Shocker: Shannon Watts gets it wrong on ghost guns

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Shannon Watts is one of those people the media likes to get to talk about guns. I don’t know why, though. After all, she doesn’t know crap about them. She literally freaked out on Twitter over a bolt-action .22 rifle.

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Unfortunately, though, they do.

This time, Newsweek gave her the chance to write about so-called ghost guns.

host guns—untraceable firearms that can be assembled from parts sold online without a background check—are the fastest-growing public safety crisis in the United States. And because they’re as easy to buy online and build as a piece of furniture, ghost guns have become the weapon of choice for all sorts of prohibited purchasers, including domestic abusers, sex offenders, white supremacists, terrorists—and even children.

In a disturbing new trend, children and teens in America are getting their hands on ghost guns and bringing them to school—with deadly consequences. Last month, a Kansas student shot a school administrator and a school resource officer with a ghost gun. In February, a New Mexico student shot and killed his classmate with a ghost gun. In January, a Maryland student shot and critically wounded a classmate with a ghost gun he assembled with a friend.

While the untraceable nature of ghost guns means we don’t have data showing the full scope of their role in school violence, according to media reports, there were over a dozen instances of ghost guns being found in American schools since the beginning of this school year.

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OK, Shannon, then tell me something. How many traditionally manufactured guns were found in schools since the beginning of this school year? I’ll bet it was far, far more than a dozen.

The crux of her op-ed is summed up in the title of her piece: “Ghost Guns Are Real Guns. Now They’ll Finally Be Treated as Such.”

Except, they’re not.

So-called ghost guns are pieces of plastic or metal that are vaguely gun-shaped. They’re not firearms until someone makes them firearms. At some point, there has to be a line drawn as to what constitutes a gun and what doesn’t.

What Watts is worked up about is that someone took the line and used it to get around the rules that are already in place, rules many of us vehemently oppose but will follow because we’re law-abiding citizens. So, we lawfully skirt the rules in place to point out how stupid the rules are.

Watts and company want the rules changed? Well, it’s just a matter of time before someone figures out how to skirt them again.

This isn’t about arming criminals–something that I’m more and more convinced just isn’t happening–it’s about arming ourselves without having to ask Uncle Sam for permission.

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But at no point are those pieces of plastic real guns until they’re actually turned into functional receivers, which is precisely the point.

Yet one person who may own Watts a big old thank you are the folks at Defense Distributed. Their Ghost Gunner is the ideal solution to hoist a middle finger at the gun control crowd.

Or is Watts going to try to claim that a block of metal is a real gun, too?

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