The state of Illinois is one of those where we tend to think of as having any gun control law you care to imagine. That’s not entirely true, though. For their many anti-gun sins, they’re not as bad as a lot of states. After all, compared to New Jersey, for example, they seem like a comparatively free state.

And they don’t have any laws restricting homemade firearms.

However, it seems lawmakers there want to change that.

So-called ghost guns are as easy to build as a piece of furniture, and also nearly impossible to trace.

As CBS 2’s Tara Molina reported Monday, there is a push to make ghost guns illegal in Illinois – with more and more of them showing up in Chicago every year.

Ghost guns can be made with a 3-D printer and an at-home kit. They are untraceable, unserialized, and dangerous.

First, furniture is easier to build than completing a receiver. Unless, that is, you mean actually building furniture from boards, which is a lot harder. I’ve done both and know that little bit at the beginning is absolute BS.

Additionally, you can complete a “ghost gun” without a kit. The individual parts are common enough and they’re often the parts people want to replace or upgrade on their guns anyway, so it’s not difficult to get them individually.

Moving on…

According to information from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the number of ghost guns – or privately made firearms – is going up every year. Ghost guns are also tied to 325 homicides or attempted homicides nationwide since 2016.

In Chicago, police confiscated 455 ghost guns last year – more than twice the number confiscated in New York City. Nationwide, in 2019, law enforcement discovered 10,000 ghost guns.

Ten states – California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington state, and also the District of Columbia – already have laws against ghost guns on the books.

That is why Illinois state Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago), says the bill he introduced Friday is so important.”Other states are already regulating these firearms, and it’s Illinois’ time to do the same,” Buckner said. “This is commonsense legislation.”

It’s really not.

Look, those 10 states have restrictions, but they also have just as much of a problem with illegal firearms as Chicago has.

Further, look at the numbers here. They say 325 homicides are tied to ghost guns since 2016 throughout the nation. Uh…there have been 89,680 murders in the nation in total since that time period, not counting this year so far. That means “ghost guns” account for about 0.36 percent of homicides.

Sorry, but I’m not really seeing this as a huge issue.

Instead, Illinois lawmakers–and the lawmakers pushing this crap throughout the nation–are focused heavily on something that accounts for less than one percent of the issue because it makes headlines.

For a while now, I’ve been sounding the horn on how unserialized firearms are being misrepresented as a problem, and here’s the evidence to illustrate just how bad it is.

Then there’s the fact that even if they were an issue, it’s not like Chicago was peaceful before you could buy a kit or 3D print a receiver. Bad guys didn’t have any problem finding guns before “ghost guns” were a thing, either in Illinois or anywhere else.

But then again, this isn’t about addressing an actual issue so much as being seen to address an issue, which always works out oh-so-well for everyone involved, hasn’t it?