The informant beat the agent’s time, building a functioning firearm in just 21 minutes. As part of an investigation into Polymer80, a leading manufacturer of the kits, federal agents and a confidential informant used YouTube videos to learn how to assemble them. The kits often require only minor modifications - drilling holes and sanding parts - to make them functioning firearms. And the parts are sold without serial numbers, which the federal government uses to track weapons involved in crimes, making the handmade guns almost impossible to trace. That means buyers can bypass background checks, giving criminals who are banned from owning firearms access to guns. For that reason, they aren’t technically considered firearms under federal law. Ghost guns are particularly problematic for law enforcement agencies because they are sold in parts, typically including an unfinished frame, a separate trigger mechanism and a barrel. (Bing Guan / Bloomberg via Getty Images, file) Authorities: Ghost guns are the ‘weapon of choice’ Image: Polymer80 80% frames for sale at a firearms store in El Cajon, Calif., on April 26, 2021. “They can’t possibly be asleep at the wheel on this,” he added. “It’s surprising to me that YouTube wouldn’t be looking at this more closely and enforcing a rule that they themselves set,” said Jim Burch, the president of the National Police Foundation, a nonpartisan law enforcement think tank. The Trace said that it flagged several videos through YouTube’s mechanism for reporting policy violations but that the company removed the offending videos only after The Trace contacted it directly. In 2019, The Trace, a nonprofit news organization that focuses on gun violence, found that YouTube hosted videos about how to build 3D-printed guns that violated its policies. Employees then review the videos to determine whether they should be removed. YouTube said in a statement that, with more than 500 hours of content being uploaded to the site every minute, it largely relies on “advanced machine learning” and reports from users to flag videos that may violate its policies. “It’s really kind of sad, if you think about it.” “What does it say about your corporate moral leadership if you cannot live up to your own corporate ideals?” said MSNBC analyst Jim Cavanaugh, a former special agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF.
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