{"id":80372,"date":"2022-04-24T13:19:16","date_gmt":"2022-04-24T18:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=80372"},"modified":"2022-04-24T13:19:32","modified_gmt":"2022-04-24T18:19:32","slug":"80372","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=80372","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

What journalist doesn’t get about “ghost guns”<\/a><\/p>\n

Whatever the topic of the day is, there are some who will think they\u2019re experts in it. While people have a right to their opinions and a right to voice them, I\u2019m always amused by how idiotic some of the takes actually are.<\/p>\n

This is especially true when it comes to \u201cghost guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

I put the words in quotes because, well, most of the people who sling the term want to use it because it sounds scary. Most don\u2019t really understand much of anything about the topic at hand, only the talking points politicians and activists sling around.<\/p>\n

Take this story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal by Clarence Page titled, \u201cWhat the right doesn\u2019t get about \u2018ghost guns\u2019<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

In it, it shows that Page doesn\u2019t get a lot himself.<\/p>\n

An often-repeated story about W.C. Fields holds that as he approached the end of his life, a friend was surprised to find him reading a Bible.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking for loopholes, m\u2019boy,\u201d he reportedly explained. \u201cLooking for loopholes.\u201d<\/p>\n

That scene comes to mind these days as I hear the standard response given by the National Rifle Association, the Gun Owners of America and other gun rights groups to even the most modest attempts to inject a little sanity into our nation\u2019s gun laws.<\/p>\n

The latest example of loophole-seeking has emerged in the recent pandemic of \u201cghost guns.\u201d I\u2019m not talking about the spirits of deceased firearms. \u201cGhost guns,\u201d as many have been learning, is a street nickname for home-assembled firearms. Their parts can be 3D printed or ordered over the internet and constructed at home like Ikea furniture to produce a full-fledged gun.<\/p>\n

The bad news is in their illegality. Buyers of unfinished parts or components have not been required to undergo a background check, and their weapons have no serial numbers, which makes them virtually impossible for police to trace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except most guns used by criminals are virtually impossible for police to trace\u2026at least, to trace in any meaningful way that helps to solve a crime. Most guns are illegally acquired in the first place, meaning the trace gives them a name and an address of someone who bought the gun, but they\u2019re not the criminal.<\/p>\n

With all this talk about tracing, you\u2019d think crimes couldn\u2019t be solved without it. Yet more than half of all firearms are stolen.<\/p>\n

Now, Mr. Page, tell me how tracing will help?<\/p>\n

But as stupid as that comment is, Mr. Page ramps it up to 11 with this nonsense:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As if we didn\u2019t have enough guns on the street already. \u201cThe last thing we need in our community right now,\u201d Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart of Chicago said recently, \u201cis not just more guns, but more guns that can\u2019t be traced.\u201d<\/p>\n

True. Hunters, collectors and other firearm enthusiasts, including some of my personal friends, have many legal ways to practice their pastime, but, as the sheriff observed, there\u2019s no need to have a ghost gun unless you\u2019re planning to commit a crime.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Completely and totally untrue.<\/p>\n

For one thing, there are those of us who simply don\u2019t trust the government very much. We\u2019ve watched time and time again while the government demonstrated its lack of trustworthiness and would much prefer to have something that same government simply cannot know about.<\/p>\n

Why distrust the government, you may ask, Mr. Page? Well, there\u2019s this thing called history. I\u2019m a fan of the subject, actually, and if there\u2019s one thing you learn is that governments do a lot of shady or downright evil things.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t believe me? Ask a Native American sometime.<\/p>\n

As such, that\u2019s at least one other reason to own a \u201cghost gun\u201d that doesn\u2019t involve planning to commit a crime.<\/p>\n

That says nothing about those who simply want to build a gun in the privacy of their own home without having to jump through the ridiculous hoops that have been proposed.<\/p>\n

Mr. Page, like so many others in his profession, believe himself to be an expert on the subject of \u201cghost guns,\u201d but he, as so many others in his profession, really just illustrates his complete and total ignorance of not just the subject at hand but the gun community as a whole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What journalist doesn’t get about “ghost guns” Whatever the topic of the day is, there are some who will think they\u2019re experts in it. While people have a right to their opinions and a right to voice them, I\u2019m always amused by how idiotic some of the takes actually are. This is especially true when … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,75,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-media","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80373,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80372\/revisions\/80373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}