A report in CBS News highlighted the case of a man who had used a ghost gun to kill his brother, father, and three other people. A report in the San Diego Tribune suggested that ghost guns are more popular in states where it is illegal to purchase the kinds of guns many people want to purchase (color me surprised on that front).
The proliferation of websites and services tailored to the person who wants to build their ghost guns are noticeable. There’s even a ghostguns.com site that sells unfinished receivers for people to use on their own ghost gun builds.
Of course, one of the more “notorious” advocates for ghost guns is the founder of Defense Distributed, Cody Wilson, whose company recently brought to the market a Ghost Gunner Machine that allows you to quickly complete an unfinished receiver for a 1911.
Before I go on, let me make sure you, the reader, full understand exactly what a ghost gun is. A ghost gun is called because, like a ghost, it can’t be traced. It has no serial numbers on it. It is not registered with the federal government, or any other government for that mattered.
It is a gun that is manufactured by an individual and, by law can only be used by that individual. You cannot simply manufacture guns and sell them, at least not legally. But the fact that laws exist, or rather don’t exist, that allows for individuals to create weapons, tools of self-defense, with no eyes on them from any “authority” is enough to drive a statist-loving control freak up the wall.
And that it has done. Previously, the ghost gun world was a select world filled, mostly, with skilled gunsmiths or with amateurs who were simply building crude slam fire guns (one shot guns that operate by literally slamming a firing pin against the cartridge). But a lot of that has changed with the advent of 3D printing and now with such tools as the Ghost Gunner Machin that allows even amateurs to effectively and quickly apply the finishing touches to receivers that make them useful.
With the proliferation of ghost guns will come the proliferation of triggered gun grabbers. With that triggering will come what we are already seeing, more and more news stories focused on ghost guns being used in crimes, more stories hyping the public to be afraid of ghost guns and, through that fear, to DEMAND that their masters, the owners and managers of the coercive enterprise, do the right thing and pull the leash tighter, make ghost guns “illegal.”
Never mind that if you make ghost guns illegal the ONLY people who might actually pay attention to laws that will be difficult, at best, to enforce, are not committing any crimes now and have no plans to commit any crimes in the near future. The criminals, on the other hand, will have no compulsion to suddenly follow a law that prohibits them from buying or making a gun that cannot be traced back to them.
The rise of ghost guns is just one more area where technology is enabling individuals to do the two things that controlling state acolytes and their masters most don’t want to see happen, it is creating self-reliance and anonymity, the deadly combination that creates free people with real power to counter the prevailing power (at least for now) of the coercive enterprise over individuals and free assocations.