Idiots.
Joe Biden, by fiat (and Maryland, by legislated law) just attempted to outlaw ghost guns. I say attempted because these regulations will not stop ghost gun manufacture, distribution, or acquisition. Even if it did, ghost guns accounted for less than 4% of use in crime. What Biden and Maryland just did was usher in the next technological race for even easier guns. While it’s already available now, 3d printing will become as easy as your 11-year-old owning and using a cellphone. Maybe they’ll pick up the new and improved printer on Amazon or Staples. A couple miscellaneous pieces of hardware from the local Home Depot will finish it out. Firearm print software will be traded like baseball cards or available on some site in Belize. What exactly is a gun? If it looks like a shoe box but shoots bullets, is it a gun? What is a serial number? What is a manufacturer? The possibilities are endless.
Who will be in the market for these? More people. While serious gun owners like the art, precision, and dependability of high spec manufactures represented at the local FFL, anyone on a serious budget and with a need for protection will opt for the bootleg selections. Also, a much wider group just curious about what will ultimately become, greater availability. There’s inflation you know. The white market will lose some share to the black market over it, but no one will notice.
What about the fines, the prison? You got to catch them first and that will be mostly limited to those already pursued for serious crime. Otherwise, let’s see how that goes with already far spread-out (‘evil’) policing. A certain percentage are already anticipating prison. Maybe they’ve been there before. What’s another year or two? Isn’t bail going to the wayside? So let’s add this up: you’re poor, you’re urban, you need a gun. The vast majority here will be black so there is that. If you must use it, you use it (or end up dead); that’s a pretty easy choice. If you get caught, you get caught. If you’re trialed or more likely plead out, you serve a little time, maybe not. Since the vast majority are just defending themselves on a budget, all of this doesn’t apply unless the gun is stolen, but it can’t be traced to anyone. The criminal pros use the good illegal gear or may in fact engage in their own high spec manufacture themselves. They have their own black-market economy for that. Of course, average law-abiding Joes can still buy legal guns, even in gun-regressive stupid Maryland.
So ghost gun bans make politicians feel good, blue meat they can throw to the squeamish left. It gets them off the hook for a lot of other incompetence, like ‘defund the police’, no bail DAs, giving mentally ill homeless license to take over the streets . At the end of the day, it’ll primarily be just another hook to incarcerate primarily urban minorities, unless and until the judges just look the other way, which is a distinct possibility.