Biden and Dems ready their ‘ghost gun’ theater

It ought to be hard to believe — but, alas, it’s not — that with the border disintegrating and with it our security and sovereignty, the Biden administration and Washington Democrats are prioritizing . . . yes . . . wait for it . . . ghost guns!

I had the chance to discuss this on Fox News this morning with Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer. “Ghost gun” is the term applied to a firearm that is DYI-assembled from components often sold in a kit. The anti-gun folk are alarmed about ghost guns because they don’t have serial numbers and thus can’t be traced. (Charlie Cooke and Robert verBruggen had insightful posts on this topic about a year ago.)

The administration’s ghost-gun push is anti-gun theater that will have utterly nothing to do with tamping down violent crime.

The problem with guns from a crime perspective is how they’re used by criminals, not how they’re registered by everybody else. Before there were ghost guns, it was typical in violent-crime investigations for police to seize firearms with obliterated serial numbers. Or, when cops found guns that had serial numbers and were properly registered, they had nevertheless been stolen or otherwise illegally procured by the criminal. That is to say, the record-keeping attendments of gun ownership in the United States neither prevented the violent crime nor much advanced many investigations in which guns were recovered.

You would think from the way the press cover guns and Washington Democrats wail about them that there were some great federal interest in them. Other than protecting the right of citizens to bear arms for their defense, however, the Constitution has nothing to say about them. Firearms regulation, like most law-enforcement matters, is supposed to be the bailiwick of the states. (See David’s excellent post on how Biden’s model state in this regard is, of course, California.)