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California Killer Built His Own ‘Ghost Gun’: Quote of the Day

Dan Zimmerman - comments No comments

“The more restrictive the laws become for people to purchase firearms, we’re going to see those criminal elements build their own. That’s what they do.” – Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston in Shooting rampage in California highlights “ghost guns” and their dangers [via cbsnews.com]

0 thoughts on “California Killer Built His Own ‘Ghost Gun’: Quote of the Day”

  1. How is any of that possible? I cannot believe that somebody that is evil and hell-bent on murder will not just follow the law. Didn’t the killer know that ghost guns are illegal in California and that he was not allowed to possess guns?

    It’s almost as though gun laws don’t work and criminals will not follow the law. But that can’t be true, as our Democratic totalitarian overlords tell us that these laws are for our own good and safety.

    #sarc

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  2. Again proof positive that background checks are absolutely worthless. And yet I’m sure this author has no clue that is the logical conclusion from his article.

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    • But the background checks are not without purpose. They serve to condition people’s minds. (Like machineguns registration. And then closing the machinegun registery for any new machineguns.)

      After just couple of decades they are considered to be a norm. Today even many pro 2A guys are so brainwashed, that they will tell you it’s O.K. for government to decide who can and can’t get arms useful in possible struggle against… government (if it slipped into tyranny).
      Another feature is that more and more classes of people can be added to the ‘prohibited possessor’ list. Remember the super secret No Fly List and Suspected Terrorist list? Next it might be Tea Party members or plumbers or readheads.

      Next step – Universal background checks. That requires a registration to have any chance to be enforced, of course.
      As soon as they know who has what, the road is open wide to confiscation.

      (Little sidenote: My grandma once told us that when in 1939 Germans occupied Czech part of Czechoslovakia and created Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren, they ordered civilian disarmament. Then they went straight to registration offices to pull the records. Groups of soldiers then visited every gun owner that failed to surrender any firearm registered in his name, requiring its immediate surrender. Surprisingly “lost”, “stolen”, “must be mistake in paperwork as I have never owned such gun” or “unfortunate boating accident” didn’t move them. If the gun was not found and surrendered by the owner right now, or was found by the troops as they ransacked the house, the family was divided in two parts. The females and small kids were sent to concentration camps and males executed on the spot. No courts, no lawyers. Well, they would even kill you for tuning your radio to wrong station. London, not Christian rock.)

      Final stage – total civilian disarmament and rule of peace and harmony. Or else!!!

      TL;DR: Background checks can’t work for their proclaimed purpose of lowering crime and they never were meant to. B.C.’s are just another step from freedom to control.

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  3. warne makes steel scope mounts. the additional weight is negligible to me. i prefer them.
    that bipod looks solid. something for the .308.

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  4. The sad thing is liberals will just take this to mean 80% lowers must be banned nationwide, as if that will somehow make the existing “ghostguns” disappear and no one will be able to make new ones.

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    • They can ban 80% lowers and people will still continue to mill them for the black market. So they will then ban CNC mills from eBay.

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      • . . . then there’ll be a CNC black market, which the gun-grabbers will shut down. Then the people will finally rise up and hunt them and there’s to (an albeit temporary) extinction.

        So, at least we don’t have to wait too much longer before we get a chance at some peace and quiet around here.

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      • You don’t need an CNC mill to complete an 80% lower. they can be done with everything from cheap Asian manual bench top mills, to jigs designed for the router you got from home depot. In fact if you have machining skills and a good knee mill you can start with a bare block of aluminum. You can even buy mold kits and literally poor a polymer lower now.

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  5. I’m from this county. Deputy Johnston, like the rest of the sheriff’s office, is scrambling to obfuscate why they let this guy keep his guns when he was being prosecuted for stabbing someone in February. Or why they didn’t respond to neighbor’s complaints that he was shooting off hundreds of rounds from high capacity mags morning and evening when he wasn’t busy threatening his neighbors. One of the neighbors he killed had a restraining order against him. But yeah, guns are so hard to find that the real crime was him building a ‘ghost gun’….

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    • Finally! The real story.

      Crazy neighbors that stab, shoot, do drugs, and threaten are all just fine upstanding Americans…until they aren’t. And when they aren’t, they tend to take a whole pile of people down with them leaving law enforcement no laws to enforce with no recourse but to publicly wander in circles sniffing their own butts.

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  6. Next on the California legislative plate: no 80% lowers can be sold in the state; or perhaps required serial number and registration of upper receivers.

    Or both.

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    • >bans 0% lowers.
      *feels safe and happy despite the fact that simple metal billets are now considered to be firearms
      *watches youtube video of man making AK lower receiver from a shovel

      >bans shovels

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  7. I have a “First Edition” SIG P290 with serial number lower than 20. I don’t really care for the gun. I’ve only shot it twice. It isn’t much fun to shoot and it pretty much just sits in the safe. I’m trying to decide whether to sell it and get something else I like better or keep it as a collectible because it has a low number and maybe will become valuable someday. I know it’s speculation, but I wonder what others think.

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  8. Yeah, well screw Jill Richard’s. Like you said – gang bangers and suicides and you’ve decreased 2/3’s of deaths. At that point there’s dozens of things that cause more accidents than guns. Like alcohol for instance

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    • when the green tip ban started up, (armor piercing rounds + AR pistol = cop death!!) i asked the same question. does the average AR pistol have enough barrel length to get the average AP round going fast enough to actually P A?

      I never found a good answer. sure, the bullet is probably moving quicker than your average 9mm, but the trade off in weight might balance the scales.

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  9. NEW JERSEY is the worst state in the Union, it’s where corruption and taxes thrive. It’s where the Constitution , Our bill of rights, and Federal Laws are ignored.While local, state and county laws multiply all to generate even more revenue for political thieves. New Jersey is where peoples rights are violated and denied. It’s where breathing is a privilege, and working 3 days week is required just to pay taxes. It’s where the endless highway and bridge tolls only increase and the roads only get worse. It’s where there are more Cops than teachers in order to quench the thirst for more money to squander. And now you want to give our money, our safety, and our state away to every ill-willed, illegal to find their way to our state

    AND NOW, STUPID F’ING DEMOCRATS, VOTED TO MAKE IT A POT SMOKING, SANCTUARY STATE. OF COURSE, YOU DON’T WANT RIGHT TO CARRY, YOU WANT “EASY TARGETS AND VICTIMS”

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  10. While I like the sentiments and the ideas, McConnell and the rest of the Republicans know they have gun owners between a rock and a hard place. They can slow walk anything they want because the alternative is worse.

    Are gun owners really going to either actively or passively help put Democrats in power who will undoubtedly be far worse on the issue? Are you willing to give up the issue to DiFi and the like to spite Mitch and his ilk?

    Sure, pressure away and see if you can get them to do the right thing, but the long term solution is to Eric Cantor more of these folks, not give the reigns of power to the Dems.

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  11. Alright.
    At least a few of you are thinking it. I’ll go ahead and say it:
    “SQUEEEE!!! Awww! Look at the widdle SCAR!!! Must have cute gun for my kid!!!”
    🤠

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  12. The logically fallacy in her position is that she’s rebutting an argument no one ever made. No one has ever said, “Well, I’m only opposed to gun laws because I have some lofty belief that laws should only exist if they are 100% effective.” No, our position is that the kind of people who are willing to maliciously kill people are not pursuaded by laws. It’s not that we’re rejecting gun control because it won’t be 100% effective. We’re rejecting it because it won’t be effective at all.

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  13. SCOTUS has ruled that treaties take president over the Constitution. My take is that should be reversed. In my opinion, nothing takes president over the US Constitution.
    As for back-ground-checks, up until JFK’s death, guns could be purchased by mail order. I purchased my first one from Sears out of their catalog. Per capita, we didn’t have any more shooting, before JFK’s shooting, then we do now.

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  14. First off, this is not a Gun problem as much as a Mental Health problem, and they are completely ignoring that. If a Mentally ill person is intent on causing chaos and destruction, they will. If they can’t get their hands on a gun, they will find another tool. This bill is an excuse to whittle away at our rights a little at a time especially since this law is already on the books, but not enforced. Simple and cheap solution would be to enforce the law that already exists.
    How far will they go with this crap? How many of us have seen a doctor for situational depression after the death of a loved one? Or been prescribed a medication for anxiety? Government is already to large with too many laws over us.

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  15. I was 17 and a senior in high school. A number of students signed up for a one day outing to the skeet club in Chicago, out at the lake. We had a woman instructor with a semiauto 12 gauge. For someone who’d never handled a gun other than a pellet gun, much lest shot at moving targets, I was happy to have hit 11 of 25, including a double. It was a great day!

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  16. The Studebaker gets so much hate because of its external styling, but when you actually go and look at all the things they implemented for the first time, they were legitimately an innovative brand.

    Taurus, on the other hand… “Hey, Samsung is making their phones curve, why don’t we do the same thing to our gun” without considering anything like aimability or whether the slight relief actually makes it any easier to conceal.

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  17. My first time was when I was 17 or 18, and it was an M-16A1 (I was in Army ROTC).
    I arrived late and missed the safety briefing and instructions (thanks to my silly roommates playing a practical joke on me by disassembling my alarm clock during the night and hiding the pieces, so I had to bum a ride to Fort Dix).
    So without any safety briefing or instructions, they put me behind an M-16A1 for some trigger time!
    I don’t remember how well I shot that day, but the next summer I got some practice with bolt-action .22 rifles.
    That practice with 22’s must have helped, because the SECOND time I ever shot a centerfire rifle, I qualified as EXPERT with the M-16A1, hitting even the 300 meter targets using iron sights!

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  18. I can do rapid fire, Mozambique drills just not from holster but low ready. Also, for head shots the target has to be at least 25 feet so people don’t shoot out the lights. My range does not bother me if I am doing mag dumps or tactical or slide lock mag changes. Also, if you take an Intermediate class at the range, two Tuesdays a month you can practice drawing shooting. I’m signed up for the Intermediate class but some personal stuff has got in the way the last two times I was scheduled.

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  19. I like to see and hear experiences of people who have mastered combat skills, but I ask myself, “How many people use those tactics in a defensive gun use?” Many people talk about training to meet extreme conditions so that less-than-extreme situations are…”more survivable?” I have not seen an analysis of DGUs that indicate any particular style of facing a gunfight is more effective than any other. In fact, it seems the vast majority of DGUs are managed by people who likely do not train at all.

    Were there victims who would have survived if they trained to SEAL/DELTA proficiency? I do not know, but there is very little information indicating the SEAL/DELTA trained person survived when the 85 year old senior citizen armed with a .22 and no idea what “cover” means, (or which stance should have been used) didn’t because of lack of combat training.

    My observation is that combat training is predicated on the notion that one can pick fighting ground, one can expect to be attacked from all directions, simultaneously, one is 22-34 years of age, and in peak condition.

    Where is data/information about the number of civilian (not military, not police) gunfights at 30-75yrds? My impression (limited experience, I admit) is most DGUs are one-on-one, movement is restricted by surroundings, there is concealment available, but no “cover” capable of stopping a bullet.

    Do I think training to use a firearm is wasted? Absolutely not! Do I think training to operate in a combat zone is particularly useful? No, but if one wants to train for combat, fine; good onya. Emphasizing combat style/level training might just be discouraging many to train at all.

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  20. Every time the seasons change – and my clothing changes accordingly – I spend at least a couple of weeks re-practicing my draw stroke with dry fire. It’s a lot different drawing from under a coat & sweatshirt than from under a t-shirt. Par time apps can reveal the difference very quickly. Still working on getting to less than 2 seconds, but getting there.

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  21. Don’t worry. You will still be able to roll your own marijuana cigarette, at home in California. But you won’t be allowed to roll you’re own rifle barrels with groves, in you’re own home, in California.

    The three L’s Libertarians Liberals and the Left, And the socialist progressive homosexuals all want to tell you what you can and can’t do in every room in your home.

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  22. Rather then pass more gun control laws, why not review the ones we have? Why don’t they work? Better, why not repeal some of the laws that are failures?
    Then consider gun enforcement in say Chicago. They are closing the prisons to save money. They drop gun charges for plea bargains. They dismiss gun charges and allow early release. If gun laws aren’t enforced, why have them?

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