Ghost guns

They’re real, they’re here, and it’s a crime they haven’t been outlawed

On a gray, cold weekend before the season got into full swing, you’d expect the streets around Hyannis to be subdued, and so they seemed.

Except that by Sunday night, police had picked up five handguns that didn’t belong in circulation.

Of those five, three bore a chilling name:

Ghost guns.

Ghost guns are weapons that bear no serial numbers, show up in no data base, reveal no owners. They are the next generation of contraband weapons that once had their serial numbers filed off to make them anonymous. Today they’re created with “buy, build, shoot” kits containing all necessary parts. They also can be built by 3-D printers, fabricated from plastic.

Ghost guns are just as deadly as any living version. They haunt Massachusetts, where ordering kits, firing up the 3-D printer, assembling or “printing,” is legal.

Here’s the key hypothetical:

Why would anyone want to build a ghost gun?

Possible answers:

For the fun of piecing it together, like Legos?

Perhaps, though model cars fit that bill better.

Because it’s cheaper than buying even a crappy legal handgun?

Maybe, kits go for around $500.

You can’t buy a legal handgun because you’re too young or you won’t clear a background check?

More feasible, which begs the question of why you can’t clear.

How about even if you could buy one legally, you don’t want anyone to know you have or used it?

Likely, you might say obvious.

In that case, how to describe the expected use of that gun?

Criminal.

And what does this have to do with the Second Amendment, the “right to bear arms” written into the Constitution so civilian militias can protect us from the Red Coats?

Nothing.

Of course the illustrious United States Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, does not agree. In Congressional testimony intended to highlight the proliferation of ghost guns, he offered these thoughts:

“(Democrats) want to scapegoat law-abiding citizens, the hobbyists who make homemade guns, who are not committing crimes … But the real issue is in something Chairman Blumenthal (a Democrat from Connecticut) made several references to, he referred to these guns as untraceable. That term was meant to be ominous. That's what this is all about, the Democrats on this committee want to trace every firearm in America. They want a registry of every firearm in America, they want a government list of what guns there are, who owns them, how many they own. And inevitably, when you see countries enact registries of firearms, the next step is confiscation."

There you have it. If we don’t condone ghost guns, all guns will soon be seized.

Seeing as there is zero chance federal legislation addressing ghost guns can pass (there has been a push at the agency called ATF, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, to bypass Congress and require serial numbers), it’s up to our state; eight already have banned them, including New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

Maura Healey came out in favor of a ban when she was Attorney General and upped the ante after she was elected governor:

“We need to ban ghost guns,” she said in an interview on public radio. “We need to do everything we can to get rid of them.”

Legislation at the State House is coming forward. House Judiciary Chair Mike Day unveiled a major bill earlier this week that includes banning ghost guns. Day did so at the request of powerful House Speaker Ron Mariano, which bodes well for passage.

All that said, laws won’t eliminate ghost guns. There’s profit to be made satisfying demand, so they’ll exist.

Few issues draw law enforcement into the same camp as the “left” wing; this one does. Yet even ghost guns don’t breach the deep divide about gun control. A ghost gun will never help a hunter put food on the table, but the potent symbol of a firearm, and total distrust of anyone trying to reduce the deadly impact of guns (dismissed as shills for government domination), means we will continue to be armed, legally and otherwise.

We will continue to grieve from daily murders and almost daily mass shootings.

We will continue to be haunted by the memories of those who should still be alive.

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