California school shooting shines light on murky 'ghost gun' world
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[November 22, 2019]
By Brad Brooks
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - "Ghost guns" like
the one a 16-year-old boy used to kill two classmates and injure three
others at a California high school last week are self-assembled,
virtually untraceable - and completely legal.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's department confirmed that the
.45-caliber pistol that Nathaniel Berhow used in the shooting at Saugus
High School in Santa Clarita, California, on his 16th birthday was made
from a kit. He then shot himself and died a day later in the hospital.
Such firearms have no serial numbers, and by making the gun themselves,
owners can legally bypass background checks and registration
regulations. That's why they are known as "ghost guns."
Kits can be purchased online or at gun shows, as long as the frames are
not fully functional. But users can easily and cheaply machine and
assemble them.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2019/Nov/22/images/ads/current/theatre_sda_111919.png)
Police do not know how Berhow got his hands on the pistol he used, or
who sold it and assembled it.
Kit guns represent what law enforcement and gun safety advocates call
the next frontier of the fight to keep weapons away from potential
criminals.
"Congress and state legislatures enact all these crimes about gun
registration. But now the gun industry is creating a way to just bypass
the entire thing," Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told KABC
TV on Thursday in confirming the weapon used in the high school shooting
on Nov. 14.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not
immediately reply to questions about whether it tracks how many such
untraceable weapons it recovers.
MORE UNKNOWN
"More is unknown about ghost guns than known," said Nick Suplina,
managing director for law and policy at gun safety advocacy group
Everytown.
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![](../images/112219PIX/news_b3.jpg)
Police and emergency vehicles on the scene of a shooting at Saugus
high school in Santa Clarita, California, U.S., November 14, 2019 in
this screenshot taken from video footage courtesy of NBCLA. NBCLA
via REUTERS/File Photo
![](../images/ads/current/fitzpatrick_lda_SPONSOR_2017.png)
"Law enforcement is increasingly having to familiarize themselves
with them, but it's not hit the public consciousness yet that there
is a legal, untraceable firearm out there that can be ordered in
parts online and assembled at home."
Suplina, a former New York state prosecutor who has worked on cases
involving such guns, said law enforcement agencies have no reporting
requirements for ghost guns used in crimes.
But in the past decade they have gone from relatively complex and
difficult weapons to put together to incredibly simple.
To stay within federal law, the frames or "receivers" of such guns
can be sold 80% complete. The other components required to build a
functioning firearm are often sold along with the frame and packaged
as a kit.
Kit guns vary widely in prices, like fully assembled weapons, but
the same models are generally the same price.
Also included are drill bits and jigs that allow the purchaser to
easily mill the frame with a simple drill press that can cost less
than $100.
In recent years, federal courts convicted several people for
manufacturing untraceable weapons without a license.
"Criminal enterprises and gangs are seeing a real opportunity here
to mass manufacture untraceable firearms and sell them at a
premium," Suplina said.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Austin, Texas; editing by Bill Tarrant
and Gerry Doyle)
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