On July 1, the California Department of Justice (DOJ) published a groundbreaking report providing key insights about the companies that manufacture and sell crime guns recovered in the state1A “crime gun” is any firearm used in a crime or identified by law enforcement as suspected of having been used in a crime. — information that can help researchers, lawmakers, and other stakeholders better understand how criminals obtain firearms in their communities.
The new “Crime Guns, Inspections, and Handguns in California” report combines information required by two key pieces of legislation: Assembly Bill 1191, a first-of-its-kind law enacted in October 2021 that requires the California DOJ to name the manufacturers and dealers of the state’s crime guns — as first reported on in 2023 and 2024 — and Senate Bill 965, a law enacted last year that requires the agency to report certain information about gun dealer inspections.
glock tops the charts
The new report named Glock as the top manufacturer of crime guns recovered and traced in California in 2024, followed by Smith & Wesson, Ruger, Taurus, and Springfield Armory. Together, these five gun makers produced over 47% of the crime guns recovered last year. (To see last year’s rankings, click here.)
| Manufacturer | Crime Guns Recovered in 2024 | Percent of 2024 Recoveries |
|---|---|---|
| Glock | 8,805 | 18.7% |
| Smith & Wesson | 5,486 | 11.6% |
| Ruger | 3,358 | 7.1% |
| Taurus | 2,392 | 5.1% |
| Springfield | 2,160 | 4.6% |
Glock also manufactured the most crime guns recovered in California between 2022 and 2024, as shown in the table below. The report notes that 20% of the Glocks recovered in those three years had a “time to crime” — the length of time from when the gun was initially purchased until it was recovered in a crime — of less than a year, a strong indicator that the firearm was trafficked, compared to just 9% for Smith & Wesson, the second-leading manufacturer.
| Manufacturer | Crime Guns Recovered 2022-2024 | Percent of 2022-2024 Recoveries |
|---|---|---|
| Glock | 25,261 | 18.2% |
| Smith & Wesson | 16,664 | 12.0% |
| Ruger | 10,035 | 7.2% |
| Taurus | 7,221 | 5.2% |
| Springfield | 6,073 | 4.4% |
cracking down on ghost guns
According to the new report, police recovered 56,245 total crime guns in 2024, down 5% from the 59,544 recovered in 2021. But that reduction was primarily driven by a 31-percent drop in ghost gun recoveries in that time frame.
The report notes that since 2021, “California has taken strong action to address the ghost gun crisis through affirmative litigation in the courtroom, law enforcement actions, local gun safety ordinances, and in 2022 and 2023, by enacting the nation’s most comprehensive ghost gun reform legislation.”
Polymer80, once the largest producer of ghost gun kits, reportedly dissolved in August 2024, and more recently, in March 2025, the Supreme Court upheld the Biden administration rule requiring ghost gun kits to be sold with serial numbers and background checks like complete firearms.
supplying crime guns
According to the report, of all the crime guns recovered in California in 2024, 34.7% (16,321) were first purchased and logged in the state’s Automated Firearms System (AFS), but only 26.4% (12,405) “were traceable to a post-2010 transaction with specific dealer information.” In other words, the majority of crime guns recovered in California come from other states.
Of the crime guns traceable to California dealers, roughly half (6,228 firearms) were sold by 81 gun dealers in 2024. Additionally, 710 dealers sold or transferred at least one firearm between 2022 and 2024 that was recovered as a crime gun within that same three-year period.
Turner’s Outdoorsman, a large sporting goods chain, sold the most crime guns recovered in California in 2024, with eight of its locations leading the list of top crime gun dealers. Worse yet, between 15% and 26% of the crime guns sold by these eight locations were recovered by police within a year of leaving their stores.
Finally, the report notes that the California DOJ inspected 736 gun dealers between January 2020 and December 2024 and uncovered a range of violations — from missing or incomplete paperwork to possible straw purchasing activity. Of the 802 total inspections completed, only 41 resulted in zero violations. The median number of violations per dealer was 18, and the highest number of violations recorded by a single dealer was 1,056.’
With the Trump administration cutting staffing and resources for Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) inspections of gun dealers, states that want to ensure gun stores in their jurisdiction are abiding by the law may choose — as California has — to conduct their own inspections. This data from California demonstrates that many sellers have considerable work to do when it comes to compliance and safety.
More information about the violations can be found in the report’s Appendix I.