Just in time for Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and the winter solstice and New Year’s, Republicans and Democrats find themselves face-to-face with a problem they can actually solve together.
They can outlaw so-called “ghost guns” like the one used to kill a health care executive recently in New York City.
Imagine that. A genuine end-of-the-year opportunity to do something for the common good — something that transcends cultures and religions and politics.
Yes, dear reader, I know what you are thinking: Our nation’s political system is so broken that Republicans and Democrats barely speak to each other. So actually solving a problem — well, that may take a miracle.
But this is a season of hope, right?
Ghost guns are virtually untraceable. They can be made at home, from plastic-like materials on a 3D printer. They look like toys. And prospective shooters can even pick a favorite color, with choices ranging from tennis ball green to Barbie pink.
But these guns are definitely not toys. And we all know what ghost guns can do. We saw one in action on the morning of Dec. 4, when a hooded, masked man stepped from the predawn shadows on a sidewalk in midtown Manhattan and killed a health care executive with a shot in the back.
The killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson shocked America in ways that were not so surprising — and yet deeply surprising and cause for some sort of social examination of what our nation has become.
The brutality, captured on surveillance video, was certainly appalling. But so was the cheering by many Americans who felt that the nation’s system of private health insurance was so broken that corporate health care executives deserved to die.
The alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old computer whiz who grew up in a wealthy family in the Baltimore area and went on to an exclusive prep school and the Ivy League’s University of Pennsylvania, was turned into a folk hero of sorts while Brian Thompson was consigned to a weird second-class status as a murder victim.
Lost in this social morass of shock at the murder itself and the sick adulation for Mangione is the fact that this crime was the handiwork of a ghost gun.
Mangione, who was captured in Pennsylvania after a five-day manhunt and has since been indicted in New York on first-degree murder and terrorism charges, has not said much about the ghost gun that was found in his backpack. But New York police ballistics experts tested the gun and linked it to Thompson’s killing.
Where’s the outcry over ghost guns?
You would think that such evidence would prompt a public outcry against ghost guns. It hasn’t.
In general, this nation is still unable to figure out how to regulate firearms. Whether it’s military-style assault rifles designed for the battlefield or handguns marketed for home defense, America’s laws are still a hodgepodge that is grounded more in the crazy-quilt politics of states’ rights than in common sense.
For example, a shopper in search of that perfect holiday gift is sadly allowed to walk around a mall in Pennsylvania with a pistol in a hip holster — presumably as protection from all those crazy criminals who are just trying to find their own perfect holiday gifts. But in New Jersey, such “open carry” practices are banned — and rightly so. Once upon a time, we depended on trained police officers — in uniforms — for protection. The police are still around. But far too many Americans think of themselves as gunslingers, dressed as civilians. When a shootout breaks out, how are cops who arrive on the scene supposed to determine who are the bad guys and the good guys?
More Mike Kelly:Why are we cheering Luigi Mangione, accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO?
That’s just one of the head-scratching questions that America faces because of its inability to sensibly regulate firearms. Indeed, the debate over carrying guns in public is only a small piece of the larger debate over guns in America. Considering that America can’t find a way to regulate when and how people are allowed to carry guns in public, it’s hardly shocking that we still can’t come to grips as a people with how to stop mass murders — like the one that took place at a Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, this week.
But ghost guns represent a far different element in the overall gun debate.
For starters, they have been used far too often by criminals. They are cheap and often without serial numbers and other identifying characteristics, making them almost impossible to trace. And because they were constructed primarily with plastic-like materials, they are often difficult to detect at security checkpoints in airports and at such mass public events as concerts.
To put the dilemma another way: These are homemade guns. But they are hardly amateurish. They work — well. And, to the frustration of police and security experts, they are essentially invisible to so-called “metal detectors” that are often the only line of security in courthouses and other public buildings.
Can’t Congress act?
So why can’t Congress just outlaw these guns?
Fifteen states — including New Jersey — passed laws in recent years that establish some sort of ban on ghost guns. But this system of state laws resembles the same patchwork quilt of “open carry” regulations. New Jersey bans ghost guns; Pennsylvania does not. And so on.
One of New Jersey’s innovative rules is to make it illegal to sell digital ghost gun blueprints for 3D printers that are used to make these weapons at home. Not surprisingly, gun rights advocates are challenging this rule. But in this case, the gun rights crowd is not leaning on its old legal crutch of the Second Amendment, which is the constitutional foundation for private ownership of firearms in America. In this case, gun rights advocates say their First Amendment rights of free expression are being violated if they can’t load their 3D printers with ghost gun blueprints.
Welcome to the new world of guns.
The U.S. Supreme Court is currently assessing whether to uphold a rule, imposed by the Biden administration, to establish minimum standards for marketing ghost guns. But who knows what the court will decide? One of the arguments by gun rights proponents in asking the court to set aside the Biden regulation of ghost guns is that Congress should first establish a law, not the president.
So maybe it’s time for Congress to find its common ground on ghost guns. Maybe it’s time to put aside the policy differences and personality conflicts and find a way to inject some measure of sanity into the national debate over gun control.
After all, America watched a man kill another man on a sidewalk recently in New York City. At the center of that video was a ghost gun.
Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com, part of the USA TODAY Network, as well as the author of three critically acclaimed nonfiction books and a podcast and documentary film producer. A paperback edition with an updated epilogue of his 1995 book, “Color Lines,” which chronicles race relations in a small New Jersey town after a police shooting and was called “American journalism at its best” by The Washington Post, was released last year. To get unlimited access to his insightful thoughts on how we live life in the Northeast, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: kellym@northjersey.com
