The rate of privately manufactured firearms, or "ghost guns," recovered by law enforcement is associated with an increase in firearm suicide rates in California, according to a new analysis led by NYU GPH researchers. The findings, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, suggest that stronger regulation of ghost guns is needed, and that efforts to prevent suicide should recognize ghost guns as a growing public health threat.
Ghost guns are built using a mix of parts sold online and 3D-printed elements. Because they lack serial numbers, they can’t be traced through traditional law enforcement methods. This presents a particular challenge in states with strict gun laws like California, which has seen a proliferation of ghost guns in recent years.
Despite the growing number of ghost guns, research on them has largely focused on crime patterns, not gun-related deaths.
"Ghost guns are emerging as a critical public health threat in the USA, yet little is known about their relationship with firearm mortality," the study's authors write.
To investigate this issue, the researchers looked at whether ghost guns recovered by law enforcement—a proxy for the availability of ghost guns, given the difficulty in tracking them—were associated with firearm deaths in California from 2014 to 2023. They used county-level data on ghost guns recovered in California from The Trace’s Gun Violence Data Hub and compared it with data on firearm deaths from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For every 20 ghost guns recovered per 100,000 people, there was an associated 6.4% increase in firearm suicide rates in the following year. However, ghost guns were not significantly associated with temporal changes in overall firearm death rates or firearm homicide rates.
The researchers say that their findings highlight the need for greater regulation of ghost guns and enforcement of existing laws as part of comprehensive suicide prevention strategies.
The study's authors include Jemar Bather, Saba Rouhani, Runhan Chen, José A Pagán, Diana Silver, and Melody Goodman of NYU GPH, as well as Amanda Mauri of the University of Maryland, Zoe Lindenfeld of Rutgers, and Jinrui Fang of the University of Texas at Austin.