San Diego police found a cache of weapons, including unserialized ghost guns during a search in Pacific Beach in January 2023.
Firearm crime and incidents have dropped in San Diego County since last year, according to a report released Tuesday detailing the county's fight against gun violence.
"We've banned ghost guns, passed safe storage laws, and sued the companies that flood our communities with untraceable weapons — and the data shows it's working," said Terra Lawson-Remer, acting chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. "Gun deaths are down. Ghost guns are off the streets. We're saving lives, and we're not slowing down."
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WATCH HEREAccording to the report, firearm-related homicides have dropped 22% since 2020, suicides are down 19% since last year and the recovery of so-called ghost guns is down 39% — the steepest single-year decline in five years.
Additionally, more than 2,600 firearms have been voluntarily turned in at gun safety events.
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SIGN UP Last year, the San Diego Sheriff's Office filed 368 criminal charges tied to ghost gun seizures, including for manufacturing, possession and distribution.
"When we banned ghost guns and started suing the companies behind them, we sent a clear message: These weapons have no place in San Diego," Lawson-Remer said. "Now we're seeing the results — fewer sales, fewer guns, fewer lives at risk."
Lawson-Remer has made preventing gun violence a priority of her term in office, leading the county's ghost gun ban, authoring new firearm storage requirements and voting with her colleagues to pass a policy giving the county authority to sue gun manufacturers, a tool now being used in court to block the sale of illegal DIY gun kits.
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According to a study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 48,204 people died by firearms in the United States in 2022. In San Diego County, from 2020-24, there were 1,071 deaths by firearm, with 734 suicides and 337 homicides.
"By concentrating programs, services and practices on the communities and individuals most affected by violence and its underlying factors, the goal is to create lasting solutions," according to the report, which details actions taken against gun violence but also recommendations going forward.
San Diego County is also expanding efforts to prevent firearm violence through "hospital-based intervention programs, strengthening community-based outreach in neighborhoods like Spring Valley and Vista, and ramping up public education around suicide prevention and secure firearm storage," according to a county statement.
