Ghost Gun Recovery and Firearm Deaths in California, 2014-2023
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Background
Ghost guns are untraceable firearms assembled from online parts kits without background checks or waiting periods. Police nationally recovered 17 times more ghost guns in 2023 than 2017, yet the relationship between ghost gun recovery and firearm mortality is understudied. We investigated whether ghost gun recovery rates are significantly associated with subsequent firearm mortality rates across California’s 58 counties from 2014 to 2023.
Methods
We obtained yearly county-level data on ghost guns recovered in California from The Trace’s Gun Violence Data Hub, which aggregated data from the California Department of Justice’s October 2024 report California’s Fight Against the Ghost Gun Crisis: Progress and New Challenges. County-level firearm death counts (total, suicide, homicide) were pulled from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Restricted-Use Vital Statistics Data. Covariates included (1) urbanicity measured using the Rural-Urban Continuum Codes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and (2) economic/racial segregation assessed by the Index of Concentration at the Extremes for income and race/ethnicity. We employed a hierarchical Bayesian approach to quantify the associations between ghost gun recoveries per capita and total firearm death rates in the following year. Exploratory analyses examined whether urbanicity and economic/racial segregation were significantly related to ghost gun recovery rates from 2014 to 2023.
Results
Controlling for urbanicity and economic/racial segregation, spatiotemporal models indicated that for every 20 ghost guns recovered per 100,000 population, there was an associated 5% increase in total firearm death rate (IRR: 1.05, 95% CrI: 1.02-1.08) and a 5% increase in firearm suicide rate (IRR: 1.05, 95% CrI: 1.02-1.09) in the following year. Ghost gun recovery rates were 298% higher in urban versus rural counties (IRR: 3.98, 95% CrI: 2.37-6.94) and increased 113% per 0.25-unit increase in economic/racial segregation score (IRR: 2.13, 95% CrI: 1.11-4.19).
Conclusions
This study provides the first empirical evidence examining the relationship between ghost gun recovery rates and subsequent increases in firearm mortality, particularly firearm suicides, across California counties from 2014 to 2023. Practitioners concentrating on suicide prevention efforts should be advised about the threat that ghost guns may present.
