The choice of language around firearms is always interesting. Instead of using a descriptive term like "homebuilt firearms", communications on this topic use an editorialized description like "ghost guns".
Probably doesn't help when Cody Wilson is selling a CNC called the Ghost Gunner.
Ideologically, CBC has tended to be very far to the left, and over time has become even more extreme.
About a year ago, a journalist who'd worked at CBC discussed the situation:
https://tarahenley.substack.com/p/speaking-freely
In my opinion, CBC consistently puts out some of the lowest-quality and least-objective "news coverage" that I've seen from the major and minor news providers in Canada.
Aren't many guns in the US untraceable even though they have serial numbers because of the lack of a proper database? So in effect also ghost guns?
Edit: although, the cheapest and easiest way for a criminal to get an "untraceable" gun in the US is probably to bust out the window of a pickup truck, steal the gun out of the glove box, and file off the serial number.
The law requires NICS to delete records about approved transactions within 24 hours:
> The National Tracing Center is not allowed to have centralized computer data.
> That's been a federal law, thanks to the NRA, since 1986: No searchable database of America's gun owners. So people here have to use paper, sort through enormous stacks of forms and record books that gun stores are required to keep and to eventually turn over to the feds when requested. It's kind of like a library in the old days—but without the card catalog. They can use pictures of paper, like microfilm (they recently got the go-ahead to convert the microfilm to PDFs), as long as the pictures of paper are not searchable. You have to flip through and read. No searching by gun owner. No searching by name.
FWIW, this was entirely the point of the compromise.
Which would be dumb, because the serial number can easily be recovered in a lab and is an easy 10 years in jail and way to get feds to pick up the case.
Sale of firearms may be regulated if crossing state lines, hence the Gun Control Act of '68, but a federal database of firearms / firearm owners would of course be completely unconstitutional.