Oakland on Tuesday became the latest California city to ban the components for easy-to-assemble and impossible-to-trace “ghost guns,” whose popularity has spiked in recent years amid a wave of gun violence in the city.
The ordinance, which passed unopposed, takes aim at the rapid proliferation of the firearms, which can be ordered online and delivered without a serial number or the buyer undergoing a background check.
Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan and council members Dan Kalb and Noel Gallo proposed the ordinance. In seeking its passage, Kalb and Gallo called it a key move to strike back against a spate of gun violence across the city.
“We don’t pretend that one new law is going to end gun violence in the next month in Oakland or any other city,” said Kalb ahead of the vote. “But any additional thing we can do that makes it a little bit harder, I think, is worth the effort.”
The proposal passed in a bulk vote alongside several other items, and most council members did not comment on it. A second vote, expected on Feb. 1, is needed for the ordinance to become law.
Other communities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Berkeley, have passed similar ordinances over the last year. One such ordinance, passed in San Diego, prompted a federal lawsuit from a coalition of local gun owners that is ongoing.
The laws aim to cut down on the growing number of ghost guns being used on the streets amid what supporters say are lax state and federal regulations.
“More needs to happen at the federal and state level, but this is what we can do locally,” said Kalb, during Tuesday’s meeting.
Ghost guns are firearms that can be assembled at home — in as little as an hour — from parts that do not arrive stamped with serial numbers, making them untraceable.
Current state law allows people to purchase those firearm components online and have them shipped to their homes. Before assembling those parts, purchasers must first apply for a serial number through the California Department of Justice — a process that involves undergoing a background check. One or two thousand people, often described as firearm hobbyists, apply for such serial numbers every year, the department said.
But law enforcement agencies say people don’t often seek those serial numbers, and the resulting ghost guns have become a popular way of circumventing the state’s firearm-purchasing regulations, often for illicit purposes.
In Oakland, 23% of the roughly 1,200 firearms seized by police officers last year were ghost guns, according to the Oakland Police Department.
Last year, San Francisco police seized 194 such guns as of Dec. 7 — accounting for 20% of all guns seized by the department. That number has risen fast in recent years — just six such guns were seized by San Francisco police in 2016, and no such guns were recovered in 2015.
In Los Angeles, 24% of the 8,121 guns seized last year by police were ghost guns. Los Angeles police also arrested 586 people in 2021 who were prohibited from owning a firearm yet were caught carrying ghost guns, said Los Angeles city Councilman Paul Krekorian.
“So this is 586 people who would never have had access to an ordinary firearm, because they would have been prohibited from purchasing one if they’d done a background check,” Krekorian said. “So a tremendous, tremendous challenge for law enforcement … (and a driver) of the violence, the gun violence, that L.A. has been enduring.”
A new state law going into effect July 1 mandates those firearm parts go through retailers — meaning gun components can no longer be sent straight to a buyer’s house. It also requires most vendors of firearm components be licensed by the state. And it requires that purchasers undergo a type of state background check that’s similar to when people purchase ammunition.
Still, council members in Los Angeles and San Diego have said they needed to act more quickly and to pass more stringent regulations than found on the state level. The new state law still does not require firearm components to receive a serial number before a purchaser takes them home, according to an analysis presented to the Oakland City Council.
“The key is we don’t want to just wait around,” said Los Angeles city Councilman Paul Koretz. “We want to do this now and not give an extra six months for the problem to get worse.”
Oakland’s new law follows the lead of most other cities in California to pass such laws by banning people from possessing, buying, selling, offering for sale, transferring, transporting, receiving or manufacturing unfinished firearm frames or receivers — two main firearm components — that do not have a serial number.
Oakland’s law also goes one step further, though, by allowing for civil penalties of $1,000 to $5,000, in addition to criminal penalties of up to $1,000 and up to six months in jail.
“We’re trying to make an impact on the violence that we’ve had this past year,” said Gallo, who represents District 5, before Tuesday’s meeting. “We want to make it very clear that here in Oakland, we do not accept — and will penalize you for — ghost gun sales and so forth.”
Krekorian said that Los Angeles leaders may also move to adopt similar civil penalties in the near future.
“In recent years, ghost guns have just been an epidemic problem here in L.A. and throughout the country,” Krekorian said.
