In the midst of the drama about the arrest of murder suspect Luigi Mangione, the establishment media is all in on its reporting about the pistol allegedly used in the slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but is their reportage going overboard?
According to New York Mayor Eric Adams, quoted by Axios, so-called “ghost guns” are “extremely dangerous and we must do more on the federal level to clamp down on the availability of ghost guns.”
Adams, nor anyone else, has explained what makes such a firearm any more or less dangerous than any commercially-manufactured firearm, especially if it is firing the same caliber ammunition. The question has ignited a sometimes-intense discussion on Facebook.
Virtually every report now mentions the pistol to be a “ghost gun” which “may have been made on a 3D printer,” due to a remark by New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny during as press conference, according to NBC News. It was only speculation, but the media picked it up immediately and ran with it.
When Mangione was arrested at a McDonalds in Pennsylvania, police found a 9mm pistol in his backpack, along with a suppressor. The pistol was quickly alleged to be a “ghost gun.” According to the New York Post, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch also said the gun “may have been made on a 3-D printer.”
However, that’s not entirely accurate. A 3-D printer doesn’t produce barrels, springs, slides, rails or magazines and their metal components, a fact not one media outlet has apparently so far reported.
But still, what makes such a gun any more or less dangerous?
According to the Justice Department, “Unserialized firearms are incredibly difficult to trace. For instance, over the past five-year period, ATF reports that it was only able to successfully trace to an individual purchaser 0.98% of the suspected “ghost guns” submitted by law enforcement around the country.”
The inability to trace a gun doesn’t make it any more dangerous than a gun which can be easily traced.
WABC in New York joined in the “ghost gun” chorus, explaining how parts may be purchased online and “be put together in a matter of minutes and unlike other guns, there’s no serial number. They are virtually untraceable.”
The Hill is reporting that “ghost guns” have “become an emerging public safety threat, targeted at the state and local level for allowing criminals to evade gun regulations.” But criminals have always evaded gun control laws, a fact underscored by a new report at Ammoland News.
To read The Hill report, one might conclude the problem with so-called “ghost guns” is not how dangerous they might be but that they cannot be easily traced.
“Serial numbers would normally allow the guns to be traced back to the manufacturer, the dealer and whoever originally purchased the gun,” The Hill observed, without explaining how this does not necessarily lead to the solving of a crime.
Newsweek also focused on the apparent “ghost gun” aspect of the case, and the coverage overall almost suggests the media is blaming the murder more on the firearm than they are on the person who used it to commit the crime.
