Politics & Government
LA Leaders Take Aim At Ghost Guns
The untraceable weapons account for a third of all gun crime in Los Angeles and have been used at numerous school and mass shootings.
LOS ANGELES, CA — The Los Angeles City Council delayed a vote Wednesday to request a draft ordinance from the city attorney to prohibit the possession, purchase, sale, receipt and transportation of "ghost guns" in Los Angeles.
The council is now scheduled to vote on the motion on Tuesday.
The motion was introduced by Councilmen Paul Koretz and Paul Krekorian on Aug. 10.
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Ghost guns -- also known as kit guns and 80% receivers -- are virtually untraceable weapons without serial numbers that can be assembled by unlicensed buyers from legally purchased kits.
The unfinished parts are inexpensive and not required under federal law to have serial numbers or a background check to purchase. According to the gun control advocacy organization Everytown For Gun Safety, an AR-15 ghost gun kit and lower receiver can be purchased for $345.
More than 40% of guns confiscated by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and one-third of crime guns recovered by the Los Angeles Police Department in Los Angeles in 2020, were ghost guns, according to Koretz.
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The motion, if passed, would also request the Los Angeles Police Department to report within 14 days to the City Council on current data on the impact of ghost guns in Los Angeles, including the number of non-serialized firearms confiscated from people and recovered at crime scenes and the number of shootings and homicides that involved non-serialized firearms.
Officials say ghost guns were used during the 2013 shooting at Santa Monica College, in which six people, including the shooter, died, and the 2019 shooting at Saugus High School in 2019, in which three students, including the shooter, were killed and three others were injured.
The ATF recovered 10,000 ghost guns in the United States in 2019, 2,700 of which were in California.
"Ghost guns are deliberately designed to avoid tracing, and when sold without background checks, end up in the possession of felons," Krekorian said on Aug. 10. "In Los Angeles, ghost guns were a factor in the sharp rise in homicides in 2020. This motion enables the city to move aggressively to significantly reduce the number of non-serialized firearms in our communities."
Krekorian introduced a motion approved in February to authorize City Attorney Mike Feuer to negotiate contracts with Everytown Law and Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart and Sullivan to receive their pro bono services to develop and implement legal strategies to combat ghost guns in the city.
If a motion is requested, the draft ordinance would need to be unanimously approved by the City Council on its first reading. If not unanimously approved, it will be voted on again the following week, when it would need a majority to pass.
City News Service
