Ghost guns ‘used more and more often,’ sheriff says

When asked recently how often he thinks about ghost guns on the streets in Southern Nevada, and the danger they pose, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill didn’t mince words.

“Every day,” the sheriff said during a recent interview with Las Vegas Review-Journal reporters. “They’re used more and more often. It’s rare for us to have a search warrant served where we don’t have some type of ghost gun.”

In simplest terms, ghost guns are privately made guns that don’t have serial numbers, which makes it almost impossible for law enforcement agencies to track.

The guns are not legal in Nevada — following a Nevada Supreme Court decision in 2024 that banned them — but that doesn’t mean that those that might want them can’t find them here.

Though Metropolitan Police Department statistics on ghost guns weren’t available at the time of publication for this story, McMahill’s words illustrated his concern.

“I don’t think people should be able to have either an upper or a lower part of a gun without a serial number on it,” McMahill said. “Major gun manufacturers have to have serial numbers on the guns that they sell. That should be mandatory across the board.”

Ghost guns on the rise

In Henderson, according to statistics supplied by the Henderson Police Department, 284 ghost guns were recovered last year, which was a 15 percent increase from 2023.

While recent statistics from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives weren’t available for this story, a former ATF field supervisor for Nevada said the agency documented over 45,000 ghost guns — also known as “privately made firearms” — nationwide between 2016 and 2021, though that was just a fraction of the over 3.2 million firearms that were traced during that time.

Thomas Chittum, who retired from the ATF in 2022, is now an adjunct professor at UNLV. He teaches a firearms law course there and has followed the ghost gun issue closely.

“For a while now, one of the ways criminals arm themselves is by making their own guns,” Chittum said.

It might seem like a difficult task to some, but it’s really not, Chittum said.

“Primarily, people have been doing that with these kits,” Chittum said. “I’m not an especially handy guy, but when I was at the ATF, I built one using one from one of the kits and I put it together in less than 30 minutes, using common tools.”

The Supreme Court of Nevada in 2024 unanimously ruled that a state ban on ghost guns is constitutional, overturning a lower court’s decision that the state statutes against the firearms were unconstitutionally vague.

“The statutes here only regulate conduct involving an object that is intended to ultimately become a firearm,” Chief Justice Lydia Stiglich wrote at the time. “They prohibit acts involving such not-yet-complete firearms that have not been imprinted with a serial number. ”

The U.S. Supreme Court in March ruled to uphold Biden-era regulations on mail-order ghost gun kits, which cleared the way for states to require that serial numbers be added to gun-making kits, basically a decision that places gun kits in the same category as regular guns.

Following the Polymer path

While Polymer80 no longer does business in Nevada, the director of another gun kit maker believes ghost guns will continue to pop up in Nevada, including from kits he makes.

“I’m introducing a new type of kit and I know it’s going to find its way to Nevada,” said Cody Wilson, director of a company called Defense Distributed, which is the parent company of a number of smaller firms that have been in the ghost gun space for over a decade.

Wilson’s company sells kits in other states, though it doesn’t sell in Nevada because of the state law.

Over the weekend at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Atlanta, Defense Distributed released a type of kit for a handgun — called the “G80” — that Wilson said won’t have serial numbers. For all intents and purposes, he said, it’s the next iteration of the popular Polymer80 kits.

The future of self-made guns

One local gun expert thinks states will eventually pass laws that are more in concert with each other about ghost guns. Joe Gersten, a Las Vegas lawyer who published a book in 2022 called “Nevada Gun Law: Armed & Educated,” said he thinks the U.S. Supreme Court decision damaged the ghost gun industry greatly.

“I think eventually ghost guns, in all forms, will be outlawed everywhere,” Gersten said. “Should ghost guns being on the street keep people up at night? That’s tough to answer. Whether a gun is traceable or not, someone who wants to do something is going to do it. And there’s a long history of gun-making in this country, so there’s tension around this issue.”

In places where kits are outlawed, Gersten and Chittum both believe interest in 3D printed gun parts will continue to grow.

“I think 3D printed guns will be an increasing source of firearms for people who should not have them,” Chittum said. “We should be thinking about that. Right now, however, 3D represent only a tiny fraction of all the guns out there.”

McMahill said he knows some in the gun rights community view any type of requirement for a serial number on a gun part to be in opposition to the Second Amendment. But he said he isn’t coming off his stance on the issue.

“They need to be able to be traced and tracked,” McMahill said.

Contact Bryan Horwath at bhorwath@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BryanHorwath on X. The Associated Press contributed to this report.