Cities across California are ramping up efforts to try to stop the flow of so-called ghost guns into their jurisdictions, as the do-it-yourself weapons appear with increasing frequency at homicide scenes, traffic stops and community gun buybacks.
As state and federal laws meant to bring ghost guns into compliance with traditional firearm laws await implementation, local officials and prosecutors across California are increasingly resorting to bans and lawsuits to regulate the weapons in their cities.
San Franciscopassed its ban on ghost guns – weapons built from firearm parts sold without serial numbers, making them difficult to trace – on 7 September. The measure forbids the sale of unserialized weapons and weapon parts by unlicensed dealers.
On 2 August, a month before San Francisco’s board of supervisors unanimously passed its ban, San Diego’s city council voted 8-1 to pass one of its own, making the city the first in the state to prohibit the homemade weapons. That ordinance prohibits the sale of unserialized frames and receivers, two essential pieces of firearms, and forces retailers to complete a background check on customers that buy the parts.
“Ghost guns are the future of the industry and we’re going to have to catch up with our legal interventions,” said the San Diego city council member Marni von Wilpert, who introduced the ban. “We’re trying to pressure manufacturers to not let people who are prohibited buyers from getting these guns.”
San Diego police said they had recovered 211 ghost guns in 2020, up from 77 in 2019. This year, they have already gathered at least 360, according to the department. In April, a gunman used a ghost gun to kill one person and injure four others in the city’s bustling Gaslamp District.
In San Francisco, police found 97 ghost guns in 2019 and 164 in 2020, according to the city’s police department. So far this year, at least 150 ghost guns have come through the city’s crime lab, according to the San Francisco district attorney’s office.
In addition to the bans, cities including Los Angeles and San Francisco are suing ghost gun manufacturers and dealers over alleged deceptive business practices. The San Francisco district attorney, Chesa Boudin, in August sued three online ghost gun kit retailers, alleging false advertisement and violating California’s business competition statutes.
“We’re hoping [our lawsuit] will be a deterrent and establish case law that makes it easier to rein in these ghost gun companies,” Boudin told the Guardian. “We’re trying to get ahead of the problem so we have fewer victims and fewer things to prosecute.”
The goal of the lawsuit, Boudin said, was to make companies that sell gun kits explain the legal responsibilities that their prospective customers have once they buy and assemble a kit. Under California law, once someone puts together a gun, they are required to register it with the state’s department of justice and get it serialized. But Boudin alleges these shops are failing to alert customers to this.
The legal action “tries to turn the tables on manufacturers and dealers who have been claiming to be above the law while their customers are the ones dealing with prosecution and gun violence”, said Hannah Shearer, litigation director of Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The law office is partnering with Boudin’s office on the city’s lawsuit.
“The issue is that the use of ghost guns has been dramatically expanded and companies are operating in a regulatory vacuum,” Boudin said. “City officials and DAs have been unable to keep up with policies that could check these companies.”
Buyers of the parts are generally not required to pass a background check. The unserialized do-it-yourself firearms were once a niche market, mostly put together by hobbyists and gun enthusiasts. But in recent years the weapons have been used in school shootings, acts of domestic terrorism, and the everyday gun violence that most affects lower-income Black and Latino communities.
“The bullets don’t have names, and now the guns don’t have serial numbers,” said Rudy Corpuz of United Playaz, a community-based gun violence prevention program in San Francisco.
Corpuz says he started noticing unserialized weapons popping up at his organization’s annual gun buybacks a few years ago and now he sees them regularly. He has been a vocal supporter of Boudin’s lawsuit and the recently enacted ban, and spoke during the press conference announcing the city ordinance in May.
“This takes a lot of courage. You’re pushing water uphill and going against the real profiters,” Corpuz said of city officials’ actions. “But it’s all done in the spirit of saving lives and preventing people from going to jail, especially Black and brown people, who go in at an alarming rate.”
The efforts at the city level come as a California law that would treat kit sales in a manner similar to traditional firearms is due to go into effect in the summer of 2022. On the federal level, the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco has proposed a new rule that would expand the definition of what it considers a firearm, establishing federal rules for homemade guns.
But some cities have argued they can’t wait until those efforts start having an impact. “Local governments are not trying to wait another year before we have meaningful protections,” Ari Freilich, state policy director for Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said of recent bans and lawsuits.
“These weapons are already out there, but it’s important to ban and address them through lawsuits to make future sales harder,” Shearer said.
While officials and attorneys admit they are behind when it comes to regulating ghost guns and those who make and sell them, they are hopeful that bans and lawsuits can still make a dent in decreasing homicides. “When it comes to these guns, everybody plays their part and we need every piece of the puzzle,” Corpuz of United Playaz said.
“Every level of government is behind the ball on ghost guns, and I hope that someday every city will have a similar ordinance,” Wilpert, of the San Diego city council, said.
This article was amended on 30 September 2021 to reflect that San Diego, not San Francisco, was the first California city to pass a ghost gun ban.
