Clarence Page: What the right doesn’t get about ‘ghost guns’

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Apr 20, 2022

Last year alone, there were about 20,000 suspected ghost guns reported to the ATF as having been recovered by law enforcement in criminal investigations, Biden said in his Rose Garden announcement at the White House, “a tenfold increase from 2016.”

But, predictably, gun rights organizations say the war on ghost guns is misplaced — and that’s one of the nicer words they use.

For one thing, they argue, ghost guns are only a small portion of the weapons police have recovered on the street. True. But the amount is growing.

Citing Justice Department statistics, Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America, wrote in an op-ed posted on the group’s website that privately made firearms were found at 692 homicide or attempted homicide crime scenes over a six-year period.

“That means that, at worst, out of more than 16,000 yearly murders, homemade guns are used in around 115 homicides per year,” he writes. “That’s far fewer murders than many common items which are easily found around one’s house — such as knives (1,476), hammers or blunt objects (397), or fists and feet (600).”

Sure. But knives, hammers, fists and feet arguably have other uses besides homicide.

The growth trends for ghost guns are rising too fast to give many peace-loving Americans comfort.

In Chicago, for example, only 72 ghost guns were recovered by Chicago police officers in 2019. But that number jumped to 130 ghost guns in 2020 and 458 last year. So far this year, according to reports, officers have recovered at least 166 of the guns.

By comparison, Chicago police say they recovered more than 12,000 guns of all types last year, including some that were gathered during voluntary gun turn-ins. That’s disturbing, but hardly an excuse to ease the pressure on those who seek firearms to break laws.

The pro-gun rights crowd certainly isn’t easing the pressure from their end. Quite the opposite, they’re pouring it on. “The only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington,” says a quote on the homepage of the Gun Owners of America, which boldly criticizes the famously hard-line NRA for being too moderate.

I believe in the virtues of compromise to heal the growing polarization in our national politics. But in today’s firearms clash, it doesn’t seem to have a ghost of a chance.

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)