{"id":80824,"date":"2022-05-08T09:14:53","date_gmt":"2022-05-08T14:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=80824"},"modified":"2022-05-08T09:14:53","modified_gmt":"2022-05-08T14:14:53","slug":"80824","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=80824","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

First prosecution of San Diego’s “ghost gun” ban shows how worthless the law really is<\/a><\/p>\n

San Diego, California is one of several cities in the state that have banned the possession of \u201cghost guns\u201d in recent months. Anyone caught with an unserialized firearm in the city is now subject to criminal charges, but the first case to actually get to the sentencing phase is a perfect demonstration of just how useless the new ordinance really is.<\/p>\n

The ordinance, authored by San Diego Councilmember Marni von Wilpert (a name that sounds like it would also be good for a Disney villain), in essence mirrors existing California law, which already prohibits the possession of an unserialized firearm. The San Diego ordinance specifically creates a misdemeanor offense to possess or sell any firearm that does not have a serial number on it, which is supposed to make criminals think twice about carrying a home-built gun around. As of March of this year, the\u00a0law wasn\u2019t having any impact<\/a>\u00a0on violent crime, with homicides up 80% compared to the same time period in 2021 and 77 unserialized firearms seized by police. There were also 295 serialized firearms seized by police, which is another sign that going after \u201cghost guns\u201d isn\u2019t going to stop the individuals committing the shootings in the city.<\/p>\n

But none of that matters to the virtue-signaling politicians in San Diego, including von Wilpert, who are instead now\u00a0eagerly singing the praises<\/a>\u00a0of the \u201cghost gun\u201d ordinance now that someone\u2019s been sentenced for violating the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city\u2019s novel ghost gun ordinance is an effective tool for removing untraceable firearms from the hands of criminals,\u201d City Attorney Mara W. Elliott said. \u201cWe thank Councilmember Marni von Wilpert for bringing forward this ordinance, which keeps San Diego at the forefront of our nation\u2019s battle against gun violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026 \u201cIt\u2019s clear from this conviction that San Diego\u2019s landmark ghost gun law is starting to work to stop the proliferation of dangerous, untraceable firearms in our community,\u201d said von Wilpert.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is it though? I realize I haven\u2019t actually said what the sentence the defendant received here, so let\u2019s delve a little deeper into the events that led to 23-year old Rene Orozco having the dubious distinction of being the subject of a press release by the city attorney.<\/p>\n

Orozco\u2019s arrest apparently didn\u2019t make the news at the time, but according to the Elliott\u2019s account he was arrested after fleeing from police and leading them on a car chase through San Diego\u2019s City Heights neighborhood, allegedly tossing the unserialized gun as he then continued to try to elude officers on foot.<\/p>\n

Would Orozco would have avoided arrest and prosecution if the gun he\u2019d been caught with had a serial number? Of course not. So what exactly is the point of a misdemeanor charge for possessing a \u201cghost gun\u201d when he could already be charged with illegal possession of a weapon for simply having a gun in the first place. Then there are the charges of eluding police, tampering with evidence, and any number of traffic misdemeanors that were committed during the police pursuit. But the City Attorney needs to show that this new ordinance is working, and so Orozco was charged with having a ghost gun, and now gets to experience firsthand the draconian punishment that will surely cause him to rethink the decisions he made.<\/p>\n

He was sentenced last week to 45 days in custody and one year of probation. As a result, his driver\u2019s license will be suspended from six months and he is prohibited from owning firearms for a year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

45 days in custody with good credit time means that Orozco will likely spend about three weeks in the county lockup, which doesn\u2019t sound like much time considering how scary \u201cghost guns\u201d are supposed to be. And again, he could have gotten that same sentence just by charging him with misdemeanor crimes in California state statute that have nothing to do with unserialized firearms. What\u2019s the point?<\/p>\n

San Diego\u2019s \u201cghost gun\u201d ordinance is pure political theater; designed to have an impact on the electorate, not armed criminals. As long as politicians like von Wilpert can convince constituents that she\u2019s \u201cdoing something\u201d to address their fears about violent crime, she doesn\u2019t have to bother coming up with doing something that actually works. And in California, \u201cdoing something\u201d means putting another gun control law on the books that at best is worthless, and far too often ends up harming the law-abiding instead of curtailing violent criminals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First prosecution of San Diego’s “ghost gun” ban shows how worthless the law really is San Diego, California is one of several cities in the state that have banned the possession of \u201cghost guns\u201d in recent months. Anyone caught with an unserialized firearm in the city is now subject to criminal charges, but the first … 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":[50,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goobermint","category-gun-schtuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80824","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=80824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80825,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80824\/revisions\/80825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}