Privately made firearms, often called "ghost guns" by the media, aren't anything new. They've been part of the fabric of America since the states were colonies. It's how many guns were made at the time. You bought the parts from a gunsmith, then worked the wood and assembled everything yourself.
My first AK was from a kit. The receiver had been cut in two places, creating three pieces, and so I needed to build one of those before assembling everything else into a workable firearm, but a gunsmith friend helped with that. The ATF later changed it so the barrel had to be cut, also, but that was trivial to sidestep, even if it added costs.
3D printers took this basic concept, though, and made it more accessible. Now, anyone could build gun parts, assemble them with other parts, and have a workable firearm. Yes, this includes criminals, because even before the 3D printers, politicians lost their minds over the idea that you could make an "untraceable" gun...and told every criminal in America how to get a firearm brand new without alerting the law.
An editorial out of Albany, NY, though, seems to think that the mere existence of so-called ghost guns makes the world unsafe.
This is a constitutional guarantee: Everyone charged with a crime deserves the opportunity to mount a vigorous defense. And this is an aphorism familiar to defense attorneys: When the law is on your side, pound the law; when the evidence is on your side, pound the evidence; when neither law nor evidence is on your side, pound the table.
It appears that Kevin O’Brien, currently representing Albany resident Demetrio Daga in proceedings in Albany County Court, is familiar with both of those things. Mr. Daga was charged in early 2025 with manufacturing dozens of “ghost guns,” including firearms composed of elements he allegedly whipped up on a 3D printer. He faces 15 felony counts of weapons possession after searches recovered 35 ghost guns, including 13 handguns and 22 “AR-style assault rifles” — as well as hundreds of 3D-printed components used in their manufacture.
...
Whether you are making illegal ghost guns to fire at bottles behind your house or making them to arm a street gang, you are supporting and perpetuating a black market that by its very existence undermines responsible gun laws. Even the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court last year upheld Biden-era rules on the regulation of ghost guns.
Which they remanded back to a lower court, and that lower court just made the same ruling with different reasoning.
Whoops.
What bothers me here is this idea that lawfully making your own guns, or unlawfully making them exclusively for your own purposes and sharing them with no one, is somehow akin to arming every street gang in the state of New York.
It's ridiculous on every level.
You're only supporting and perpetuating a black market if you're part of a black market. It's just that simple, and this idea of turning people who are exercising their Second Amendment rights — and yes, that's what people who make guns are doing, even if not intentionally — are part of that black market is nothing more than a feeble attempt to smear millions.
Let's note that the board doesn't differentiate. It doesn't make any difference between lawful and unlawful behavior. Every one of us who has ever made a so-called ghost gun is being painted with the same broad, criminal brush. Especially when we know that despite the case at the heart of this editorial, privately made firearms aren't an issue.
And that is why the mainstream media is a freaking joke. It's people like this, so convinced of their own moral superiority, who want to ignore the Constitution entirely while pretending they're the defenders of the nation, that make me want to puke.
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