Ah yes, the terrifying “ghost gun.” The latest boogeyman trotted out whenever politicians need another excuse to chip away at the Second Amendment.
Whether anyone likes it or not, technology has changed the game. Today, people with modest mechanical skills can use 3D printers and CNC machines to manufacture modern firearms in their own workshops. In many cases, they can produce a Glock-pattern pistol that is virtually indistinguishable from one that rolled out of the Glock factory.
That genie is not going back into the bottle.
Laws attempting to regulate every privately manufactured firearms or sound suppressor are little more than political theater. They may sound impressive during a press conference, but they are virtually impossible to enforce against millions of hobbyists, machinists, engineers, and basement workshops spread across America.
Then comes the familiar refrain from government officials: “We can’t trace guns without serial numbers!”
Really?
In the overwhelming majority of firearm crimes, the gun is not politely left at the scene for detectives to collect. Criminals usually take it with them. Even when a firearm is recovered, tracing it often leads nowhere. A gun may have been legally sold years earlier, then stolen, traded, inherited, sold privately where lawful, or passed through multiple hands completely outside any meaningful chain of possession. A serial number does not magically reveal who committed the crime. It merely identifies the firearm’s manufacturing history.
One legitimate purpose of serial numbers is helping return lost or stolen firearms to their lawful owners. That is a benefit worth acknowledging. Unfortunately, in jurisdictions openly hostile to gun ownership, officials choose to destroy recovered firearms instead of making any effort to reunite them with their rightful owners.
The crusade against so called “ghost guns” has never been about stopping criminals. Criminals, by definition, ignore laws. It is simply another attempt to burden ordinary citizens who wish to exercise a constitutional right.
The uncomfortable reality is that knowledge cannot be outlawed. Machines cannot be uninvented. Technology does not disappear because legislators pass another bill.
You can ban privately made firearms on paper. You cannot ban the ability to make them.
That is why laws prohibiting so called “ghost guns” collide head on with the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment. They do not stop determined criminals. They simply create another avenue for regulating people who were never the problem in the first place.
Comments