DispositionMatrix
NES Member
There’s Only One Reason to Own a Ghost Gun
A ghost gun is a gun that’s manufactured absent that marked part. And really, the only reason to manufacture a gun that way is if you’re someone who wants to avoid a background check, such as a criminal or an extremist. There is no reason to do this. It’s not fun to make a frame or receiver.
It’s quite clear that ATF director isn’t making policy or law, but I think that there is a role to being able to more publicly and articulately and transparently describe the why of things that are going on. That’s not going on. As I said, with ghost guns, ATF was doing the opposite. They should have known that there was a problem brewing, and what they did was they attempted to cover up the problem by putting a good light on it—that, no, this is just what hobbyists are up to. I think any law enforcement official today would understand that ghost guns are not primarily what hobbyists are up to. They’re what criminals and extremists are doing to make our streets less safe.
Well, the pro-gun groups would argue that there should be no ATF. I think where much of the debate is today is that they believe in their constitutional view that the ownership of guns is some sort of birthright and that there is this insurrectionist belief that one of the reasons for the Second Amendment was so that the public could take up arms against the government themselves. And so I think there needs to be some kind of structure, just like we have with cars, to take a lawful product and do what we can to make sure that it’s used lawfully and doesn’t cause unintended harms.