For all the hysteria around so-called ghost guns, it’s not really much of a problem. The numbers are small despite media fearmongering and much of what we’ve seen has really been because of that media. Most bad guys didn’t even know you could make your own guns.

But the idea of bad guys manufacturing firearms isn’t new. They’ve done it off and on for years and all over the place.

While the White House is pushing laws against “ghost guns” in their latest anti-gun push, an arrest in British Columbia kind of undermines the idea.

Two Fraser Valley men have been charged after the B.C. anti-gang unit investigated an alleged gun manufacturing operation.The Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of B.C. (CFSEU) was tipped off about the illegal firearms in December 2021 and began investigating the alleged manufacturing and trafficking of privately made guns, silencers and other firearm-related goods.

Searches in February and April 2022 of homes in Langley and Surrey turned up a slew of evidence, including three airsoft pistols that had been converted into .22-calibre guns, both with silencers attached; several magazines and ammunition; GSG 1911 slides, which are used to convert airsofts into more lethal firearms; 15 suppressors; and other items “consistent with a firearms manufacturing lab,” according to CFSEU spokesperson Sgt. Brenda Winpenny.

…

“Privately made firearms represent a growing trend in British Columbia and internationally by which criminals attempt to obtain firearms and to profit from firearms sales.

Now, this is Canada. There are already laws against this kind of stuff in place. The average citizen doesn’t have the ability to build their own firearms lawfully.

And yet, the criminals will still do it just the same.

At a time when the White House is pushing a series of measures, including a ban on so-called ghost guns–meaning anything that lacks a serial number, but primarily focused on homemade firearms of any kind–the fact that an arrest like this happened in anti-gun Canada has to throw a bit of a wrench in the works.

Bans on things like this only ban the law-abiding from doing a thing. The problem is that the law-abiding are, you know, law-abiding. They’re not going to use these guns to break the law. They’re not going to make them to sell to criminals. They build them for their own purposes. Lawful purposes.

Yet if the White House gets its way, you and I would be forbidden from building our own firearms, even if we only ever build them for personal use, but the criminals wouldn’t stop.

There’s no way to stop bad guys from doing bad things. Canada keeps thinking they can and stuff like this is the result. Yes, these two were arrested, but how many more are at work right now making illegal guns?

Stopping bad people is a good idea. “Stopping” activities that law-abiding citizens engage in as well because bad people also do it is stupid. You’re not stopping the bad people from doing it, only the good people who mean no harm.

But then again, isn’t that the real point?