Lawmakers set to send Pritzker ‘ghost gun’ registry bill

[April 12, 2022]  By Greg Bishop | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – As long as a homemade gun for personal use isn’t transferred or sold to anyone else, it’s legal. But a measure at the Illinois statehouse would require such firearms to have a registered serial number.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says on its website “a license is not required to make a firearm solely for personal use.”

“However, a license is required to manufacture firearms for sale or distribution,” the ATF’s website says. “The law prohibits a person from assembling a non–sporting semi automatic rifle or shotgun from 10 or more imported parts, as well as firearms that cannot be detected by metal detectors or x–ray machines.”

In the past decade, technology has advanced allowing 3D printing devices and metal mills to quickly produce various firing mechanisms for firearms. Such equipment can take an incomplete firing mechanism and finish it to be operable.

President Joe Biden on Monday announced new rules on so-called “ghost guns.”

“This rule clarifies that these kits qualify as ‘firearms’ under the Gun Control Act, and that commercial manufacturers of such kits must therefore become licensed and include serial numbers on the kits’ frame or receiver, and commercial sellers of these kits must become federally licensed and run background checks prior to a sale – just like they have to do with other commercially-made firearms,” the White House’s website said.

The White House also emphasized that any federally licensed dealers that take unserialized firearms into their inventory must serialize the gun.

“For example, if an individual builds a firearm at home and then sells it to a pawn broker or another federally licensed dealer, that dealer must put a serial number on the weapon before selling it to a customer,” the White House said.

On the final day of spring session Saturday morning, the Illinois General Assembly approved House Bill 4383 which goes further than Biden’s rule. The Illinois measure would require built-from-scratch firearms for personal use that aren’t transferred to be registered.

State Sen. Jacqueline Collins, D-Chicago, said so-called ghost guns, or firearms that are homemade through various means from assembly parts from a kit, or 3D printers, are a problem for law enforcement.

“The basic criminal that you’re trying to stop with the carjacking, they have these ghost guns and the investigators and the police and the law enforcement aren’t able to solve the issue of the crime, because they’re untraceable,” Collins said Saturday.

State Sen. Neil Anderson, R-Andalusia, opposed the measure.

“This isn’t fixing a problem,” Anderson said. “This is just making criminals out of people that have a hobby.”

State Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, argued during a committee hearing Friday to require homemade guns be registered. He said home-built hobby cars have to be and so should guns.

“If you buy a gun in a regular gun shop, it has a serial number put on it by the manufacturer,” Buckner said. “If you build a gun at home from parts or a printer, you have to have a serial number on it.”

But retired gun rights lobbyist Todd Vandermyde told the committee the measure likely runs afoul of constitutional rights and will have real world ramifications for shooting hobbyists and professionals.

“If you’re in Tennessee, you don't have to serialize one of these firearms,” Vandermyde said. “You come into Illinois and shoot a [competitive shooting] match [with a specialized, personalized firearm], and now all of a sudden it’s per se contraband because that firearm is not serialized in compliance with what this bill says?”

Illinois House Bill 4383 lays out a variety of definitions Vandermyde said are problematic for gun hobbyists who like to modify and customize their guns. The measure won’t do anything to punish bad actors, he said.

“There is no enhanced penalty for a criminal, a convicted felon, who has done this,” Vandermyde argued. “But if me, as a law-abiding gun owner, if I don’t follow up and get my firearms serialized in the exact way, then I’m penalized.”

The measure says violations come with up to a Class 2 felony. It passed both chambers early Saturday and could soon be on the governor’s desk.

Greg Bishop reports on Illinois government and other issues for The Center Square. Bishop has years of award-winning broadcast experience and hosts the WMAY Morning Newsfeed out of Springfield.