California ‘Ghost Gun Lawsuit’ a Step Toward ‘Universal Registration’ and Beyond

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “California’s attorney general is suing the Trump administration in an effort to crack down on  ‘ghost guns; that can be built from parts and make it difficult to track or regulate owners,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday. “The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives doesn’t consider the do-it-yourself kits to be firearms, so buyers don’t have to undergo the usual background checks and in most states the guns are not required to have serial numbers.”

The lawsuit has been brought in response to the Saugus High School shootings from November 2019, in which a 16-year-old shot five students, killing two, before turning the gun on himself. The killer used a semiautomatic handgun without a serial number that had been assembled from a kit, a so-called “ghost gun.”

It’s a near-perfect complaint to try in the media – it has heartbreaking implications to manipulate the ignorant with, sympathetic victims, and unlimited opportunities to get in one-sided digs at “hateful” gun owners, and at Donald Trump. What we won’t see, at least from a narrative-advancing DSM, is a realistic look at laws already broken that did not do a thing to stop the carnage, and where this will all lead after new infringements that won’t do any good are imposed.

They also won’t tell us that Giffords Law Center, one of the parties to the lawsuit, consistently gives California an “A” rating, assigning it the #1 position among all the states because, in their words, “ California has the strongest gun laws in the United States…”

As we can see, those aren’t “enough.” They never will be. If they win this fight in the courts, they’ll be back with another demand, with more victims and more dire warnings.

As for the victims’ survivors, we can all sympathize at a human level with the unimaginable grief and loss that no parent should ever suffer. That said, nothing demanded here would change that, and as the disparity between the citizenry and a monopoly of violence grows, so will the toll of heartbreak for others. The inevitable result will be the state deploying men with guns to bend all those who believe in the right to keep and bear arms to its will – or else.

Sorry. Our sense of decency toward the grieving does not require our unconditional surrender to what history shows us is tyranny.

Looking at some of the circumstances, we see the same ones jumping out at us here that we see time and again. To begin with, per another AP report, the school was, predictably, a “gun-free zone”:

“Saugus High’s security is provided by one unarmed sheriff’s deputy and nine ‘campus supervisors’ who act as guards, said to Collyn Nielson, chief administrative officer for the William S. Hart Union High School District.”

In addition, “compulsory education” requires parents to put their children in a place where those tasked with watching them are utterly incapable of protecting their charges. Furthermore, they have no legally-binding duty to do so.

We can find plenty of other disconnects from a CNN report, one that naturally does not explore the implications of what it is relaying. A 16-year-old carrying a handgun in California is against the law. So is concealing it. So is bringing it onto school grounds. So is shooting people.

Ostensibly the “ghost gun” was obtained by the killer’s deceased father (again breaking numerous laws), who’d had his “registered” guns confiscated  when he became a “prohibited possessor.” Once more we see that the only way to deter someone who is not trusted with a gun from having one is to separate such people from society until they can be, something that inconveniently (for the state) requires full due process, not the fake “red flag” kind.

The effects of this lawsuit – if it ultimately succeeds (and will hinge on who wins the November elections and gets federal court appointment powers) – is that it will not just affect California, but will clear the way for national infringements. And that raises other questions, such as if so-called “80 percent receivers” are bad, what level of completion above a lump of ore-bearing rock is acceptable? What other parts that comprise a completed handgun or rifle will also have required serialization and permitting mandated? And what’s the purpose of all that in the first place?

It’s not like people haven’t been killed by bad people using “regular” guns that they have obtained through theft and other illegal means. And it’s not like all the laws prohibiting who can possess guns and how they must procure them haven’t been flouted by every armed criminal out there.

As always, this will only “stop” the “law-abiding.” And after their guns are “registered,” any number of new prohibitions can be enacted to close “loopholes” against them. The “authorities” will know exactly who to go after and the country will continue its long slide to the bottom of Nancy Pelosi’s slippery slope.”

That’s the real goal behind the “commonsense gun safety” lie.

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.