Mike McDaniel has a post today at the American Thinker entitled Ghost guns and liberty in which he reports on the Van Der Stock case before the Supreme Court. Based on court watchers reading the tea leaves, it could go either way. The term "ghost guns" is like the term "assault weapon" in that neither appears in the lexicography of guns. They are made-up terms by gun grabbers to scare the public.
McDaniel points out that Americans have been making their own guns for...well...centuries. Indeed, a serial number on a gun was not a requirement until the 1968 Gun Control Act. Serial numbers are really just a convenience for the manufacturer and in the case of the government to keep tabs on to whom they have issued the weapon and ensure they get it back. As McDaniel points out, no crime has ever been solved by knowing the serial number of the weapon used. What this is really about is power.
It's perfectly within America’s Second Amendment rights to make their own guns, and a number of manufacturers make parts kits, including unfinished lower receivers—the portion of a gun housing the trigger and hammer/striker mechanisms—“80%” complete, that require some drilling and/or other machining/filing to finish. Because these are not complete firearms—they’re parts--they are not required to have serial numbers, and that, to federal and state bureaucrats, presents two problems: (1) That’s too much freedom for Deplorables, and (2) they need the power to write their own laws to keep Deplorables from having too much freedom.
That’s why the ATF has unilaterally declared such parts kits, and particularly non-serialized lower receivers (in the case of AR-15 pattern rifles) and frames (in the case of pistols) illegal, though the relevant laws say nothing about them. Revolvers aren’t really involved as they take far more work, specialized machinery and knowledge to make. It’s another case of the administrative state writing law through rule making. Congress, for many years, hasn’t cared enough about its own legislative prerogatives to reign in federal agencies, and the agencies just love having that kind of unaccountable power. The best part for the agencies is they get to be all three branches of government. They write the laws, enforce the laws and are the judges and juries as well. If they’re accused of violating citizen’s rights, they investigate themselves and find themselves blameless.
Gentle readers should go and read the whole of McDaniel's article. Like so much about the Second Amendment, the government keeps overstepping its bounds because it desparately wants to limit the citizen so as to allow it to tyranize us without the messy consequences. We can not let that happen.
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