US gun-control advocates think that civilians shouldn't be allowed to have such weapons, or failing that, that they should be licenced or at least regulated or recorded in some way. US gun-rights advocates disagree, and mostly seem to be having things their way, though public emotion around "assault weapons" means that some states do have special laws about them.
It is perhaps worth noting that quite a lot of Americans do die by gunshot every year: at first sight it appears to be an issue about as serious as accidental poisonings or car crashes (all three causes did for similar numbers of Americans
in 2009, around 30,000 each). But, significantly, when an American dies by gunshot it is normally suicide: when it
is homicide (around a third of the time, so gun homicide is a noticeably less serious problem than cars and poisonings) it is very unlikely that the weapon used will be an "assault weapon" or indeed a rifle of any kind.
Nearly all US gunshot homicides are carried out using handguns, not longarms. If the USA has a gun crime problem, it is nothing to do with "assault weapons" like the AR-15.
It might also be worth noting that, as gun-control advocates claim, it is rare for civilian US gun owners to use their weapons legally against criminals (for instance in "home defence" scenarios). However there
are between 200 and 300 justifiable homicides of this kind every year, a number not so very much lower than
the fatal shootingsaccounted for by law-enforcement types acting in the line of duty. This is a small phenomenon in such a big country with so many privately held guns: however one can say that gun owners justifiably shooting felons in the act is a bigger phenomenon by orders of magnitude than school attacks or other criminal mass-shootings.
So America's gun culture has its costs and its benefits: but neither are actually big issues. After all, a Brit from the gun-control paradise existing in the UK*** seldom says to himself or herself "no, I shall not go and visit/work in the USA, they have guns there and I might get shot" - it would be silly. It would exceptionally silly to worry about being shot with an AR-15.
So perhaps gun control doesn't really need to be such a big issue in the States. It absolutely certainly isn't a big deal that the Ghost Gunner is on the market, no matter what earnest US gun-control types may say. It's a damn sight more difficult to arm yourself with an AR-15 by means of Ghost Gunner than it is to just go and buy one legally.
