Photo: Boswell’s ghost gun
February 6, 2022 – Santa Barbara County
Perhaps it’s the daily news reports of the potential outbreak of armed conflict between Russia and her neighbors to the west, or perhaps it’s the haggling in the halls of the U.S. Congress over crime statistics emanating from many American cities responsible for what appears to be a proliferation of firearms violations throughout the Central Coast.
Whatever the underlying cause, there is little doubt that law enforcement efforts to control the proliferation of illegal firearms on the public streets continue to support the fear that a significant percentage of folks are “carrying” an illegal deadly weapon in abject defiance of the law requiring the registration of firearms within the State of California.
Evidence of that came once again just after the noon hour on January 27 th when Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department deputies were dispatched to a Buellton neighborhood pursuant to a citizen’s report of what SBSD Public Information Officer Raquel Zick described as “a suspicious subject in a vehicle.” Responding deputies quickly made contact with 49-year-old Auberry, Ca. resident Johnny Boswell.
When deputies asked Boswell to alight from the vehicle, a quick reach under the driver’s seat came up with a loaded, unregistered “ghost gun” and “more than 28.5 grams of cannabis. As possession of that amount of weed and an unregistered, loaded pistol in a motor vehicle is against the law, Boswell earned himself a free ride to Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was booked on charges of carrying a loaded firearm in public, possession of an unregistered loaded firearm, and a cannabis possession violation. He and his two adult passengers were “cited and released.”
Photo: courtesy Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department
