In the United States, you can own a machine gun. Sorta.

You have to jump through a pile of hoops and you also have to hope someone has one for sale. Since nothing made after 1986 is available for civilian ownership, that means the market is limited for legal weapons of that type.

If gun control works as advertised, absolutely no one but a small handful of people would own such firearms.

Well, as per usual, there went that plan.

A federal jury has convicted a man with illegally possessing a machine gun and possessing a pistol and ammunition after previously being convicted of a felony.

According to court documents and trial testimony, in March 2020, 31-year-old Jesse Carter illegally possessed a pistol, a machine gun and more than 400 rounds of ammunition.

The machine gun was a“ghost gun” with no markings.

According to US Attorney Kenneth Parker, ghost guns are often assembled from kits, do not contain serial numbers, and are sold without background checks, making them difficult to trace.

Carter is looking at 10 years in prison.

Now, about that machine gun…

I can hear some going on about how this being a “ghost gun,” it’s evidence we need rules outlawing these firearms. However, I’d also like to remind folks that P.A. Luty built and published plans for a submachine gun that didn’t require parts from anywhere other than your local hardware store.

You’re not going to stop someone like Carter with laws.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the machine gun in question was Luty’s design. You see, while “ghost guns” are often built from kits, that’s not a requirement. The term is used to describe any unserialized firearm. It could be a traditionally manufactured firearm with the serial number obliterated or it could be any of a number of other things.

You’re not going to legislate these things into oblivion. It’s never going to happen.

That’s especially true now in the era of the 3D printer.

But here’s the thing. I cannot lawfully obtain a machine gun without making a whole lot more than I currently do. It’s purely the domain of the wealthy.

Yet someone who cares nothing for the law can and will get a full-auto weapon if they so desire, even if they have to make it themselves. They’re not prevented from doing so by any rule or regulation. They’re only, at most, inconvenienced a bit.

But if someone like this rolls up and decides he wishes to harm me and mine, I’m outgunned. This person can throw a lot more rounds my way than I can in return. While it may not be good marksmanship, the probability of an accidental hit goes up when there are a ton of rounds flying through the air.

We’re at a disadvantage when facing criminals as it is, and gun control advocates want to make that disadvantage even more pronounced.

The bad guys don’t obey rules, but some think the answer to the problem is to create more rules for them to ignore. It’s absolute insanity.