Gary Reeder
more from the ATF on the ghost guns.
Friday, April 29, 2022, 17:45

“ATF has maintained and continues to maintain that a partially complete frame or receiver alone is not a frame or receiver if it still requires performance of certain machining operations (e.g., milling out the fire control cavity of an AR-15 billet or blank, or indexing for that operation) because it may not readily be completed to house or hold the applicable fire control components,” the agency said in the rule.

However: “A partially complete billet or blank of a frame or receiver is a ‘frame or receiver’ when it is sold, distributed, or possessed with a compatible jig or template, allowing a person using online instructions and common hand tools to complete the frame or receiver efficiently, quickly, and easily ‘to function as a frame or receiver,” the ATF clarifies.

The rule redefines a handgun “frame” as “the housing or structure for the primary energized component designed to hold back the hammer, striker, bolt, or similar component prior to initiation of the firing sequence (i.e., sear or equivalent).” It also redefines rifle “receiver” as “the housing or structure for the primary component designed to block or seal the breech prior to initiation of the firing sequence (i.e., bolt, breechblock, or equivalent).”

SEE ALSO: ATF Asking Vendors for Forced Reset Trigger Customer Records
The agency is shutting down one of the primary ways law-abiding gun owners have been able to build firearms without the government’s knowledge or say-so. But in another provision that has received far less media attention, the ATF is making sure that the records of those gun sales never go away.

Prior to this new rule, gun sellers were allowed to dispose of firearm transaction records after 20 years. Now, they’re no longer allowed to destroy those records—ever.

And what happens when a gun store goes out of business? As we’ve covered previously, those records are sent to the ATF, which scans them into an electronic database the agency insists isn’t really a “gun registry.”

It’s still legal to make guns at home. But this new rule makes it more difficult, and it sets up future generations for a day when the federal government possesses a record of every gun transaction in all 50 states.