This article, originally published on Jan. 14, was last updated on Jan. 21 to include updated statistics.
In Pennsylvania, a 15-year-old killed one teen and injured another at a corner store. In Wisconsin, two 15-year-olds were shot and killed by another 15-year-old with a gun he stole from a family member. In Maryland, a four-year-old playing hide-and-seek found a gun and accidentally shot herself in the arm. In Oregon, a 20-year-old shot and killed two teenage sisters with gun parts she ordered online. All of these tragedies happened in 2024 and are just a snapshot of the many incidents that involved ghost guns and young people last year.
Ghost guns were more recently thrust into the spotlight after investigators determined the firearm used to allegedly kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was a ghost gun.
What Are Ghost Guns?
Ghost guns, sometimes referred to as privately made firearms (PMFs), are homemade firearms assembled by someone other than a licensed manufacturer. The parts are either sold together in a kit or separately to create a fully functioning firearm. Downloadable kits can also be bought online and can be made using 3D printers.
A majority of 80 online ghost gun sellers began selling the product kits within the past five years, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention organization.
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Ghost guns are especially dangerous because they are completely accessible to people who are legally prohibited from purchasing firearms. Unlike firearms sold by licensed manufacturers, these kits or parts are sold without background checks and serial numbers. Some PMFs have counterfeit markings that can be easily mistaken for authentic serial numbers, making it even more difficult to trace a PMF used in a crime.
Because of this, a new report, published in March 2024 by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), notes law enforcements ability to properly identify PMs still remains largely limited, leading the bureau to conclude that its current data significantly underestimates the real number of PMFs recovered in crimes.
How Does the U.S. Trace Guns Used in Crimes?
Before we dive into how common ghost guns have become, let’s look at how they are traced in the first place.
The National Tracing Center is the country’s only gun tracing facility, according to ATF. In Feb. 2023, the Department of Justice released its first study on criminal gun trafficking in more than two decades. The report found gun trace requests from law enforcement agencies spiked from 338,000 in 2017 to more 460,000 in 2021 — a 36% increase. See chart below.

Source: Crime Guns Recovered and Traced Within the United States and Its Territories, ATF
The requests reflect the increasing availability of manufactured, privately made, and imported firearms, according to USA Facts. Fortunately, the share of crime guns traced by ATF has risen over time. The data shows ATF traced 79% of guns from crimes in 2021. Of those traced guns, 22% belonged to people ages 18 to 24.
Comparatively, from 2017 to 2021, the federal government traced merely 1% of submitted PMFs to their original purchasers, highlighting the difficulty in tracking ghost guns.
Using data from ATF’s aforementioned 2024 report, USA Facts created the chart below to show how successful each state has been in tracing guns used in crimes. See where your state falls below or check out USA Fact’s interactive map here.

Data source: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
Graphic source: USA Facts
Texas submitted the highest number of gun trace requests (231,784) with a trace rate of 83%, according to USA Facts. California had the second-highest number of gun trace requests (177,786) with a 62% trace rate. On Oct. 1, 2024, the California Department of Justice released statistics on ghost gun recoveries by county for 2013 through 2023. The findings were as follows:
- 3 in 2013
- 11 in 2014
- 48 in 2015
- 174 in 2016
- 326 in 2017
- 687 in 2018
- 1,572 in 2019
- 5,490 in 2020
- 10,877 in 2021
- 10,098 in 2022
- 8,340 in 2023
How Prevalent Are Ghost Guns?
From 2016 to 2021, ATF received around 45,000 reports of suspected PMFs that were used in crimes, including 692 homicides or attempted homicides.
ATF’s 2024 report also revealed the number of privately made firearms that law enforcement submitted to ATF increased by over 1,000% between 2017 and 2021 — up from 1,629 in 2017 to 19,273 in 2021.
Since Aug. 2021, in Queens, New York, the District Attorney’s Crime Strategies & Intelligence Bureau has conducted investigations that have led to the seizure of 453 illegal firearms, including 294 ghost guns, as well as 1,190 high-capacity magazines, 338 additional firearms lower receivers, 13 3D printers, and more than 140,500 rounds of ammunition, QNS reports. In 2024, Queens had the most ghost gun recoveries in New York City for the fourth year in a row.
On Jan. 15, a mechanic at LaGuardia Airport was arrested after police conducted a search warrant of his Queens Village home following a lengthy multi-agency investigation into the purchase of unserialized firearm components, which were reportedly used to assemble two Glock 19-style semiautomatic ghost gun pistols, a Glock 17-style semiautomatic pistol, and a Glock 43X-style semiautomatic ghost gun pistol.
The man, identified as 37-year-old Jonathan Diaz, told investigators it was “just a hobby.” Also recovered from his home were a 3D printer, 14 spools of PLA filament, which is used in the 3D printing of ghost guns, eight unserialized 3D-printed Glock-style lower receivers, and nine rounds of 9 mm ammunition.
“We will continue to investigate the assembly and sale of these untraceable firearms to get an upper hand in our fight against gun violence,” Queens District Attorney General Melinda Katz announced on Jan. 17 following Diaz’s arrest.
What’s the Most Common Type of Ghost Gun?
Pistols are the most common type of ghost gun, making up 59% of all recovered and traced PMFs from 2017 to 2021, followed by rifles (14%) and machine guns (12%).
However, pistols weren’t always the most common PMFs. In 2017, rifles made up 35% of all recovered ghost guns compared to 19% of rifles. Since then, rifles have declined as a share of PMFs from 30% in 2018 to 10% in 2021, according to USA Facts. See the shift over time in the graph below.

Source: Crime Guns Recovered and Traced Within the United States and Its Territories, ATF
Minors and Ghost Guns
Since 2019, more than 50 ghost gun incidents have involved teens, according to a list compiled in 2023 by Everytown for Gun Safety.
In 2021, 17-year-old Stephen Abrams, the national chapter coordinator of Team ENOUGH, the youth-led initiative of Brady, the country’s oldest gun violence prevention group, demonstrated how easy it is for minors to purchase a ghost gun kits.
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Abrams did a quick Google search for “ghost guns.” Within 30 minutes, Abrams was able to purchase a frame kit for $149.99 and have it shipped to his home. The kit came with a slide, a barrel, a slide spring, and a lower receiver. He then found a video online about how to assemble the 9mm handgun. See the video of Abram’s purchase below.
In 2024, the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department in Wisconsin disbanded a ghost manufacturing ring run by high school-aged teens, according to K-12 Dive.
“They’re going to high school during the day and at night, they have this illegal gun manufacturing operation going on instead of doing their homework,” Sergeant Colin Coultrip, who supervises Westosha Central High School and Wilmot High School Resource Officers, told news outlet WISN.
Are Ghost Guns Used in School Shootings?
Ghost guns have also been used in school shootings. According to Sandy Hook Promise, the gunman in the Nov. 14, 2019, shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, Calif., used his father’s ghost gun. Killed in the shooting were 14-year-old Dominic Blackwell and 15-year-old Gracie Muehlberger. Three others were injured, and the 16-year-old shooter fatally turned the gun on himself.
Mia Tretta, shooting survivor and best friend of Muehlberger, spoke out against ghost guns during a 2022 press conference at the White House.
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Since the Santa Clarita tragedy, there have been at least four other school shootings that have involved a ghost gun, according to NBC News.
On Nov. 29, 2021, a 15-year-old student allegedly shot and wounded a 16-year-old classmate with a ghost gun at Cesar Chavez High School in Phoenix.
Less than two months later, on Jan. 21, 2022, a 17-year-old student shot and critically wounded a 15-year-old classmate using a ghost gun at Magruder High School in Rockville, Maryland.
Just over a month later, on Feb. 25, 2022, a 14-year-old shot his classmate with a ghost gun outside West Mesa High School in Albuquerque.
Merely one week later, on March 4, 2022, an 18-year-old used a ghost gun to wound a school resource officer and an assistant principal at Olathe East High School in Kansas.
What’s Being Done to Mitigate Ghost Guns?
So what is being done to stop the proliferation of ghost guns in the U.S.? In 2022, under the Gun Control Act, the Justice Department finalized a rule that makes PMFs subject to the same rules as traditional firearms, meaning manufacturers of ghost gun kits kits now need to serialize their firearms and sellers must conduct background checks, among other requirements.
In the summer of 2024, the American Medical Association joined the Texas Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and other physician and health care groups in filing an amicus brief supporting the government’s position.
In Oct. 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court heard some of the first cases concerning whether ghost guns should be subject to background checks and age verification like other firearms on the market, including Garland v. VanDerStok.
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K-12 Dive reports many justices seemed inclined toward regulating ghost guns. However, not all justices were persuaded. Justice Brett Kavanaugh reportedly told U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar that the Biden’s administration argument “has force” but that he’s worried its regulation “broadens a criminal statute beyond what it had been before” and wondered whether the administration would criminally charge firearm sellers if they are “truly not aware that they are violating the law.” Prelogar argued that if a manufacturer believes in good faith that they aren’t selling a regulated product in violation of the law, they would not be criminally chargeable.
The current justices have upheld some firearm legislations but turned down others, according to K-12 Dive. In June, justices upheld a ban on firearms for those under domestic violence restraining orders. That same month, they struck down a ban on bump stocks.
California Sues Polymer80 Over Ghost Guns
Some states have taken matters into their own hands. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, nine states, including New York and California, have responded to the proliferation with laws that regulate the sales of ghost guns by requiring background checks and serial numbers for all of the components in the kits.
New York state’s ghost gun regulations went into effect in the fall of 2022 after legislators saw a 479% increase in ghost gun seizures across the state over the last three years, ABC News reports.
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In 2021, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer sued Polymer80, the largest U.S. ghost gun manufacturer, on behalf of the people of California. The suit alleged over 700 of the ghost guns LAPD recovered in 2020 were made from Polymer80 parts.
On May 30, 2023, the city announced it had reached a $5 million settlement with the company. Under terms of the settlement, Polymer80 is permanently prohibited from selling ghost guns in California — directly or through third parties.