Ghostly Gun
Ghostly Gun by Carl "Bear" Bussjaeger
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There’s an important public policy purpose in bringing this lawsuit, [Brady chief counsel Jonathan] Lowy argued. “Although it’s obvious that ghost guns arm dangerous criminals and harm innocent people, the companies that make and sell ghost guns make profits without bearing any of the costs,” he said. “That’s why it’s critical that they be held accountable to victims. We hope to establish a legal precedent that ghost gun companies can be held accountable for injuries and deaths they cause, to bring some civil justice to these innocent victims, and to lead companies to sell guns more responsibly.”

The three cases cited above are hardly exhaustive. Another case whose settlement should be announced soon involves another gun industry loophole custom-made for the “bad guy with a gun”:  replica antique black powder guns (that are nonetheless fully functional). Collectively, what these cases show is how deeply dishonest the “good man with a gun” rhetoric really is. It’s not that such people don’t exist. But they’re not the people the NRA and the gun industry have been looking out for.

Quite the contrary: They’ve been used as human shields to fend off gun safety activists and reasonable regulation, while the “bad man with a gun” demographic has been catered to for decades, as the body count continues to grow. With the NRA in crisis and the industry’s PLCAA bulwark teetering, the time is ripe for a historic, responsibility-focused shift in gun policy. And the fact that Congress is still paralyzed no longer matters all that much. Change is coming anyway. Perhaps it already has.

— Paul Rosenberg in Real gun reform without Congress: Lawsuits demolish the “good guy with a gun”

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61 COMMENTS

    • At least get a grammar/spell check program OR learn to actually SPEAK and write in English before you post this kind of bullshit on a pro-American, pro-2A forum.. No one on here is falling for your crap, regulars are too smart and the Trolls already make more than you…. HEY TTAG where’s the monitor for this shit? Will the NEW and IMPROVED format catch this kind of crap BEFORE it hits MY inbox? Or will I be censored for calling THIS dumbass out?

  1. “…while the “bad man with a gun” demographic has been catered to for decades…”

    These clowns won’t say who the “bad man with a gun” demographic usually describes, where these “bad men” live, and how they illegally acquire firearms. The FBI statistics are VERY clear about these “bad men” and their victims; it isn’t rural Montana or Colorado, but downtown Philadelphia or Atlanta. It’s amazing how policy and law makers twist themselves into pretzels to avoid the obvious truth.

  2. Oh yes! This is Salon! They are the SAME magazine that ran the story, “I am a Pedophile, but not a Monster.”

    This is the same magazine that tried to normalize pedophilia. Now they are trying to convince us to give up our guns. They can cry me a river.

  3. There are some potential legal teeth here. PLCAA protects firearms dealers and manufacturers. 80% receivers are castings, not firearms or accessories, so they aren’t under the umbrella of protection. They are only potential arms, so they might not even.have 2A protection. The PLCAA needs to be extended to all industries so that there is no liability for the criminal misuse of legal products by end users (like suing Ford because a drunk driver in a F-150 wiped out a busload of orphan nuns). Congress won’t take that meat from the trial lawyers, but hopefully the Supreme Court will if a case makes it that far.

    • I am slightly out of touch here. Who is manufacturing “ghost guns”, exactly? I was quite certain that any individual and/or company that makes more than some small number of guns per year was REQUIRED to put serial numbers on their guns, and to sell through licensed dealers. There should be no one in the business of selling ghost guns, except criminals, right?

      Oh, those black powder guns? There must be a real epidemic of black powder murders – SOMEWHERE. /sarcasm That kind of a joke doesn’t even rise to the level of being stupid. Criminals are mostly criminals because they don’t like working. What criminals are going to take the time and effort to hand load every single shot?

      I scanned the rest of the Salon article. I believe their efforts will fail, just as soon as the Supreme Court weighs in. Some district judge or panel can’t just start striking down laws that support and uphold the interstate commerce laws.

  4. Then politicians should be held liable for the injuries/crimes/murders done by illegals. Including the death penalty. I prefer public hangings.

  5. Wait, I thought it was plastic guns that were invisible to metal detectors that was the problem?

    Or was it, cheap guns with “no sporting purpose”?

    Or maybe it was exploding “cop-killer” bullets?

    It’s so hard keeping up with the latest propaganda campaign from these folks.

    • I am thinking the propaganda on ghost guns is more then likely coming from the major firearms manufacturer’s.
      When money is involved trust no one.

      • “the propaganda on ghost guns” is coming from power hungry fools.

        The major firearms manufacturer’s can produce whatever they feel like will make them money. They already know most of the gun buying is not bolt action wood stock rifles in 270. They know the money isn’t in 28 inch camo shotguns either.

        • Do you think Jim Beam and Jack Daniels would like a government that let me make more then seven gallons of whiskey? It’s the same with ghost guns.

        • government let you? lol

          I don’t claim to know a whole lot about distilling whiskey but I do know that I am aloud to make my own if I wanted to. I would imagine that it would take more than 7 gallons just to get it right. Now, SELLING it would be a very different thing all together. Jim Beam and Jack Daniels might have something to say if I tried to muscle in on them but that is a very different thing from this so called ghost gun thing.

          Ghost guns are a fiction in the first place and is only a concern for ant-2A gun grabbers. They concocted this craziness to use as an excuse.

          I am aloud to make my own guns. Those guns only need a serial number if I live in a socialist place like California. Selling those home made guns changes things.

        • “Do you think Jim Beam and Jack Daniels would like a government that let me make more then seven gallons of whiskey? It’s the same with ghost guns.”

          I’m just not seeing it.

          There are no 80 percent barrels that I’m aware of, so the gun industry as a whole is still intimately involved.

          And face it, an educated gun owner is one of the industry’s best customers. Understanding how to make a gun function provides education…

        • So you believe Ruger, Winchester, Remington, and the others are all behind you making your own firearms? I don’t think so.

    • It is the solid core cop killer bullets – all bullets have to potential to be cop killer bullets, they were designed to kill or at least wound.

  6. If successful they will only cost American jobs and American lives. Further they will drive the industry to a country like Turkey that will tell them where to shove their lawsuits.

    • Having to procure Our firearms from another country would certainly curtail the availability of purchasing a weapon in America. A sanction against Turkey would close that door, as it did with Russia and China.

      • China gats are banned huh?!? Just fondled a semiautomatic shottie made in the Middle Kingdom. Duh. Lawsuits work both ways. See: Chiraq getting handguns!

        • When’s the last time you purchased a Russian rifle, one made in 2019?
          Depending on imports for what a country needs is a tactical mistake.
          I have a feeling you’ll argue that too.

  7. OK…so when people are shot or killed in “gun free zones”…need to sue for NOT enforcing it…use the same tactics against them.

  8. People need to stop thinking like lawyers, and start thinking like warriors. We’re going to need a lot more of the latter, and less of the former very soon.

    • Agree with this sadly.

      Anyone that has faith in the courts, after the obvious election fraud, is fooling themselves.

      The State legislatures are not stepping up either it appears.

      What’s left when the People have no voice and an entire demographic is doing their best to take away God given Rights through legal manipulation?

      Someone will be stupid and throw gasoline on this mess and the dumpster fire will explode.

      • Btw, the author of the Salon piece has an interesting bio, noted at the end of the article:

        *************************************
        Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer/activist, senior editor for Random Lengths News, and a columnist for Al Jazeera English.
        ************************************

        Not hard to figure out where he’s coming from.

    • Lawyers fight with words. Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me. The word may carry penalties, but until that penalty is carried out ( sticks&stones) its just a word.

  9. Democrats pay for convicts to vote, let them out on bail and bond and now they want to force law abiding citizens to pay for the demcrats and criminals’ actions, which are supported by democrats. Its like we’re living ina weird backwards world.

  10. I’d be genuinely interested to see the actual crime statistics of crimes committed with black powder cap and ball revolvers.

  11. Hmmmmmm…..I cannot find an actual, coherent thought in the above essay. It is a rambling mess of half-formed accusations without factual foundation or even circumstantial evidence. It is a bluster of hate-filled prejudice being passed as argument when, really, it is just passing gas.

    • Just like Karl Marx’s Dad Kapital. Long on rhetoric and very short on practical solutions. It can be summed up as “if we wish it will happen”, if the bourgeoisie aren’t bored to death first.

  12. Then Left will not be happy until every good guy with a gun officially becomes a bad guy with a gun.

    The Left should be careful what it wishes for.

    • Yep, when the penalty for an AR is the same as for full-on rock-and-roll lots of folks are going to opt in on select fire. It can’t be all that difficult to do.

  13. Although it’s obvious that ghost guns arm dangerous criminals and harm innocent people, the companies that make and sell ghost guns make profits without bearing any of the costs,”

    What “companies” are making “ghost guns”? I have built several non-numbered guns from 80% lowers which is simply an UNFINISHED lower that is sold at a reduced cost… No company that I am aware of would jeopardize it’s license and thus ability to earn income not to mention running afoul of FEDERAL law risking jail time and all that follows to sell a firearm without a registration number… This clown needs to either get informed or shut the hell up… Preferably both… Anyway he has quite a shock waiting for him when his bullshit gets to the SCOTUS…

    • Brady has probably sued one of the 80% lower manufacturers, since the product may not fall within the scope of the federal law. Fortunately, “settlements” are not authority for anything, and an 80% is not a firearm nor inherently dangerous under any stretch of the imagination. Instead, the purpose of suing them is the same as suing manufacturers before the federal law: bankrupt them with litigation costs.

      By the way, despite all the yelling and screaming about ghost guns, are there any actual statistics on their use in crime?

      • “By the way, despite all the yelling and screaming about ghost guns, are there any actual statistics on their use in crime?”

        Doesn’t matter. Once a gun crime can be imagined, if it saves only one life, the possibility must be stamped out before such a crime can hurt anyone. The only safe gun owner is one who doesn’t own any.

  14. The article begins with fear-mongering invented lies and insinuated accusations, and goes downhill from there.

    What is a “Saturday Night Special”, what is illicit about them (as the author clearly tries to insinuate), and how do Hi-Point pistols fit that frame(up)-work?

    Hi-Point firearms are reasonably priced, generally decently made and reliable, have one of the best warranties in the industry, and fantastic customer service. They make firearms that low-income people can afford for effective self-defense. The negligent or intentionally illegal action of a third-party distributor doesn’t reflect negatively on a manufacturer acting with good intent. Nor should it.

    The remainder of this garbage article is similar veiled accusation and slander. But I expect no less from the anti-gun cesspool of Salon.

    What Salon and the Gun-Ban Industry want is to ban Citizens from making firearms on their own.
    That will work as well as banning alcohol and drugs did.

    And would massively INCREASE crime with the creation of additional black markets.

    But no-one expects reasonable, intelligent discourse on law, economics, history and human behavior, from the bastion of power-craving socialists and communists at Salon.

  15. Propagandists always say a thing is obvious when they can’t show evidence for it. In fact the fraction of gun crime using homemade firearms is vanishingly small. Criminals prefer to steal guns, or buy guns that were stolen by others. It makes sense – if they wanted to come by their possessions through their own honest labor, they probably wouldn’t be criminals.

    • Only the smarter high end criminals would even consider putting in the time, labor, and resources to make their own. These are the people likely to persue millions. The low IQ folks that hold up the local gas station couldn’t be bothered to do anything else but steal theirs. There are plenty of documented cases of these idiots using completely empty hand guns.

  16. If a deer rifle is for shooting deer, and a target pistol is for shooting targets, what is a ghost gun for? And should Josh Gates carry one? Just asking for a friend.

    • No guns for Josh.
      We can’t have him mounting his thermals on the chance he’d go after a Bigfoot and bag a midnight jogger by accident. It would be a bad way to put yourself out of work and in jail at the same time.
      C’mon, man. Do you really have something against Bigfoots?

  17. “another case whose settlement should be announced soon involves another gun industry loophole custom-made for the “bad guy with a gun”: replica antique black powder guns…”

    lol “they didn’t have machineguns when the 2nd Amendment was signed, REEEE”

    Yeah, I’m pretty sure they had black powder guns though

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