Kurt Hoffman: Gun ban zealots increasingly panicked over '80% complete' firearm receivers

While guns produced by the process of 3-D printing have drawn the most interest of late, it is likely that for the near future, homemade firearms produced through lower tech, more traditional methods will make a great deal more difference in any efforts by we the people to acquire effective firepower--and acquire it anonymously--in defiance of government decrees. Perhaps the most important of those lower tech methods is the perfectly legal commerce in "80% complete" receivers (generally for AR-15 type rifles)--which, unlike "complete" receivers, are not legally considered to be "guns," and can thus be sold without any legal hoops like vendor licenses, serial numbers, and background checks--that the buyer then finishes into a complete and functioning firearm.
The growing trend came to the attention of the Washington Post's reliably anti-gun Sari Horwitz Tuesday, and she clearly does not like it:

The sale of unfinished receivers, also called “blanks” or “80 percent lower receivers,” is one of the most daunting challenges for law enforcement officials tasked with enforcing firearms regulations. There are no sales records of unfinished receivers, as there are for ordinary gun sales, which means the ATF cannot check with stores for information about buyers when a gun is used in a crime. And because the receivers bear no serial numbers or other markings that would indicate where they were manufactured, guns made with them can’t be traced back to their owners if they are found at a crime scene.

That's obviously far too close to shall not be infringed for Horwitz's tastes. To a large--and probably growing--number of Americans, though, Horwitz has just come up with a pretty good summary of just what is so cool about acquiring one's life and liberty preserving firepower by that method. Perhaps the most fascinating part of the article was a quote from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives about how pervasive this trend has become--in California, of all places:

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