Gun stores are a key part of our Second Amendment heritage. They’re not just where we buy guns, but also where we meet up with like-minded folks and talk about the news that impacts all of us. Ideas about new gun regulations are passed along, etc.

And a surprising number of police officers show up. They’re not there to harass or investigate, but because they like guns too.

Now, though, gun stores are going to have to deal with unserialized firearms. Yet they tell some in the media that so-called ghost guns aren’t the problem.

Reaction builds tonight over a presidential executive order signed early Monday. President Joe Biden is enacting restrictions on what they’re calling “ghost guns”. Effectively, they’re guns without serial numbers typically sold in separate parts at legal gun stores. Now, both sides of the debate are reacting on if the move helps in what the Biden administration claims will crack down on crime

“This is not a firearm. This is a piece of plastic,” Frank Bahr explained.

Bahr’s the owner of Alien Armory Tactical in St. Charles. He’s owned the gun store for years and opened it after he found a passion for assembling firearms. Alien Armory Tactical is the only gun manufacturer that makes firearms in-house in the region. They sell fully assembled firearms in addition to separate parts for folks to build their own at home. One product, a P-80, which is a pistol frame they sell, is one of the many products President Biden announced new restrictions on Monday.

“It’s a kit that you have to drill and cut away pieces of plastic yourself, and then after it’s done, you have to build it out yourself. It’s just like a guy who works on his car, it’s no different,” Bahr said.

…

“If somebody’s wanting to commit a crime, they’re gonna find a gun on the streets. They’re not coming to a gun shop, they’re not gonna try to build one of these things,” Bahr explained.

Bahr is correct.

After all, as we’ve learned, despite the rhetoric that these are the preferred firearm of criminals, a grand total of 325 homicides were committed with them since 2016, a rate of almost 0.36 percent.

Further, criminals haven’t exactly shown they’re unable to get a firearm even before these kits were a thing.

I mean, look at the homicide rates from the late 1980s and early 1990s sometime. They were sky high and there wasn’t a ghost gun kit in sight and wasn’t for years and years.

The truth is that criminals don’t actually need these kits to arm themselves. Now, some enterprising souls used these kits to build guns they then sold to criminals, but I hate to break it to you, that’s not how most criminals get their guns.

Despite the president’s pronouncements, bad guys aren’t getting guns from homebuilt kits and they’re not getting them from gun stores.

So, at the end of the day, this isn’t accomplishing much of anything, as Bahr said. Then again, it’s gun control. When has it ever accomplished anything?