Philly man arrested for building ghost guns with a 3D printer, as Biden announces new federal rules on the weapons

Law enforcement officials on Monday announced the arrest of a Philadelphia man accused of using a 3D printer to illegally manufacture, assemble, and sell ghost guns in the city.

Daniel Whiteman, 36, was charged earlier this month with three counts of possessing a firearm and related charges after prosecutors say he purchased ghost gun kits online, then used a 3D printer to produce certain parts of the gun to build and sell them.

“It has now upped the game in Philadelphia,” said Bill Fritze, supervisor of the District Attorney Office’s gun violence task force. “This is, I think, the first type of case that we’ve seen with a 3D printer assembling these firearms.”

The charges were reported the same day that President Joe Biden announced new federal regulations on ghost guns, the largely unregulated and untraceable firearms that Philadelphia officials have long said are too easily acquired by criminals and have contributed to the city’s rising gun violence crisis. Just last week, police said, a teen used a ghost gun to shoot four people including a SEPTA police officer in Frankford.

Biden said ghost guns would now be classified as firearms, requiring sellers to be federally licensed, purchasers to undergo a background check, and the guns to have serial numbers. Last year, he said, law enforcement officials reported approximately 20,000 suspected ghost guns to ATF, a tenfold increase from 2016.

“You commit a crime with a ghost gun, expect federal prosecution,” Biden said.

Firearms are typically manufactured by licensed companies and are required to have serial numbers, which officials use to trace the gun back to the manufacturer, the firearms dealer, and purchaser.

» READ MORE: What are ‘ghost guns’ and are they legal in Pennsylvania?

Ghost guns, however, which are often sold in assemble-it-yourself kits, are typically made with what is known as an 80% frame or receiver, which acts as a base that holds all the parts of a functioning gun, like the trigger. Federal law previously did not consider unfinished frames and receivers to be firearms, so background checks and serial numbers weren’t required to buy or sell them.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro joined Biden at the White House Monday and said Philadelphia police have seen nearly a 500% increase in the number of ghost guns recovered in the past two years. Shapiro, a Democrat who is running for governor, has spoken out against ghost guns throughout his tenure.

In the case of Whiteman, who was charged with felony robbery in 2012 and is prohibited from owning a gun, prosecutors say he ordered the firearm parts online then used the 3D printer to make brightly colored receivers.

Fritze said investigators believe Whiteman’s business had only been operating for about one or two months, but during that time, he had built six guns, including Glock-style .9mm and .22 caliber firearms. Prosecutors believe some were sold in the Kensington area, a section of the city plagued by violent crime largely fueled by an open-air drug market.

“The danger, the potential bloodshed, cannot be exaggerated when you’re selling those guns in that place,” District Attorney Larry Krasner said of Kensington.

When police executed a search warrant on Whiteman’s home, two more receivers were in the process of being printed, Fritze said. Whiteman is being held in Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility on $750,000 bail.

In 2013, Philadelphia became the first U.S. city to ban the 3D printing of firearms, except by people with a license to manufacture firearms. In January 2021, the law was amended to regulate unfinished frames or receivers and the specialized tools used to turn them into functioning weapons.

Gun safety advocates lauded the changes Biden announced Monday.

“Ghost guns destroy lives just like a regular firearm. But for too long, a legal loophole allowed abusers, criminals, and violent Pennsylvanians to buy one without any of the safeguards we rely on,” said Adam Garber, executive director of CeaseFirePA Education Fund, a Pennsylvania gun violence prevention group. “They took the lives of Pennsylvanians at an ever-increasing rate while law enforcement had few options to do anything but recover the next ghost gun at the next crime scene.”

“Today we’re safer because President Biden is enshrining an obvious fact into law: ghost guns are firearms. The fewer criminals that have access to these deadly weapons, the more lives that will be saved,” Garber said in a statement.

The National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation emphasized that building a gun at home has always been legal. The problem, they say, is not the guns but rather, the people who use them in crimes. Gun Owners of America vowed that it would fight the rule.

On Fox News Monday morning, the NRA’s managing director of public affairs, Andrew Arulanandam, called Biden’s rule “hollow.”

“This action sends the wrong message to violent criminals, because this “ban” will not affect them. These violent crime sprees will continue unabated until they are arrested, prosecuted, and punished,” Arulanandam said.

Biden also announced Monday that he would nominate former U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach as the new head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which plays a key role in gun regulations and hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed director since 2015. Biden withdrew his nominee last year after facing opposition from Republicans and some Democrats.