San Jose is banning ghost guns — untraceable firearms that have increasingly been found at crime scenes in Santa Clara County over the last six years.
The ban is the latest attempt by city leaders to reduce gun violence in the nation’s tenth largest city.
While the federal government and California have passed recent legislation around ghost guns — which can be easily purchased online without a background check, built at home and lack a serial number — there is no current federal or state law that addresses the possession of ghost guns.
On Tuesday, the San Jose City Council voted unanimously to make it illegal to possess, manufacture, sell or transfer ghost guns or their parts. San Jose’s law, which will give owners of ghost guns 120 days to apply for a serial number through the California Department of Justice, follows the suit of other cities like Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
“While the new federal regulations help to stem the rising tide of ghost guns at the shoreline, it doesn’t enable us to do much about the ocean of guns that are already out there,” Mayor Sam Liccardo told this news organization.
In 2020, the San Jose Police Department recovered 206 firearms without serial numbers, compared to 75 in 2017, according to the mayor’s office.
The ban on ghost guns is just one of several measures San Jose has taken in recent years to regulate firearms. The actions come following the deadliest mass shooting in Bay Area history, when a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority employee fatally shot nine of his co-workers and then himself at a rail yard in May 2021.
Less than a month later, San Jose passed a law requiring retailers to video-record all firearm purchases to prevent straw purchasing, which occurs when someone purchases a gun for someone who isn’t allowed to own a firearm.
And in January, San Jose became the first city in the country to require gun owners to purchase liability insurance for their weapons. The law goes into effect in August and will also require gun owners to pay an annual fee to a nonprofit that will distribute the funds to groups that offer suicide prevention programs and mental health services.
The law is already facing legal challenges from several groups, including the National Association for Gun Rights, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the Silicon Valley Public Accountability Foundation and the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association.
This week, the Silicon Valley Public Accountability Foundation took aim at the ban on ghost guns. In a May 6 letter to the city, the nonprofit argued it “will not stop any criminals who wish to violate the law” and takes “away the constitutionally protected rights of individuals to privately manufacture their own firearms in a legal manner.”
Liccardo, who proposed the gun insurance mandate nearly three years ago following a mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, told this news organization that “no law stops criminals from having guns on the streets unless it’s effectively enforced.”
“Since we know that there’s a very high correlation between ownership of ghost guns and criminal organizations” he said, ” this would be a law that is absolutely worth enforcing.”
Earlier this year, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office charged three individuals for turning a Willow Glen home into a ghost-gun making operation.
At the time, prosecutors said that the three individuals were producing made-to-order AK and AR-style assault rifles and using kits, custom-made tools and 3D printing to manufacture the guns.
In March, San Jose police Chief Anthony Mata announced a new program that offers cash rewards for information that help police seize ghost guns. Out of the 1,108 firearms seized by SJPD in the preceding 14 months, 287 were ghost guns.
Source: www.mercurynews.com