SAN DIEGO — The International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference is in San Diego this weekend, and the Director of The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is in town Friday to talk about ghost guns.
Steven Dettlebach, the director of ATF, told CBS 8 that ghost gun usage is up nation-wide. He said he's working with San Diego County law enforcement to get ghost guns — and the people who use them — off the streets.
In a Friday press conference, Dettlebach said ghost guns shoot, wound and kill just like traditional firearms.
"The reason they're called ghost guns is because they're largely untraceable," he said. "The people who get ghost guns, a lot of the time, are people who don't want the gun to be traced. They don't want a background check before getting a firearm. They don't want to do that because they can't pass a background check. They don't want a serial number because they're often going to hurt other people with the firearm."
Dettlebach said ghost guns are a growing problem in San Diego County as well. ATF officials released a study on data from 2017 through 2021 and found ghost gun usage in crime increased 1,000 percent nationwide. According to SANDAG, there was a 401% increase in ghost guns recovered by law enforcement from 2019 to 2021 in San Diego County.
Because of the uptick, the San Diego Association of Governments received a federal grant from the Department of Justice to help track ghost guns.
Dettlebach said ATF and DEA worked with San Diego police during the summer to form a ghost gun unit in the region. He said law enforcement is using data and intelligence to figure out why ghost guns are such a severe problem in San Diego
"We were able to take that information and then map out over our information where would be the places in San Diego where we would most likely find people using ghost guns and we were very successful," he said. "In 90 days, we conducted over 168 law enforcement operations. We arrested 50 individuals. We prosecuted those people in both state court and federal court."
According to ATF, preliminary numbers indicate that San Diego County law enforcement seized fewer ghost guns this year. However, the overall rate of ghost gun seizures is still significantly higher than a few years ago.
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