Southern California law enforcement officials are concerned about the proliferation of illegally assembled “ghost guns,” but they also say aggressive enforcement seems to be putting a dent in the number of the untraceable firearms on the streets.
The total linked to crimes statewide has decreased in the past two years, after soaring for the previous dozen years, according to a state Department of Justice report.
Ghost guns, known in law enforcement as unserialized firearms, trouble officials for several reasons. Because they lack serial numbers as required by state and federal law, investigators are unable to run them through a database to determine whether they were used in previous crimes and connect them to suspects. And they are appealing to people who cannot legally purchase a serialized gun and want to use them to commit crimes.
These guns start as just one part: an unfinished lower receiver, which houses the gun’s firing mechanisms. Because they’re incomplete, unfinished lower receivers don’t need to be registered. The rest of the gun can then be assembled from parts bought online.
“The rise of ghost guns is a significant threat to the safety and security of our communities,” San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus said.
Ghost guns, which lack the legally required serial number, and other illegal firearms seized by the San Bernardino Police Department during raids are displayed. Police say ghost guns are difficult to trace back to their original owners or determine whether they were used in past crimes. (Courtesy of San Bernardino Police Department)
A state law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022 bans the sale, transfer, or possession of unserialized firearm parts. But the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet heard arguments in a case in which the federal government appealed a district court ruling in Texas that prohibited implementing a rule created by the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that is similar to California’s. That case is expected to be heard in October.
The ATF seized 25,785 ghost guns nationwide in 2022, the most recent year for which federal data are available.
San Bernardino County, and the city of San Bernardino in particular, have among the highest totals and rates of ghost guns linked to crimes that were recovered and reported to the state in 2023, according to the state Department of Justice’s Crime Guns in California report released this year.
The report shows:
San Bernardino County seized 1,563 ghost guns in 2023, or 7.16 per 10,000 residents — the highest rate in the state.
Only Los Angeles County took in more ghost guns, 1,914, although because its population is eight times that of San Bernardino County, its rate per 10,000 residents is much lower, 1.93.
Fontana police seized 132 ghost guns in 2023, or 6.31 per 10,000 residents.
Overall in the state in 2023, 10,390 ghost guns were reported to the DOJ.
More ghost guns could have been seized than were noted in the report if police were unable to connect them to a theft or crime and did not report them to the justice department.
Despite the reported seizures, Dicus described the numbers as “an alarming trend” and said some of his deputies have been shot by suspects wielding ghost guns. Deputy Marcus Mason was hospitalized for a month after a man shot him four times in 2022. Deputy Dustin Whitson was hospitalized for almost two months in 2021 after being hit by gunfire.
“The biggest problem is they can be mass-produced so easily. There is no tracking mechanism,” Dicus said.
San Bernardino Police Chief Darren Goodman frequently touts gun seizures in his social media posts. His officers recovered 339 ghost guns in 2023, a total only behind the cities of Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego. But its rate per 10,000 residents was 14.43, easily topping those three much larger cities.
DOJ statistics show a steady increase in the number of ghost guns seized that were linked to crimes statewide from 2010 through 2021. That figure was 848 in 2010 and reached 13,091 in 2021 — almost double the previous year’s total — before decreasing to 12,290 in 2022 and 10,390 in 2023.
‘Aggressive efforts’
An analysis of why the seizure of ghost guns linked to crimes has decreased in the past two years will be included in a future DOJ report, the Crime Guns in California authors said.
Police credit their efforts to remove the weapons from the streets, leaving fewer to seize.
“There’s a lot of criminals running around with guns, and we definitely have our fair share,” Goodman said. “What those numbers truly represent are aggressive efforts to take guns out of the hands of people who should not have them.”
Riverside police Officer Ryan Railsback points at a ghost gun during a 2022 news conference about gang takedowns related to two homicide investigations. Ghost guns, which lack legally required serial numbers, are difficult to trace back to their original owners. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
Guns and cars
Since 2021, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors has approved an additional $3 million annually to fund Operation Consequences, which targets violent crime, gangs and illegal firearms. Deputies seized 2,194 illegal firearms of all types from October 2022 to June 2024, Dicus said.
“The only way for us to get those numbers in the report is your law enforcement officers getting out there and doing that proactive policing,” Dicus said.
At a time when advocates of policing reforms are urging fewer traffic stops to limit violent interactions between police and civilians, Goodman is holding firm. He has said there is a nexus between crime and cars — one has to drive to or from a crime scene, Goodman reasons. And police sometimes find illegal guns during those stops.
His officers recovered 1,086 illegal guns of all types in 2022 and 1,218 in 2023. Goodman credits the seizures with a 50% plunge in homicides in the city from 72 in 2022 to 36 in 2023. (Homicides were down nationally during this time.)
“We are drawing a direct line between stopping a violent act and homicides,” the chief said.
New laws
Los Angeles Police Department Detective Pat Hoffman said his department “has been at the forefront of reducing the proliferation of ghost guns and gun violence in general.”
He also credited legislation. In 2021, the city passed an ordinance prohibiting the purchase, possession or sale of unserialized firearm frames or receivers and unserialized completed firearms. And a state law that became effective in 2022 bans the sale, transfer, or possession of unserialized firearm parts.
The exact number of ghost guns seized in the city and county of Los Angeles is difficult to determine. The DOJ statistics said the city collected only 74 more than San Bernardino did in 2023 — 393 to 319 — despite having 3.6 million more residents. The county data are also puzzling.
But Hoffman explained that the city actually seized 1,232 ghost guns in 2023. The discrepancy, he explained, was because not all of them received an ID number from the state that would allow the guns to be traced by the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Only then could they be entered into the DOJ database.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to questions about ghost guns. Two of its deputies were shot by a man with a ghost gun who ambushed them in 2020. And in 2019, then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva said, a student at Saugus High in Santa Clarita shot two other students to death with a ghost gun.
Riverside County seized 770 ghost guns in 2023, the fourth-most in the state. Its rate per 10,000 residents was 3.17, less than half of San Bernardino County’s 7.14 and twice that of Orange County’s 1.47.
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department declined to comment for this story.
The city of Riverside seized 112 ghost guns, or 3.54 per 10,000 residents, in 2013.
Orange County sheriff’s Sgt. Matt Parrish said he didn’t know how much of a threat ghost guns are in the county compared to those that are legally marked but used illegally.
“Do we come across them, yes,” Parrish said. “They are definitely part of the equation.”
Investigators will sometimes bring in the ATF when they make a large bust.
“If we can figure out somebody who is making them, we are going to try to grow the investigation,” Parrish said.
Magnus Lofstrom, policy director of the Public Policy Institute of California, which attempts to improve policy in the state through its research, said that legal gun ownership in the state increased by more than 1 million during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Violent crimes in which firearms were used in California have been increasing, he said: Since 2019, aggravated assaults are up 61%, homicides have risen 38% and robberies are up 18%. Lofstrom said he believes ghost guns have been used in some of those crimes.
“We don’t know what that share is, but that’s part of it,” Lofstrom said. “I’m hoping we’ll get an opportunity to look at this issue a little bit more. It’s greatly important to all of us.”
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