WASHINGTON, April 11 – President Joe Biden will announce a new law to control ghost guns and ban production of these guns on Monday as officials face increasing pressure to fight gun deaths and violent crime in the United States.
Ghost guns are secretly made guns that are not marked with a serial number and are difficult for law enforcement to track when used to commit crimes.
Biden and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco will announce the Department of Justice’s final ruling at an event to be held at the White House on Monday. The latter law has been in operation through state control for almost a year and may have sparked opposition and prosecution of firearms lawyers in the coming weeks.
At the event, Biden will also appoint Steve Dettelbach, a former U.S. Ohio attorney general, to oversee the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, a senior management official told reporters.
The announcement is part of a series of measures announced by Biden and the Ministry of Justice in April last year to address growing gun violence in the United States and to prevent mass shootings.
By 2021, there were an estimated 20,000 suspected ghost firearms reported to the ATF by law enforcement investigators – ten times since 2016, according to figures released by the White House.
The Department of Justice Act prohibits “purchase of firearms” equipment that can be purchased by people online or in the store without a background check and can easily be combined into an effective 30-minute shotgun with the equipment they have at home. It also turns other ghost guns already distributed into serialized guns.
Gun deaths have risen by 2021 over 2020, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.
By 2021, 20,726 people have been shot dead in the United States, not to mention their suicide by gunfire, reports a nonprofit organization. This includes 693 mass shootings, described by four or more people, and killed 702 lives and injured more than 2,800 people, the group reported.