In California, it’s technically illegal to make a so-called ghost gun. I mean, you can build your own gun, but you’re required to give it a serial number and register it if it’s a type of gun that needs to be registered.

Of course, anyone who thought criminals would do all that was deluding themselves. They didn’t.

Now, “ghost guns” are treated as the single biggest threat to world peace. It’s bad enough that the San Diego police are forming a special team to address the issue.

On Wednesday, San Diego’s chief of police announced the formation of a new team within the department that has been assigned the explicit goal of cracking down on ghost guns.

A ghost gun is essentially a “do it yourself” firearm that can be built at home, using untraceable parts anyone can buy online without passing a background check.

SDPD’s move came just hours after a city council committee threw its support behind the creation of an ordinance to close loopholes.

Right now, California residents are required to registered finished firearms built with unserialized parts, but it’s essentially an honor system – one police say criminals aren’t following. The state legislature recently passed a law requiring that all parts have traceable serial numbers and that those parts only be sold by licensed gun dealers – but that state law doesn’t go into effect until July 2022.

So in the meantime, SDPD Chief David Nisleit said to expect to see more officers working the streets, especially in neighborhoods where ghost gun seizures are on the rise.

“The gun violence in this city is of grave concern to us,” said Nisleit in a news conference at police headquarters. “That’s why you’re seeing this gun-violence-reduction plan. that’s why you’re also seeing the implementation of this new ghost gun team to really try to drive down our ghost gun violence.”

Oh, it’s just adorable they think they can stop bad people from building their own guns.

It should be noted that there are plans for completely 3D-printed guns available on the internet that don’t require any such parts. Further, parts are available in other states without any of this crap. Criminals will simply funnel those parts into the state from friends or family in less restrictive areas.

Then there’s the fact that even if you could prevent all of that, people can still build their own guns with parts you can get at a neighborhood hardware store.

When that’s what you’re looking at, it’s time to recognize that it’s impossible to stop criminals from building their own firearms. It’s just not going to happen.

Instead, San Diego would be better served by addressing the kinds of things that push people into criminal activity in the first place. Then they won’t be building their own guns for illegal purposes and none of the laws would be necessary.

Of course, this is California, a state where they’ll guarantee someone income but where they won’t worry about their Second Amendment rights. To call their priorities screwed up would be something of an understatement.