Just days after a teenager allegedly shot a 15-year-old Montgomery County student in a high school bathroom using a ghost gun, high school senior Lily Freeman stood outside the Maryland State House with about 100 gun-control activists, urging lawmakers to ban the purchase and possession of the untraceable firearms.
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Freeman, 17, from Whitman High School in Bethesda, said she is frustrated and numb from the violence.
“It is not teenagers’ jobs to advocate for common-sense gun legislation,” Freeman said, surrounded by representatives from Maryland Moms Demand Action, Maryland Students Demand Action and others, which had rallied to champion a bill that has been sponsored by Sen. Susan C. Lee (D-Montgomery) and Del. Lesley J. Lopez (D-Montgomery) for years but has failed to gain approval.
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The firearms, which are assembled from parts and sold in kits on the Internet without background checks, are increasingly becoming the weapon of choice among gun traffickers, according to top law enforcement officers. The guns contain no serial numbers.
Magruder student bought ‘ghost gun’ components online before wounding classmate, prosecutor says
In Prince George’s County, Police Chief Malik Aziz said recently that officers seized 27 untraceable ghost guns in 2019. Last year the department recovered 264.
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In the past few weeks, Prince George’s police have recovered ghost guns after arresting people accused of possessing drugs and stealing a vehicle.
Since 2019, Aziz said, investigators have linked at least 13 homicides, 10 robberies and 20 aggravated assaults — many committed by young people, including some in their teens — to ghost guns.
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The bill, which has the backing of top Democratic officials, including state Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D), is the latest attempt by the Democratic-controlled legislature to rein in violence by strengthening the state’s gun-control laws.
Frosh said the bill would ban the sale, receipt and transfer of unfinished frames or receivers that are not serialized by the manufacturer, and the ban to purchase new ghost guns would take effect June 1. The effective date for possession would be Jan. 1, 2023. The bill would not apply to antique firearms or guns manufactured before 1968; a grandfather clause would allow someone with a ghost gun to either sell the firearm to a licensed dealer or have the weapon properly imprinted with a serial number by a federally licensed dealer.
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A violation would be a misdemeanor that would come with a sentence of up to three years of prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
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According to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the District and 10 states, including California, Virginia and New Jersey, have enacted laws to at least partially address the problem of undetectable or untraceable guns.
In Baltimore, Police Commissioner Michael S. Harrison said the city is on pace to seize 700 ghost guns this year. In 2018, the police recovered only 12. He said 69 acts of violence were linked to the 345 ghost guns that were recovered last year.
The proliferation of ghost guns is “frightening. … I could spend hours telling you stories about how these ghost guns hurt our community and make our streets unsafe,” he said during a recent news conference.
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Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy (D) said the county has seen its ghost gun numbers increase “fivefold in two years.”
“We’re moving in the same direction everybody else is,” he said. “Unless we address intelligently ghost guns all the prior legislation that we’ve passed to regulate guns in our community really becomes meaningless.”
House Judiciary Chairman Luke H. Clippinger (D-Baltimore City), who also works as an assistant state’s attorney in Anne Arundel County, said the measure originally introduced five years ago was a ban of 3-D guns and it was difficult for lawmakers to wrap their arms around.
This measure attempts to address the latest technology, which Clippinger acknowledged has been difficult to keep up with.
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In recent years, Maryland has banned bump stocks and other rapid-trigger devices and has attempted to keep guns out of the hands of people who are deemed a danger to themselves and others with the enactment of a “red-flag” bill.
D.C. Council votes to clarify definition of ‘ghost guns’ in response to lawsuit
Last year, the General Assembly voted to close a loophole that waived a background check for buyers who purchased shotguns and rifles privately, including through a private dealer at a gun show.
Gov. Larry Hogan (R) signed the red-flag bill and the measure to ban bump stocks, but he vetoed last year’s legislation on background checks for private sales of long guns. A spokesperson for the governor said Hogan would review the ghost guns measure if it reached his desk.