By STEFANIE DAZIO

LOS ANGELES-- California law enforcement removed 54 so-called ghost guns last year from individuals who can't lawfully own firearms, a 38% jump in the variety of the hard-to-trace weapons took because 2021 under a special state program, officials stated Monday.

The ghost guns, which are privately made guns without a serial number, belonged to almost 1,500 guns taken statewide in 2015 through an only-in-California program called the Armed and Prohibited Persons System, referred to as APPS.

The California windows registry cross-matches databases to find individuals who legally acquired weapons however are now banned from ownership because they have been founded guilty of felonies or a violent misdemeanor, or have a history of domestic violence or mental illness. State and local authorities then can move to seize the weapons under the program, which started in 2006.

Typically, firearms manufactured by licensed business are needed to have identification numbers that permit officials to trace the gun back to the maker, the firearms dealer and original purchaser. That's how the windows registry can find individuals who are forbidden from having guns, as well as the weapons connected to them.

Ghost weapons, nevertheless, are made from parts and are then assembled together-- without the identification numbers that can be used to follow the gun's course. Law enforcement working to find the legal firearms listed on the state pc registry coincidentally found the ghost guns and took those.

The variety of ghost weapons found by law enforcement through their APPS work has actually leapt drastically over the last few years. In 2018, authorities seized just eight ghost guns through their deal with the registry, Attorney General Rob Bonta's office stated.

Bonta has purchased the state's Department of Justice to focus more on ghost weapon examinations in general after years of increased unlawful activity.

Guns without serial numbers have been used in lethal violence over the previous year, consisting of in New York, where a teenage lady was killed outside a high school in the Bronx, and in Sacramento, when a male fatally shot his 3 daughters inside a church.

The APPS registry consisted of 23,869 people since Jan. 1, including almost 9,300 active cases. The staying cases-- almost 15,000-- consist of individuals who are put behind bars, have vacated state or can not be found after multiple attempts, Bonta's workplace stated.

In one case, an attempt to call a male in Costa Mesa led to an eight-hour armed standoff in Southern California after he fired at the officers. The suspect was on the state's list due to the fact that he had a misdemeanor conviction for domestic violence, along with an active misdemeanor arrest warrant. He ultimately gave up and authorities recovered a rifle, a shotgun and multiple pistols, the chief law officer's office stated.

In 2015, the overall seizure included 712 pistols, 360 rifles, 194 shotguns, 80 assault weapons, three short-barreled shotguns and a gatling gun, in addition to more than 281,000 rounds of ammunition, according to a report launched Monday.

That's approximately similar to seizures in 2021, when 1,428 guns-- consisting of 39 ghost guns-- were taken by law enforcement under the APPS program.