On July 1, 2024, the California Department of Justice released its second annual report on crime guns sold and recovered by law enforcement in the state. The new report builds upon the data provided in the inaugural 2023 report, which was the first state-led publication of its kind to break down crime gun recoveries by manufacturer, recovery location, and even the dealers who sold them.1A “crime gun” is any firearm used in a crime or identified by law enforcement as suspected of having been used in a crime. These reports are mandated by Assembly Bill 1191, which was signed into law in October 2021.
The 2024 “Crime Guns in California” report not only sheds more light on the crime guns recovered in the state, but also improves upon the previous year’s data by revealing the time between a gun’s legal purchase and its use in a crime, also known as “time-to-crime.” According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a short time-to-crime “suggests that traced crime guns were rapidly diverted from lawful firearms commerce into criminal hands and represents a key indicator of firearm trafficking.”
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key highlights from the 2024 report
The latest “Crime Guns in California” report shows that the same gun manufacturers and dealers continue to produce and sell crime guns in California.
California law enforcement recovered over 45,000 crime guns in 2023, and for the second year in a row, Glock, Smith & Wesson, and Ruger produced over a third of those firearms. Even though the overall number of crime gun recoveries declined, these three manufacturers still produced thousands of crime guns across the state.
California crime gun recoveries
| Manufacturer | Crime Guns Recovered in 2023 | Percent of 2023 Recoveries |
|---|---|---|
| Glock | 8,139 | 17.9% |
| Smith & Wesson | 5,510 | 12.1% |
| Ruger | 3,330 | 7.3% |
With a second year of gun dealer sales and recovery data, the 2024 report also sheds more light on high-volume crime gun sellers. For a second straight year, Turner’s Outdoorsman, a large retail chain, topped the charts.
Fourteen gun shops in California each sold over 100 crime guns recovered in 2023, accounting for over 2,000 total firearms. And of those 14 stores, eight were Turner’s Outdoorsman locations. In fact, an estimated one out of every 200 guns sold at the Turner’s Outdoorsman location in San Bernardino was recovered in a crime in California. Over one in five crime guns from that store was recovered less than a year after it was purchased.
the decline in ghost guns
Another highlight from the report: Police in California are recovering fewer crime guns that lack serial numbers.
The number of unserialized crime guns spiked precipitously during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, California law enforcement recovered 13,091 crime guns without serial numbers, a nearly 70-percent increase compared to 2020 and a 1,000-percent increase from a decade prior. The overwhelming majority of these unserialized crime guns were “ghost guns,” or privately manufactured guns assembled without serial numbers. These ghost guns are difficult, if not impossible, to trace to a specific source and are thus more likely to be used in crimes than other guns.
In 2023, law enforcement recovered 10,390 ghost guns in California — a 15-percent decline from 2022 and a 21-percent decline from 2021. This decline may be attributed to the ATF’s “ghost gun” rule, which confirmed that “readily completed” frames and receivers are to be treated as if they are complete, meaning they must be serialized and sold with background checks. California has also enacted laws in recent years prohibiting unserialized ghost guns, and Polymer80, the largest manufacturer of unserialized gun parts and build kits, recently agreed to stop selling them into California as part of a settlement with the Los Angeles city attorney.
Glocks have a shorter time-to-crime
The last big takeaway from the 2024 report: Glock manufactures a large proportion of crime guns that have a short time-to-crime.
According to the report, 14.5 percent of all crime guns recovered in California in 2023 were originally purchased between 2022 and 2023. However, the time-to-crime varied by manufacturer. Nearly a quarter of all Glock pistols recovered by police in California in 2023 were purchased less than a year before they were used in a crime — by far the largest proportion of short time-to-crime guns of any major manufacturer in the state — compared to 11 and 5 percent for Smith & Wesson and Ruger, respectively.2None of the six other manufacturers with over 1,000 guns sold in 2023 had more than 16.5 percent of crime guns recovered within one year.
California’s crime gun reports shed light on the role gun manufacturers and dealers play in everyday gun violence and serve as a model for other states. By understanding where crime guns come from, lawmakers and law enforcement can implement strategies to prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands and help stop gun violence before it occurs.