Even a blind person could have seen this coming from a mile away. Once the suspected shooter of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was revealed to have allegedly used a “ghost gun” to carry out the murder, it was clear that the anti-gunner media would exploit this to advocate against people manufacturing their own firearms without government supervision.
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All I had to do was type “ghost gun” into Google News, and I got a series of reports decrying the supposed dangers of these firearms.
Ghost guns are untraceable firearms typically built from kits or using 3D-printed parts. Anti-gunners argue that these firearms should not be allowed because they are hard for law enforcement to track. “Ghost guns… are assembled by their owners, either from scratch or through weapon parts kits. They are not marked with serial numbers, making them easy for criminals to acquire and difficult, if not impossible, for law enforcement to trace,” NPR noted.
The report goes on to suggest that “a growing number of ghost guns have been recovered from crime scenes across the U.S., worrying many authorities” and that the weapons “have been used in homicides, domestic violence, robberies, killings of law enforcement officers, mass shootings, and school shootings.”
Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the nation’s leading anti-gunner organizations, referred to ghost guns as “the fastest growing gun safety problem in the country.”
California’s government claims 8,340 ghost guns “were recovered in the state in 2023, compared to just three in 2013,” according to NPR.
The Associated Press highlighted the Biden administration’s efforts to curb gun ownership, noting that “As police found more ghost guns at crime scenes,” the White House “moved to add age requirements and background checks in 2022.”
The AP’s report noted that “The number of ghost guns recovered by law enforcement increased from 4,000 in 2018 to nearly 20,000 in 2021, according to Justice Department data.”
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Members of law enforcement have also advocated for more restrictions on ghost guns. Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas told CBS News that the guns are “difficult for us to track because there is no serial number. The other thing that is a challenge is that they’re easily made.”
Lawrence Goshon of the Denver Youth Program told the news outlet that they “heard people were able to go to the gun shows, buy all the pieces that they needed for their guns and just put them together.”
“I’m not really a fan of guns at all in the hands of people that shouldn’t have them,” Thomas added.
Eric Tirschwell of Everytown for Gun Safety told CNN that ghost guns “became the weapon of choice for people who are otherwise prohibited from purchasing guns legally.”
As always, there are a few glaring problems with the arguments anti-gunners use to restrict ghost guns. For starters, while they make it sound as if there is this epidemic of people using these firearms to commit crimes, ghost guns still account for a tiny percentage of overall gun crime.
The ATF reported that between 2016 and 2021, about 45,240 of these weapons were recovered from potential crime scenes. This includes 692 homicides or attempted homicides.
Yet, the overwhelming majority of firearms taken from crime scenes were commercially manufactured. In 2021 alone, the ATF processed 460,024 crime gun trace requests, most of which involved firearms manufactured by gun companies.
Furthermore, despite their contentions about ghost guns, the anti-gunner crowd still misses a key point: Restricting ghost guns will not prevent evil people from making and using them for nefarious purposes.
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As with nearly all gun control laws, requiring serial numbers or background checks for parts will not stop criminals from using these weapons. This is because criminals do not follow laws, you knuckleheads.
These laws will only make it harder for non-criminals to defend themselves against violent people. Also, these laws will inevitably be abused and used to mete out unnecessarily harsh punishments on those who build them as was the case with Dexter Taylor in New York City.
People building their own firearms has been an American tradition since the nation’s founding. The reason why is easy to understand: The Second Amendment was intended to empower people to defend themselves from a tyrannical government as well as other threats. Those seeking to restrict ghost guns are not going to save lives. They are going to endanger more of them if they get their way.
