Ordered online, assembled at home: the deadly toll of California’s ‘ghost guns’

Loopholes surrounding these weapons make them untraceable - and a hot commodity in many vulnerable communities

When Brian Muhammad, a program manager at a gun violence prevention group in California, asked a 16-year-old boy in 2018 how young people were getting guns, he assumed the answer would be Nevada, the neighboring state with looser gun laws.

Who would waste time going to Nevada when you can just get them in the mail and put it together?" the Stockton teen nonchalantly replied.