Ghost Guns Are Prevalent in California

Federal authorities report that nearly one-third of firearms recovered in California are homemade, unserialized, and untraceable. For almost a year, Kevin Savangsy allegedly sold weapons to federal agents in parking lots and garages in Sacramento. The 29-year-old assured his customers that he could obtain “hella stuff,” including guns that would evade police detection.

Court documents indicate that Savangsy fulfilled his promise.

Initially, Savangsy’s inventory included conventional firearms like handguns, AK-47s, and AR-15s. However, on the morning of October 23, 2018, he introduced his latest product: a homemade, unserialized pistol modeled after a Glock. Over the following three months, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) purchased a dozen more unserialized weapons, including AR-15s modified for fully automatic fire. A raid on Savangsy’s home in late January yielded thousands of dollars in cash, pounds of drugs, and 24 machine guns.

Unserialized weapons, commonly referred to as “ghost guns,” have captured the American imagination as the work of hobbyists and DIY enthusiasts. However, as their popularity has increased, criminals have discovered that ghost guns can circumvent California’s stringent gun laws. These weapons are easy to acquire and undetectable by authorities since they are constructed without government oversight.

An investigation by The Trace, in partnership with NBC Bay Area, NBC San Diego, and NBC Los Angeles, found that law enforcement agencies across California are recovering record numbers of ghost guns. According to the ATF, 30 percent of all guns recovered by agents in the state are unserialized, rendering them untraceable in criminal investigations.

California police departments that monitor ghost gun recoveries report similar trends. “This isn’t just for enthusiasts anymore; it’s become a tool for those who commit acts of violence,” said Graham Barlowe, the ATF’s Sacramento field office agent in charge.

A ghost gun is a firearm produced outside the traditional supply chain. It can be printed on a 3-D printer or assembled from parts sold by numerous companies that create nearly completed firearms, known as “80 percent receivers,” which require no background check to purchase.

 

California police records show ghost guns have been used in homicides, robberies, active shooter incidents, and domestic violence cases. In July 2014, bank robbers in Stockton took three hostages on a high-speed chase with police, resulting in a rolling gun battle that ended with one hostage and two suspects dead. Police recovered a homemade AK-47 at the scene. A year later, a 21-year-old man shot and killed a 19-year-old woman before taking his own life at his home in Walnut Creek. The former Stanford engineering student had assembled a working gun from parts purchased online.

Several cases reviewed by The Trace and NBC revealed that perpetrators specifically sought out ghost guns because they would fail background checks. In 2013, John Zawahari assembled an unserialized AR-15 after failing a gun store screening. He used the weapon to kill five people on a college campus in Santa Monica. In 2017, Kevin Neal, a 44-year-old cannabis farmer with a criminal record barring him from gun ownership, purchased parts online to build an AR-15. During a 25-minute shooting spree across Tehama County, he killed five people and injured 18 more.

Experts attribute the accessibility of ghost guns to a cottage industry of retailers selling nearly completed firearms that require no screening to purchase.

As ghost guns proliferate across the state, lawmakers and police are struggling to grasp the problem’s scale, let alone address it. In 2016, the California Legislature passed a law requiring residents to register homemade weapons with law enforcement and outlawed the possession of unregistered ghost guns. However, records obtained by The Trace and NBC indicate that the law has had little effect. Compliance is low, and prosecutors have yet to bring charges under the new statute.

California law enforcement officials now encounter ghost guns made by criminals in their basements and organized groups producing untraceable firepower by the hundreds. “We’ve seen machine shops where they’re lining them up and completing them in 20-minute intervals with multiple machines running at once,” said Barlowe.

Most American guns start their life with a federal government-mandated stream of paperwork. These weapons, each with a unique serial number, enter the civilian market through licensed firearms dealers, which require background checks. Over time, every additional sale is recorded, creating a log of a gun’s life crucial for criminal investigations.

A ghost gun bypasses this system entirely because it doesn’t automatically receive a serial number, isn’t sold by a federally licensed dealer, and doesn’t generate paperwork.

Federal law permits the creation of firearms for personal use. Homemade weapons have long been cherished by gunsmiths and hobbyists seeking a firearm tailored to their precise specifications. However, after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, some activists saw ghost guns as a way to create and own weapons that some lawmakers wanted to regulate.

Cody Wilson, a gun rights activist from Austin, Texas, led this charge. His company, Defense Distributed, made headlines by publishing online schematics for nearly completed guns on 3D printers. With a few additional parts purchased from a gun store, anyone could make their own firearm. “It’s very, very cheap now to make these things for yourself, just because of where we are with the state of technology,” Wilson, who is currently facing charges of sexually assaulting a minor, told The Trace in 2015.

Several companies have since capitalized on the trend, selling “80 percent lower receivers.” In layman’s terms, a receiver is a gun’s spine, similar to a car’s chassis or a building’s foundation. Once a lower receiver is “complete,” it is legally a firearm and requires a background check to sell. However, an 80 percent lower is considered a hunk of metal by the government, even though it can easily be turned into a completed firearm. “If you can put Ikea furniture together, you can make one of these,” said Carlos Canino, the Special Agent in Charge of the ATF’s Los Angeles Division. “They could make one thousand or ten thousand of these. Nobody would know.”

This anonymity makes ghost guns attractive and valuable to criminals. According to Barlowe, a completed ghost gun on the black market fetches between $1,500 and $2,000, compared to around $500 for a store-bought AR-15. “Most people are looking to double their money on their investment. However, we see cases where they quadruple their money,” he said.

Many gun rights advocates dismiss law enforcement’s concerns that ghost guns pose an acute threat to public safety. Rick Vasquez, the former head of the ATF’s Firearms Technology Division, disagrees. He has seen ghost guns, assembled with parts from the United States, recovered by law enforcement in countries as far away as Brazil and Australia. “It’s so common; it’s absolutely everywhere,” he said.

On June 28, 2018, police and firefighters in San Diego responded to a domestic disturbance at a condo in the College Area neighborhood. After 20 minutes of knocking, they began smelling smoke. Bodycam footage shows a firefighter prying open the door, followed by gunfire erupting from within. An officer was struck by a rifle round but survived. The suspect, 28-year-old Joe Darwish, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He possessed a rifle and pistol, both homemade and unserialized. Darwish was prohibited from owning firearms due to his criminal record.

San Diego is one of several California police departments reporting significant increases in ghost gun recoveries. In 2017, officers recovered five ghost guns in criminal investigations. The following year, recoveries surged to 52 — a 940 percent increase.

“It caught me by surprise,” recalled Toniann Rebick, a criminalist with the San Diego Police Department. “Then a few weeks later, I had another one. All of a sudden, these are common.”

The Trace and NBC requested ghost gun seizure data from over a dozen California law enforcement agencies. Most departments, including Los Angeles and Chula Vista, do not track unserialized weapon recoveries. Those that do reported marked increases. In Oceanside, police recovered 19 ghost guns in 2018, a 280 percent increase over the previous year. San Jose, which does not separate ghost guns from other firearms without serial numbers, saw recoveries increase by 51 percent during the same period.

“We work hard to ensure that individuals pass background checks and are responsible gun owners,” said Eddie Garcia, the San Jose Police Department chief. “That really gets thrown out the door when people can just make a homemade gun.”

State law enforcement sources say that due to a lack of funding, training, and outdated software, police are ill-equipped to track recovered ghost guns, making the process laborious and confusing.

Tracking ghost guns isn’t just a local issue. Congressional and ATF sources told The Trace and NBC that the bureau does not document recoveries on a national scale. Spokespeople for ATF field divisions in Los Angeles and Sacramento said that approximately 30 percent of all recoveries made by agents are unserialized weapons. The ATF declined The Trace’s request to provide the number of weapons recovered but stated that ghost guns have become a high priority in criminal investigations.

“Whenever you want to effect change, the first step is to measure the issue and then come up with solutions,” said Barlowe. “We’re still at Step One.”

In 2016, California lawmakers passed a bill requiring residents who make their own weapons to register them with state authorities. Anyone caught with an unregistered, unserialized weapon would face criminal charges. The bill’s author, Assemblymember Jim Cooper, a former sheriff’s deputy, described the legislation as a “clear message that the State of California will not sit idly by while innocent people are being killed.”

However, records obtained by The Trace and NBC show that the law has had little effect. Since July 2018, only 2,214 ghost guns have been registered per the law, a small number compared to the estimated 4.2 million Californians who own at least one firearm. Furthermore, not a single person has been charged with possessing an unregistered ghost gun since the criminal penalties took effect in January 2019.

State law enforcement officials told The Trace and NBC that the law is a low priority for prosecutors and police. Assemblymember Mike Gipson, whose district includes Compton and the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, two of California’s most violent areas, conceded that the law lacks teeth, describing it as entirely based on an “honor system.”

Earlier this year, Gipson proposed a new bill, AB 879, which would require background checks to purchase certain gun parts, including 80 percent lower receivers. He believes the paper trail will provide an investigative resource for law enforcement if a ghost gun falls into the wrong hands.

For Dimitri Karras, ghost guns presented a business opportunity. In 2010, the former Marine founded Ares Armor, a gun parts store in Oceanside. Karras stocked up on 80 percent lowers and other parts needed to complete homemade firearms. “The idea was to get as many people interested in participating as possible, to give it some legitimacy,” said Karras.

Ares Armor was one of the many companies founded in recent years to cater to customers wishing to build their own guns. Because the parts they sell are legal, they operate openly, alongside online retailers with domain names like ghostguns.com and ghostrifles.com.

These businesses pose a unique challenge to law enforcement. The ATF, also responsible for monitoring the industry, started carefully observing businesses like Ares Armor in 2014 to determine if their products crossed the line from part to firearm, which would require a federal license and background checks for each sale.

The ATF decided that Ares Armor had crossed the line and raided the stores. Two dozen agents seized 6,000 incomplete receivers and a list of 5,000 customers. Prosecutors accused Ares Armor of selling AR-15 receivers that met the legal definition of “firearms.”

After a series of court battles and without officially charging Karras, the ATF returned the gun parts, which Karras later sold. “They did absolutely nothing about it,” he said. “Because at the end of the day, they know they’re wrong.”

The ATF declined to comment on the case.

In 2014, Polymer80, one of the nation’s larger producers of 80 percent receivers, was also raided. The case was dropped. ATF sources told The Trace that the U.S. Attorney’s Office dropped the case due to fears that a courtroom loss would create a bad legal precedent. The office declined to comment but noted that its methods for dealing with ghost guns are constantly evolving. “Unserialized AR-15-style firearm prosecutions, like other prosecutions, must adapt to new technology and new attempts to evade the law,” said spokesperson Lauren Horwood.

In recent years, federal law enforcement has shifted focus from manufacturers and storefronts to known criminal elements seeking ghost guns. EP Armory and Polymer80 continue their business. Karras, now working at another gun parts store, also continues to sell ghost gun parts on the legal market.

What happens in California doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Ghost guns are now spreading across the United States. “I see this as a wave that started in California and is going to move east,” said Steve Lindley, the former head of the Bureau of Firearms at the California Department of Justice, now with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Lindley believes that with political sentiment leaning towards tougher gun control measures, more gun buyers across the country will go underground. “Even though you can buy an assault weapon in Minnesota or Texas — why not buy one that the government doesn’t know anything about?”

In a scramble to curtail the trend outside of California, lawmakers from other states have rushed to implement legislation to regulate the homemade gun market.

In 2019 alone, legislators in Washington, Oregon, Connecticut, New York, and Maryland introduced bills to regulate ghost guns. At the federal level, House Bill 1266, known as the “Ghost Guns are Guns Act,” was introduced in February. The bill’s author, Representative Adriana Espilliat, a Democrat from New York, wrote that the proposal could close “the ghost gun loophole.”

While lawmakers debate how to close the loophole, criminals across the country seek to exploit it.

In February, a Texas man was sentenced to eight years in prison after being found test-firing a 3D-printed gun in the woods. The man, legally barred from buying guns, built his own after failing to purchase one from a gun store. He had a hit list of lawmakers.

In April, a teenager in suburban Chicago was arrested for building homemade rifles and was suspected of having ties to white supremacist groups.

In Denver, two men, one a Sureno 13 gang member, were busted for allegedly trying to sell over a dozen homemade rifles and several silencers to undercover ATF agents. According to court documents, when the agents asked the arms dealers about their guns, one trafficker extolled the virtues of the unserialized weapons, confident that law enforcement would be unaware of their activities due to the lack of regulations.