Minnesota lawmakers revive ghost gun ban after court ruling

Minnesota Democrats are pushing a new ban on untraceable "ghost guns" after the state Supreme Court effectively gutted the previous law, ruling last year that serial‑number requirements only applied where federal law also required them. The proposed legislation, which has cleared a Senate committee, would close that gap by explicitly outlawing unserialized, home‑built firearms that can be 3D‑printed or assembled from kits bought online and that bypass background checks, a growing concern for metro police trying to trace shootings in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Gun‑rights groups, including the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, are fighting the measure, arguing that the state already has extensive laws against violent crime and illegal possession and that expanding criminal liability will hit "law‑abiding" hobbyists more than criminals. Passage in the narrowly divided full House and Senate is uncertain, so for Twin Cities residents this is an early test of how far lawmakers are willing to go this session to rein in a class of weapons that investigators say increasingly show up at crime scenes with no paper trail. Behind the scenes, law enforcement has been complaining for years that ghost guns are a major blind spot in firearms tracing, but the court’s ruling forced legislators either to fix the statute or live with essentially legal, untraceable guns on city streets.