"Ghost guns" is a popular buzzword in the media these days. They love to focus on unserialized firearms, all in an effort to make the issue seem so much worse than it really is. It doesn't help that Google seems to love to promote these stories via its news algorithm, but the media itself likes to make a big deal of it.

Sometimes, they even make a huge deal of it in spite of other, more pressing concerns.

Take, for example, this story out of Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The headline is clear: "Kenosha County 'ghost gun' bust, 'high school-aged' people arrested."

But when we get to the body of the story, well, there's a lot more going on.

 Kenosha County "ghost gun" manufacturing and distribution investigation led to seven arrests, the sheriff's department announced on Thursday. All seven people are "high school-aged."

The investigation started on April 2, when the sheriff's department said several guns were stolen during a Paddock Lake burglary. On May 1, a woman called the sheriff's department about someone driving around "in a car full of guns," and at the same time, numerous people called in "shots fired" near Silver Lake.

Deputies then responded, stopped a vehicle and recovered several guns. After the traffic stop, two search warrants were then conducted in Paddock Lake and Salem Lakes, and more stolen guns were recovered. All the guns recovered in both instances were confirmed to have been stolen during the Paddock Lake burglary on April 2. 

...

The investigation revealed the guns were being sold to "high school-aged" people throughout Kenosha County. During subsequent searches on May 29, authorities recovered:

• Several firearms
• Lower firearm frames with no serial numbers – commonly known as ghost guns, the sheriff's department said
• Several Dremmel parts kits for making firearms
• Pistol and rifle magazines
• Manufactured firearm parts
• Firearm accessories
• Ammunition

Now, remember that the headline is just about the unserialized firearms, yet these kids were arrested after they got caught with stolen guns. Why is that?

I mean, even if so-called ghost guns vanished entirely the day before, these kids would still have had a butt-load of firearms to sell to other high school-aged kids. Would the people of Kenosha have been safer with those in kids' hands instead of the unserialized firearms?

I wouldn't imagine they would.

See, the problem here isn't that there were evil "ghost guns" around so much as the fact that bad people will do things to get their hands on guns no matter what you try to do.

For example, people under 21 can't lawfully buy guns, so these two dipsticks allegedly stole them instead. They then allegedly sold them to other people who couldn't lawfully buy guns.

Look, you're never going to stop this from happening by passing new laws. Ban unserialized firearms and what happens? They just find another way to get them. These guys are accused of doing both, all in violation of the law.

Gun control doesn't stop criminals. It doesn't stop bad people from doing bad things. The sooner some understand this, including the media that overhyped the whole "ghost gun" thing in this case, the better off we all will be.

At that point, we can start looking at things that might actually help instead of just being little more than window dressing that makes it look like you're doing something rather than, you know, doing something.