I was 14 when I got my first 10-speed bike. My mom got it for me for Christmas.
Four months later, the bike was stolen inside a Brooklyn drug store where I had gone to pick up a prescription for a friend.
My mom was devastated for me, but not enough to replace the bike. I had to do that on my own.
With no job and no money I built my own bike with spare and donated parts, including an Italian racing frame from the friend for whom I had gotten the prescription.
It was orange. Other than that, it was the best bike ever, faster and lighter than the one my mother bought.
I think about that bike sometimes when I consider the creative juices of some teenagers today. They are just as motivated, if not more.
Only, now they’re building guns.
When a teenage girl, Angellyh Yambo, was killed in the Bronx earlier this month, the stray bullet came from a gun that somebody put together.
Cops said Jeremiah Ryan, 17, was wielding a “ghost gun” when he unloaded a half-dozen bullets from a half-block away from Angellyh, near University Heights High School’s South Bronx Campus.
Two other teens were wounded in the shooting.
In January, police said 16-year-old Julian Oliveros was shot by another teenager with a ghost gun in New Rochelle.
Tommy Rivera, 16, was charged with second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, both felonies.
Cops said the 9 mm semi-automatic handgun used in the shooting was built from parts easily accessible on the internet.
A ghost gun — otherwise known as a gun — is just as deadly as any weapon that comes off an assembly line. But they’re even more problematic because they’re unlicensed, have no serial numbers, and it’s very difficult for police to trace them.
“Ghost guns are worse because they are operating outside the law,” said U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., who is sponsoring legislation in Congress aimed at companies exploiting the loophole. “You cannot buy a normal gun online without a serial number and a background check. There’s been a gargantuan growth in the number of ghost guns.”
This month, President Joe Biden announced his administration is enacting a regulation that will require serial numbers on ghost gun parts, and background checks for ghost gun kit buyers. The rule will designate ghost gun kits as firearms under federal law.
But Torres said that is not enough, because the next administration can just change the rule and reopen the loophole.
I told Torres about the bike I built as a kid, and he asked me how long it took to put together. I told him it took me a few weeks, including the time it took to gather the parts.
Ghost guns, he said, are as easy to assemble as LEGOs. Gun-makers can use 3D printers to manufacture plastic or polymer parts in about 12 hours from blueprints that can be easily downloaded online.
“Any kid anywhere can buy gun components online without a background check and put those components into a fully functional firearm,” Torres said. “I never thought I would live in a world where guns can be printed or guns can be manufactured at home. It’s as surreal as it is shocking.”
My rebuilt orange bike got me through most of my adolescence, to football practice after school to church choir rehearsal on the weekends. It carried me to nearly every corner of Brooklyn, and parts of Queens and Manhattan.
What I didn’t tell Ritchie was that the rebuilt bike was eventually stolen, too. It was another adolescent setback, but at least it didn’t involve a dangerous weapon that fell into the wrong hands.
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