency Power?

With Halloween around the corner, anti-gun groups, federal bureaucrats and big city mayors would have you believe that the scariest thing on today’s streets are so-called “ghost guns,” a.k.a. firearms manufactured at home. What they won’t mention in their talking points, however, is the four centuries of historic tradition around this practice and the lack of authority that regulators have to ban these guns without action from Congress.

Consequently, attempts to regulate homemade firearms, in spite of these facts, are far spookier and frankly more dangerous to our republican system of government than any gun on the street.

This all started in 2022, when the agency charged with firearms regulation issued a new rule to regulate firearm parts kits. Driven largely by anti-gunners’ bewilderment that unserialized firearms could become the norm, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris bypassed Congress and pushed the ban. But a sticky problem persisted: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) lacked the statutory authority to initiate such a regulation.