Ghost Gun Found On Drug-Dealing Student of Maryland High School

In Charles County, Maryland, a 17-year-old student showed up to Westlake High School with a loaded 9mm ghost gun, a bag full of THC products, and enough packaging supplies to suggest this wasn’t his first day on the job. He got caught because a staff member smelled weed.

That’s it. That was the warning sign. A strong odor of cannabis tipped off school officials, and when they confronted the student, he tried to bolt. A school resource officer stepped in and detained him. Inside the kid’s backpack was a privately made 9mm handgun with no serial number, plus cannabis, THC gummies, jars of THC resin, a scale, and packaging materials. Let’s not pretend what was going on here. This wasn’t some confused kid with a vape pen. This was a walking red flag with a weapon.

Any time a gun is introduced into a school, it could have fatal effects. That’s not an exaggeration. It doesn’t matter whether the person holding it intends to use it. Guns in schools are inherently dangerous because of how fast things can spiral. All it takes is one impulsive moment, one bad decision, one flash of rage or fear. That’s all.

The gun didn’t have a serial number, making it a ghost gun. A privately made, untraceable gun, which was made illegal in Maryland three years ago.

Maryland’s ghost gun law went into effect on June 1, 2022. That law required all privately made firearms, unfinished frames, and build kits to be marked with a personal identification number by a licensed dealer. If you already owned one, you had until March 1, 2023, to get it marked and registered. After that, possessing or transferring an unserialized firearm became a crime, one punishable by up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

So the law exists. And yet here we are, with a student smuggling a DIY handgun into a school like it’s a lunchbox. That raises the questions how did he get it, and why does this keep happening?

No one was hurt, and that’s worth being thankful for. But this is the second gun incident in Charles County Public Schools in just a few weeks. The school superintendent admitted as much, noting that while rare, these incidents are a very real threat to school safety. She’s calling for vigilance, for better communication, for parents to check their kids’ backpacks and social media. It’s not a bad message, but it’s one that fails to stick.

The problem isn’t a lack of messages. It’s a lack of enforcement, a lack of oversight, and a culture that still treats these weapons like harmless collector toys instead of what they are, easy tools for untraceable violence. A student can’t legally own a gun, much less one without a serial number. Yet, he got one anyway. That should scare every parent in not just Maryland, but the nation.

Let’s not forget this wasn’t just about a gun. The student allegedly had marijuana, THC edibles, resin, a scale, and packaging materials. We’re talking full-scale drug distribution, not teenage experimentation. A whole criminal enterprise in a backpack.

He was charged as an adult and is being held at the Charles County Detention Center.

There are less than 30 days left in the school year. That’s almost 30 more mornings someone can show up with a gun tucked between textbooks. Maybe next time, the warning sign won’t be a strong smell of weed. Maybe there won’t be one at all.

Until then, it’s another ghost gun, another school dodging disaster, and another reminder that a law on paper means nothing if it’s only reactive. You can’t just wait around for every illegal gun in the state to conveniently fall into your lap. Then again, given how many of them are out there, maybe that’s not such a long shot after all.

(Sources)