Sponsors (16)
Introduced April 7, 2025 by Bennie Thompson · Last progress April 7, 2025
The bill strengthens interagency intelligence, analysis, and guidance to detect and disrupt ghost guns and cross-border trafficking—improving safety and enforcement—but creates trade-offs in privacy risk, potential community tensions, resource diversion, and added taxpayer-funded administrative costs.
Law enforcement (local, state, tribal, and federal) will receive coordinated intelligence, a DHS strategy, and improved interagency data-sharing to better detect and interdict ghost guns and trafficking, including analysis of U.S.-sourced firearms recovered in Mexico.
Travelers and aviation security benefit from improved reporting and tracking of unauthorized firearm carriage at checkpoints, including incidents involving ghost guns, which can reduce in-transit risks and improve checkpoint safety.
Communities near the border will see more targeted efforts against cross-border smuggling because ICE and CBP analyses and data-sharing focus on U.S.-sourced firearms recovered in Mexico.
Expanded information sharing across federal, state, and local partners increases the risk that sensitive or personally identifiable information could be improperly disclosed, threatening privacy and civil liberties.
Enhanced enforcement and data collection around ghost guns could lead to increased law-enforcement encounters in tribal and border communities, heightening tensions and potential justice-related harms for residents.
A stronger DHS focus on ghost guns may divert enforcement attention, funding, and personnel away from other local public-safety priorities, creating trade-offs for local governments and police departments.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Directs DHS to produce a department-wide strategy, threat assessments, research, and public guidance on threats from ghost guns and requires related reports from TSA, ICE, and Secret Service.
Requires the Department of Homeland Security to develop a department-wide strategy, threat assessments, research, and public guidance to address threats posed by untraceable "ghost guns" and partially complete firearm frames/receivers. It directs specific threat assessments and public reports from DHS components (including the intelligence office, Secret Service, CBP, ICE, and TSA) and mandates recurrent TSA reporting on unauthorized firearm carriage at passenger screening checkpoints.