Hello and happy Thursday.

On Nov. 14, 2019, a 16-year-old student with a homemade “ghost gun” walked onto the campus of Saugus High School in Santa Clarita and shot five classmates, killing two. He then shot and killed himself.

Mia Tretta was one of those hit, taking a bullet to her abdomen from a .45 caliber weapon made from a kit sold by a company in Chula Vista. Tretta made it into a classroom to hide. Her best friend, Dominic Blackwell, was one of those who died.

Astonishingly, untraceable ghost guns like the one that killed Blackwell and fundamentally altered Tretta’s life have been at the center of legal and political fights for years, as gun-rights advocates have pushed the theory that these weapons don’t require background checks or serial numbers because they’re just kits — not guns unless they are assembled.

But these nearly complete kits have fueled a surge of violence across the country and especially in California.

“In my shooting especially we can see that,” Tretta told me Wednesday. “My shooter wouldn’t have had access to a gun if these ghost guns didn’t exist.”

The Supreme Court, in a somewhat surprising 7-2 bipartisan ruling, put an end to that suspect logic on Wednesday, upholding a 2022, Biden-era regulation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that requires ghost guns to be subject to many of the same regulations for sale as ready-made weapons — including basic ones such as background checks, age verification and serial numbers.

That is “such great news,” said Tretta, now a sophomore at Brown University, who has been an advocate for common-sense gun laws (including this one) ever since her own shooting. “It’s been years of hard work and when sometimes it seems like the Supreme Court can do nothing right, they certainly did right in this case.”

Mia Tretta, who was wounded during a mass shooting at Saugus High in 2019, is shown in 2022.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

California problem

The ghost gun issue has been a particularly vexing one for California — which saw a 592% increase in the number of such weapons recovered from crimes between 2017 and 2021, according to a study by the ATF.

During that period, law enforcement agencies across the country submitted records of guns retrieved in crimes to the federal agency, totaling 1.9 million weapons suspected of being used to commit illegal acts. Guns taken in California accounted for 12% of those, but for ghost guns, California accounted for a whopping 55% of crime-related firearms recovered.

The problem for California was so severe that one study by respected gun violence researchers found that in 2021, of all the guns recovered in crimes in the state, 18.5% were ghost guns. For guns recovered in homicides against police officers, 32% were ghost guns. And for guns recovered from crimes involving violations of court orders (such as those in domestic violence cases), parole or probation, 22% were ghost guns.

Though the California numbers are dire, ghost guns pose threats to public safety and police across the country, which is one reason law enforcement has been nearly uniformly supportive of efforts to rein them in.

“I’ve been in the hospital with law enforcement officers whose colleagues have been shot and killed by a ghost gun, and I routinely meet with officers … that are seizing these guns off the street that are terrorizing communities,” said New Jersey Attn. Gen. Matthew Platkin, who was the co-lead on an amicus brief filed in the case for 20 state attorneys general, including California.

“And when they seize that gun, they want to be able to track it and understand where it came from And how did it end up in the hands of somebody who shouldn’t have it,” he said.

So, despite the claim by gun-rights folks that these nearly complete kits are just for hobbyists having some fun at home, building a Glock-like weapon as if they were snapping together Lego sets, the reality is ghost guns are used by violent criminals to “evade every law we have,” Platkin said.

Good news

California began trying to police ghost guns after those frightening findings came out, enacting legislation in both 2022 and 2023 to curtail their unregulated sales.

In 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1621, written by Assemblyman Mike Gipson (D-Carson), which banned the sale of firearms and certain gun-making parts without serial numbers. It also limited who could buy or use 3D printers and certain gun-milling devices for the purpose of making weapons. Then came SB 1327, which played off a Texas law allowing civil suits in abortion cases, morphing the idea to allow civil suits to enforce some existing gun laws; and AB 1089, which further cracked down on 3D-printed guns.

Those laws have made a difference. From 2021 to 2023, law enforcement agencies saw their retrieval of ghost guns used in crimes drop by 23%, according to a report from the attorney general’s office.

The Supremes weigh in

Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision marks a fundamental turning point nationally on the issue of ghost guns, led by conservative justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee. The ruling in Bondi vs. VanDerStok basically says that partially assembled gun kits are in fact guns, and should be treated as such under the 1968 Gun Control Act, which allows for regulation.

Gorsuch pointed out in his majority opinion that although the kits say they provide only a partial gun, or require skills to assemble, at least one was so easy that a functioning weapon was put together in about 20 minutes.

“An ordinary person, using ordinary tools, can finish the frame in minutes,” Gorsuch wrote. “Really, the kit’s name says it all: ‘Buy Build Shoot.’”

Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas were the two dissenters in the case.

Thomas wrote that the court was promoting “Government’s overreach” with the ruling, and should have split the baby perhaps by only making it apply to really easy-to-assemble kits, not ones that require more parts or skills.

“Congress could have authorized ATF to regulate any part of a firearm or any object readily convertible into one. But, it did not. I would adhere to the words Congress enacted,” Thomas wrote.

But for most Americans, putting some restrictions on mail-order guns doesn’t seem like government overreach, I’m guessing, and Wednesday’s ruling is a huge win for public safety.

“Why would people be comfortable with somebody who physically abused their wife to the point that they were convicted of a domestic violence offense being able to go to a gun show and buy the same gun broken up into pieces that they can’t buy when it’s assembled at a gun store?” Platkin said. “What do you think that person is going to do with that gun?”

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Supreme Court upholds ban on untraceable ‘ghost guns’ that are made from parts kits
The what happened: Hegseth’s Leak Would Have Warned the Enemy. The White House Is Using Semantics to Obscure That.
The L.A. Times special: Beverly Hills seeks $400,000 in legal fees from abortion provider blocked from opening

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

P.S. Journalism solidarity. Love to see it.

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