https://www.fox9.com/news/unitedhealthcare-ceo-murder-suspect-had-ghost-gun
It doesn't seem like the media and the Democrats are going nuts, using this as another reason why we need to ban "ghost guns" yet. I'm sure they will.
Let me nip this specific case in the bud.
Ghost guns freak morons out because they lack serial numbers, allegedly making them hard to trace. What's more, they can be made with 3D printed parts, and individually purchased parts.
Okay, problem number one is that the shooter -- I'll refer to him as Ass Face -- didn't have a criminal record, and he could have gone into any gun store and bought a Glock or a Sig or whatever, and he would have passed any background check.
Even if we accept that ghost guns make it easier to commit crimes due to the lack of a serial number, it would definitely help the criminal if the criminal is smart enough to ditch the gun after committing the crime. Ass Face wasn't smart enough to ditch the gun. Ass Face still had the gun on him when he was arrested. No tracing of the gun was necessary.
Also, I don't know how many people in the media, and members of the Democratic party legitimately get their education on forensic ballistics from CSI and Hollywood; but, no, we can't reliably link a bullet to a specific gun with any certainty anymore. Back when a lot of guns still required a lot of hand crafting (like ghost guns), yeah, guns would have specific imprints on the bullets they fired -- that was still unreliable. Nowadays, you might be able to show that the bullet came out of a Glock. Nobody would be able to prove which specific Glock. If anything, it's probably easier to link the bullets to Ass Face's ghost gun than it would be to a standard Glock.
So, one thing that we can definitely say is that Ass Face is a fucking moron. If he had the sense to ditch the gun in any random dumpster on his way to the McDonald's in Pennsylvania, he would have made the case against him a lot harder to build. I guess that Ivy League education wasn't worth the price of admission.
Another thing is that serial numbers didn't have a mother fucking thing to do with it. It's not like running a bunch of serial numbers was much of a component in the manhunt.
Stopping criminals and finding criminals aren't the reason why the media and the Democrats are freaked out about ghost guns. They're freaked out about ghost guns for the same reason why they aren't happy with our current background checks, and want universal background checks. They want a massive national gun registry, with information of who has what, so they can confiscate guns. It wasn't a mistake that the ghost gun law in Massachusetts made it a felony to possess any gun without a serial number, and made it illegal to have a Revolutionary War era musket.
This isn't about safety. This isn't about bringing bad guys to justice. This is about control.