USAtoday Hit Piece on "Ghost guns"

 

On December 12, 2024, USAtoday published a hit piece on "Ghost guns", attempting to use the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as a reason to impose unconstitutional restrictions on homemade firearms.

It appears Brian Thompson was assassinated with a homemade firearm. However, the manufacture of the firearm did not interfere with the investigation of his murder. The suspect was arrested without any assistance from gun tracing data, as is the case with virtually all violent crimes.  Gun tracing has no measurable effect on solving violent crimes. It is difficult to find any violent crime which was solved with gun trace data. The USAtoday article misleads from the first paragraph:

For decades, America's detectives have made breakthroughs in crime using gun traces. A homicide investigator typically uses ballistics and serial numbers of weapons checked via a vast network of gun shop records, manufacturer IDs and crime databases.

The unstated conflation is from crimes of possession or illegal gun sales to homicide. Homicides which are solved by the use of trace data seem to be non-existent. It may have happened, but this correspondent has not found documented examples. If there were examples, they would be shouted out by the ATF and those who want a disarmed population. They are not. The USAtoday article does not cite a single violent crime solved by using trace data.

Canada has required all handguns to be registered since 1934.  The Canadian handgun registration is far more effective and intrusive than the United States gun trace system.  In 1995, when the Canadian handgun registry had been in use for over 60 years, the Canadian Department of Justice could not identify a single instance where handgun registration helped to solve a crime. From publicsafety.gc.ca:

Department of Justice officials admitted that they could not identify a single instance where handgun registration helped solved a crime (Hansard, 1995, p. 12,259)

Gun registration is not an effective way to solve violent crimes. Gun tracing in the USA is far less effective than gun registration.

The USAtoday article uses the scare tactic of citing increasing numbers of homemade guns found by law enforcement agencies. It is an irrelevant number. Most firearms in the United States are unregistered and untraceable. A few thousand, or a few million more, given the over 500 million firearms in private hands in the United States, is not going to make a significant difference.

This is the scare tactic used to demand legislation no matter how minimum or irrational the actual threat is. A person who is shot with a manufactured gun is no more or less injured or killed than a person shot with a homemade gun. Manufactured guns will always outnumber homemade guns by thousands to one.

The article spends considerable time considering how people make illegal devices to circumvent federal and state laws. So... what is the point? The devices are already illegal to make. Making them double or triple illegal will not change anything.

At the end, the article gives a realistic assessment, quoting a gun control advocate from the Giffords Law Center. More laws will not stop people from making their own guns.

 “The genie is out of the bottle,” he said.

Analysis: This scare tactic is used to promote the idea of government control of firearms. Fortunately, most people realize this is an area where government will control law abiding people, but criminals, government agents, or criminal government agents will always be able to obtain firearms.  The use of a few cases and bogus or non-existent statistics has been a favorite way of passing bad laws for much of American history. A good examples is the ban of switchblade knives. Short barreled rifles were banned because of a stupid, ignorant, or Machiavellian representative from Minnesota in 1933.

Laws restricting the freedom to have and  carry (keep and bear) firearms do not reduce homicides or suicides. Gun registration does not reduce crime or suicides. Registration is gun confiscation stretched over time, perhaps generations. Homemade guns fall outside of gun registration schemes. Americans have always had the legal right to make their own guns. The courts should recognize this inalienable right.

©2024 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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