No permit? No problem.

You need a permit to legally buy and possess a handgun in New York, along with 15 other states and Washington, D.C. But as we keep seeing, there are ways around the law.

We saw it in the arrest of two teenagers last Thursday in Albany when sheriff ’s deputies pulled them over for a traffic stop and found a small arsenal beside the young man in the back seat.

And in a shootout outside a private club Oct. 9 that left a 29-year-old veteran dead and six people wounded.

And in a shooting outside a New York City bar that left four people wounded before police shot and wounded the shooter.

In each instance, police found what’s known as a ghost gun on the scene — a weapon without a serial number, and built from kits that can be ordered in most states through the mail with no permit or even a federal background check required. The guns come nearly finished, and can be made into working firearms — pistols, revolvers, semi-automatic rifles — with the help of a few basic tools (which may come with the kit). They can even be obtained in most states where the purchase of a handgun would normally require a permit.

With only New York and New Jersey banning ghost guns, they remain widely and readily available in the U.S. And since there is no serial number on them, transferring them once they’re fully assembled carries little risk for sellers since it would be hard to trace the gun back to them.

And their popularity is growing. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says 23,906 such guns were found at crime scenes between 2016 and 2020, rising from 1,750 to 8,712 a year over that time.

The continued availability of these weapons comes largely thanks to ATF, which so far has stuck by the opinion that these nearly completed firearms aren’t firearms, and Congress, where the gun lobby has co-opted or cowed enough senators and representatives to block even the most common-sense and widely supported firearms measures. Those include universal background checks for all firearms purchases, bans on high-capacity magazines, and, yes, a ban on ghost guns — which nearly 63 percent of respondents supported in an April Morning Consult/politico poll, with only 21 percent opposed.

In a glimmer of sanity, the Justice Department is proposing a rule that would expand the definition of a firearm to include ghost guns and require companies that sell gun kits to print serial numbers on the parts and run background checks for buyers. Final action could come by the year’s end. Lawsuits will no doubt follow.

Far more bulletproof would be a law, but that seems unlikely in an atmosphere in which President Joe Biden was forced to withdraw his nominee to lead the ATF, David Chipman, a former ATF agent who left the agency and became a prominent gun control advocate. United Republican opposition and likely “no” votes from some Democrats tanked the nomination. Because who would want an experienced individual committed to gun regulation to lead the agency that enforces firearms regulations?

Would reining in ghost guns solve all of America’s gun violence? Of course not. Would it save lives? Consider that one of the ghost guns seized in last week’s traffic stop in Albany was capable of firing 50 rounds in a few seconds. There’s your chilling answer.