![]() We can’t keep up with the number of guns especially when they may be more accessible than social services for some,” said Muhammad, of the Advance Peace program, a gun violence prevention organization, in Stockton. “We have people buying guns on the street at a faster pace. Their rapid spread, combined with Covid-19 limitations to the in-person contact so many violence interrupters rely on, have created a dangerous combination that is contributing to the surge in gun deaths that began last year. The ease with which these guns can be ordered and constructed, and the difficulties in tracing them have made them readily available in many California cities, the organizers say. The next year, as protests over police violence filled city streets, Steven Carrillo used a homemade machine gun to shoot two security guards at a federal building in Oakland and a sheriff’s deputy in an ambush in Santa Cruz.īut as the role of ghost guns in high profile criminal cases has grown, community violence reduction workers warn of the less visible toll ghost guns are taking : ghost guns, they say, have become a hot commodity in many vulnerable communities, a trend that has only intensified during the pandemic.īrian Muhammad, center, is the program manager for Advance Peace, a gun violence prevention group in Stockton, California. In 2019, a 16 year old killed two students and injured three others before killing himself with a ghost gun at a school in Santa Clarita. In California alone, homemade guns were used in a 2013 mass shooting in Santa Monica, a 2014 bank robbery in Stockton and a shooting spree in rural Tehama county that killed six in 2017. Warnings about do-it-yourself guns have steadily grown in recent years, spurred by ominous news stories describing the weapons’ use in a slew of mass shootings, domestic terrorism cases and gun trafficking busts. When the president announced executive actions targeting gun violence after the mass shootings in Georgia, California and Colorado, they included steps to regulate the sale of the devices – the first time the federal government took up such efforts. Three years later, homemade weapons known as “ghost guns” have risen to the top of the Biden administration’s policy agenda. ![]()
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