ATF ‘Ghost Gun’ Tracking is as Organized and Scientific as You’d Expect it to Be

InvestigateTV discovered that tracking of these weapons is spotty across America. InvestigateTV submitted public records requests in 12 cities to get their ghost gun data. Atlanta, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Portland responded and said that data is not tracked, or no records exist.

Through those public records requests, InvestigateTV obtained ghost gun data from the following cities from 2021-2023 that shows the number of PMFs they’ve recovered:

Las Vegas, 1092
Kansas City, 128
New Orleans, 97
Cincinnati, 10

Nashville began tracking ghost guns in 2023. Since then and through the beginning of November, the city has logged 56 ghost gun recoveries.

Although the ATF tracks data through firearms tracking programs, InvestigateTV found that doesn’t mean all ghost gun data makes it there. The discrepancy could be a result of different terms used to describe ghost guns.

For example, Polymer80s which are made with kits online and other hobbyist guns without serial numbers could be classified as PMFs while other cities may call them ghost guns or unserialized weapons. Without universal terms, tracking them is impossible. All of this has fueled a big education push for law enforcement across America about what ghost guns are and the need to get everyone to use the same words to describe the weapons.

“Sometimes when terms and street vernacular take over, it’s just what society refers to them as, but us training the locals whether it’s police officers, sheriff’s department, deputies, prosecutors, it’s getting everybody on the same page so they understand what they’re looking at,” Hansen said.

— Chris Nakamoto in ATF Logs Substantial Increase in Ghost Guns as Tracking Remains Spotty, Inconsistent