Today I came across an NPR article reporting on a new development in the federal government’s war against the right to self-defense; the article opened with this:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday once again stepped in to leave in place the federal government’s ban on so-called ‘ghost guns.’ These are unassembled and unmarked guns that can be bought online and then assembled into fully operative guns.

Now obviously the author of the article, Nina Totenberg, is either embarrassingly obtuse as to what she’s talking about, or she’s guilty of disinformation; saying that a “ghost gun” is nothing more than an “unassembled and unmarked” firearm, implying that all that needs to be done for it to be operational is simple construction as if it’s a LEGOⓇ set, is asinine.

You can’t just buy unmarked (unserialized) firearms online—you can buy certain finished gun parts, and blocks of metal that can be machined into gun parts (which therefore wouldn’t have a serial number as you machined the piece yourself instead of a firearms manufacturer), but promoting the idea that you can simply and legally buy a disassembled gun and assemble it without any government involvement is completely fictitious.

In reality it’s like saying a grove of trees is basically a house; or suggesting that a chunk of metal, a cow hide, and a rubber plant, can be assembled into a “fully operative” car. There are a number of steps in between the pile of materials and the finished, working product… and, these steps are absolutely necessary in building something that operates as it was intended.

First, these trees need to become lumber, a step which requires tools and a mill. You’ll also need a decent amount of working knowledge in engineering or construction to turn that pile of lumber into a home that won’t immediately collapse. The same goes for the second analogy—that chunk of metal first needs to be machined into a frame, and you have to possess the mechanical understanding of the vehicle, otherwise it won’t run.

Similarly, to convert a “ghost gun” into a functioning firearm, one would need a number of machines and tools, fairly niche knowledge of how to piece it together, and the skillset to do all the above, before that gun is going to safely fire a round.

Then, Totenberg wrote this:

In August 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives issued regulations that required any such disassembled gun parts to carry serial numbers and required anyone buying them to pass a background check, in the same manner as in-person gun buyers.

Because the “journalists” of mainstream media are, at best, extremely uninformed, it was hard to figure out exactly what they meant, so this is an educated guess, but I think Totenberg is referring to “80% lowers” which again, are not simply disassembled gun parts, but rather blocks of metal that require additional machining before they can become a lower receiver, or what is the legal “gun” for ATF and serialization purposes, for a number of firearms, including the AR-15. Previously, these blocks of metal weren’t serialized because… they are blocks of metal. But then Joe Biden came along, and the ATF took the assaults on peaceful gunowners up a notch.

The image below is a “stripped lower receiver” and this is the item which has historically been a “gun” as defined by the ATF, and therefore, restricted and serialized:

Public domain image of a stripped lower receiver for an AR-15

An “80% lower” looks similar, but is only machined a portion of the way, leaving the buyer to do the rest—first and foremost, there is no space to install a trigger.

Now of course I’ll admit that Americans who have built their own firearms from 80% lowers have done so because they want to exercise their right to self-defense away from the peering Big Brother eye-in-the-sky tyrannical regime seeking to disarm its citizenry, and, they don’t want to be victimized by government gun registries—we all know where these things have always led—but they also do it because it’s a hobby. Building guns is an expensive endeavor, a lot of work, and requires a level of knowledge and skill not possessed by the average person.

But most importantly, it’s neither a necessity, nor is it practical in this day and age for a person to go through all that trouble just to get a weapon for malintent. The average terrorist using firearms to maim and kill the innocent gets his guns from the ATF (Operation Fast and Furious)... or on the black market after a certain dummy at the helm leaves billions of dollars of small arms and ammunition in Afghanistan… or from Iran after receiving pallets of cash thanks to American tax dollars…. The list goes on and on.

This level of ignorance is so willful, it completely undermines the idea that the media is full of journalists instead of propagandists.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.