Villanueva oversees the largest sheriff's office in the country, and he says over the last year, the number of ghost guns turning up in LA county investigations has jumped by 50%.Īlex Villanueva: Domestic assault, assault with a deadly weapon, distribution of child pornography, possession a child pornography, armed with a ghost gun. Ironically, California has some of the strictest state gun laws in the U.S., and yet it's the epicenter of this growing problem.īill Whitaker: Where on your list of worries do these ghost guns fall?Īlex Villanueva: Well, along with terrorism, active shooter, this is w- way up there on the list. Build a ghost gun? No one knows you have it.
YouTube videos will show you step-by-step how to turn that piece of plastic or metal into a gun.Īlex Villanueva: So you have pretty much it's open season, anyone who is a prohibited person that wants to arm themselves now has a very easy way to do it.īut, if you're a felon or judged mentally unfit for example, federal law says you're not supposed to have any kind of firearm. But until you drill out holes and file down a bit, in the eyes of federal law, it's just a hunk of metal or in this case plastic. Why is it so easy to buy? Because federal gun law only regulates a part, called a frame or a lower receiver. It came in parts, like IKEA furniture but for firearms, and even includes the drill bits you need to put the gun together in the comfort of your own home.
We bought a kit online for $575 that has everything you need to make a 9 millimeter handgun. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, they have been flying off the shelves. The parts are widely available across the country in stores and online. Ghost gun parts can be used to fabricate a handgun or even an AR-15. But we believe it was the father of the suspect and it came into possession then of the shooter himself. He saved the last round for himself.Īlex Villanueva: This is the actual weapon that was used in the Saugus shooting. In addition to Gracie, he shot and killed Dominic Blackwell and wounded three other students. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex VillanuevaĬarrying that loaded ghost gun was Nathaniel Berhow, a high school junior. His mom had- had packed the lunch for him. What happened?Īlex Villanueva: He shows up at school. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva arrived at the scene not long after the shots were fired.īill Whitaker: This kid shows up at school. You know, at least we got to see her face one more time. Shot her right through the backpack and right through her chest, And thankfully he didn't aim at the back of her head. That's where Gracie was waiting for friends before class.īryan Muehlberger: She was about as close as I am to you right now. A typical Thursday morning disrupted, the quad littered with backpacks after students dropped everything and fled for their lives. This was the aftermath at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Don't- don't tell me the bad news, please." And I just- I just remember sayin', you know, like, "Please, no. And just like you see on the movies, he sits across from you with that real quiet kinda solemn stare, right at you. There had been a mass shooting at his daughter's high school and 15-year-old Gracie was murdered.īryan Muehlberger: They bring in one of the head doctors. Comparing a ghost gun and a regularly manufactured gunīill Whitaker: What's the difference between these two guns?īryan Muehlberger found out one day last November. Thomas Chittum, ATF's assistant director of field operations, gave us rare access to its West Virginia weapons repository and told us the latest additions here are ghost guns. We sought out America's top gun cops, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the ATF, to find out exactly what a ghost gun is. After a year and a half of reporting, we discovered that ghost guns, once mainly popular with gun enthusiasts, have also become a weapon of choice for criminals, manufactured by gangs and used in mass shootings. We were surprised that it's all perfectly legal. There's no background check and no serial number, making ghost guns invisible to police and almost impossible to trace when used in a crime. One kind of weapon that has been selling out is a build-it-yourself firearm known as a ghost gun because it skirts most federal gun laws. Retailers tell us they have never seen such a surge in firearms sales. As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps through the country, panic and fear have caused a run on hand sanitizer, toilet paper and guns.