At least nine untraceable ghost guns have been seized by police on the Cape since 2021.

HYANNIS — Ghost guns, a scourge of big cities across the United States, are now showing up on the streets of Cape Cod towns, police say.

Between 2022 and 2023, Barnstable police have seized six ghost guns, police told residents at a July 6 meeting in Hyannis to discuss a recent spate of gun violence.

A ghost gun is an unregistered, untraceable homemade gun.

“Yeah, they are here,” Police Chief Matthew Sonnabend said at the meeting. “People can get on the internet and they can buy the parts that they can buy without a license. They can have them sent to their house. And then they get a 3D printer, they put together the parts they bought off the internet and the parts they can’t, and now they’ve got a working firearm.”

“You don’t have to be that smart to do it,” he added. “You just have to have the right printer, the right equipment and access to YouTubers. And all that stuff is right there for you.”

What is a PMF, or ghost gun?

Personally made firearms, or PMFs, are guns that do not have a serial number and have not been registered with the state, making them untraceable to an owner if recovered (hence the nickname “ghost guns”). They can be obtained by buying an unserialized gun kit, which has all the necessary pieces and just requires some drilling to construct. Or they can be made by 3D printing a receiver and putting it together with freely sold parts of the gun.

How many have police encountered on Cape Cod?

Massachusetts State Police and the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security publish an annual report on the seizure of crime-related guns. Only one ghost gun was recovered on the Cape in 2021, according to that year’s Crime Gun Report. It was seized in Truro.

The 2022 report, published July 3, recorded four ghost guns being recovered across the Cape that year. One was seized in Sandwich, two in Barnstable and one in Eastham.

Police seized a total of 18 guns of any type from the Cape in 2021, and 55 in 2022, according to the reports, meaning that last year ghost guns represented around 7% of all guns seized on the Cape.

Numbers have continued to increase since then in Barnstable, police said. Lt. Mark Mellyn said Thursday that so far in 2023, Barnstable police have recovered four ghost guns associated with firearms-related crimes in town, including two in June.

More: At Hyannis meeting, Barnstable Police say recent violence connected to 'the same group'

“We don’t have a great solution for that, that’s where we work with our ATF partners,” Lt. Michael Riley told residents at the July 6 meeting. "In the past it was a rusty .22 from Grandma’s basement, and now we’re seeing more significant and prolific firearms. That is pushing some of the violence, I would say.”

More: Barnstable man pleads guilty to charges involving sale of 'ghost guns'

Federal authorities partner with local police departments on ghost guns

The ATF, or the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, partners with local police departments to prosecute the gun's owner, Special Agent Nicole Strong said Thursday.

“We will look at the facts of the case and if it makes more sense, we will adopt that case and charge it federally,” Strong said.

Depending on a given person’s criminal history and other circumstances of the alleged crime, authorities decide whether prosecuting in federal or state courts could achieve a harsher punishment, Strong said. That decision would be made by the local police, the federal agency and the district attorney’s office.

Ghost guns are a growing concern across Massachusetts

According to the 2022 Crime Gun Report, authorities seized 316 ghost guns across Massachusetts in 2022, accounting for 13% of all gun seizures statewide. That was up from the 181 ghost guns seized in 2021, which accounted for 8% of seizures that year. Prior to 2021, the number of ghost guns seized in Massachusetts was in the single digits, according to the Crime Gun Reports.

That uptick matches the available statistics nationally: last year, the ATF published a comprehensive report that tallied 19,273 ghost guns recovered across the country in 2021. That number was more than double what it was in 2020, and more than 10 times what it was in 2017.

Many ghost guns in Massachusetts were seized by police from people who were not licensed to carry, according to the State House News Service. As the news outlet reported on Tuesday, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell is urging state lawmakers to focus on ghost guns in gun control legislation.

On June 26, state Judiciary Committee Co-Chair Rep. Michael Day, D-Stoneham, filed a bill that would, among other things, crack down on ghost guns. The bill would require that receivers and barrels be registered and serialized, making it illegal to print in 3D those parts without immediately registering them with the state government.

House Speaker Ron Mariano, D-Quincy, said Thursday that lawmakers have been meeting about Day's gun control bill, HD4420, and he hopes to pass it in the House by the end of the month, according to the State House News Service.

Suspect in Philadelphia mass shooting used a ghost gun, police say

Authorities said the man accused of the mass shooting that left five dead and two children injured in a Philadelphia neighborhood on July 3 used a ghost gun.

Philadelphia Police Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said the AR-15 used in the shooting and a 9mm handgun Kimbrady Carriker is alleged to have been carrying, but which wasn’t used during the spree, were ghost guns.

Carriker was arraigned July 5 on five counts of murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault and weapons counts of possession without a license and carrying firearms in public, prosecutors said. The 40-year-old is accused of killing a man later found dead inside a house and then gunning down four others before surrendering to police.

A 2-year-old boy and a 13-year-old youth were also wounded by gunfire and another 2-year-old boy and a woman were hit by shattered glass in the rampage that made the working-class area in southwest Philadelphia the site of the nation’s worst violence around the July Fourth holiday.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said that the city has seen a nearly 300% increase in ghost guns recovered during police investigations over the past four years, including 575 recovered in 2022.

Not everybody wants ghost guns off the streets

Tony Leary, who co-founded Cape Gun Works, has a sign out front of the Hyannis store, reading "HD4420 IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL." Leary would like to see 3D-printing of guns made easier, not harder.

"It's geeky hobbyist stuff, that people get together and do for their own enjoyment," Leary said. "It's not a nuisance."

Leary has a gun that he built out of a kit, sold by the company Polymer80 without a serial number. If he were to sell it, he said, he'd have to go to the government and get it serialized. But as it is, he legally owns an untraceable, homemade gun. And he wants to own more.

He's experimented with 3D printing, he said, and it's harder than people make it out to be. A friend in Florida got a printed receiver to work, but it took 24 hours to print and Leary said he saw two other frames "just totally disintegrate in his hands."

Most of the people trying to print guns are like him, Leary said, gun enthusiasts who want to try to make their own at home. As for crime being committed with ghost guns, Leary believes the focus of law enforcement should be on the criminal, not the weapon.

"Let's face it, they're gonna get guns whether they print it or buy it or steal it, or whatever," Leary said.

Material from the Bucks County (Pa.) Courier Post, a newspaper in the USA Today network was used in this report.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Untraceable ghost guns on the streets in Barnstable, police chief says