Franklin man facing federal charges for manufacturing ghost guns

INDIANAPOLIS — A Franklin man has been charged with federal offenses of dealing firearms without a license, possession and/or transfer of machine guns and manufacturing machine guns.

According to court documents, in May 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) began investigating Alexander Clark of Franklin for unlawfully manufacturing and selling privately made firearms.

Over the course of several months, agents purchased several 3-D printed Glock-style firearms and devices capable of converting semiautomatic rifles to fully automatic machineguns from Clark.

According to court documents, during the search of Clark’s residence, law enforcement officers seized approximately 30 firearms including several 3-D printed firearms, several “Glock switches” used to convert firearms into machine guns, a suspected fully automatic AR-15 rifle, 3-D printing filament, a laptop with a Glock frame on screen connected to a 3-D printer and a silencer.

According to the U.S. District Court, Clark does not possess a Federal Firearms License authorizing him to sell firearms and he had not registered the weapons in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record as is required for this category of firearms.

3-D printed firearms of this type are untraceable and are referred to as “ghost guns.”

Ghost guns are unserialized, privately made firearms increasingly recovered by law enforcement at crime scenes across the country. Because ghost guns lack the serial numbers marked on other firearms, they are impossible for law enforcement to trace through the ATF’s National Tracing Center.

READ | Untraceable guns: Growing concerns in Indiana over-regulation of 'ghost guns' and 'Glock switches'

ATF is investigating this case in collaboration with the Columbus (Indiana) Police Department.