ghost gun rule: hands holding a picture of child in baseball uniform

New ghost gun rule unlikely to stem violence amid thriving youth gun culture

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Ghost guns — so-called because they are nearly impossible to trace — are sold in parts and assembled by the buyer. Until recently, they were not classified as firearms, meaning there were no background checks and dealers didn’t have to be federally-licensed.

That has opened the door for traffickers, teens and people with felony records to get ghost guns.

rural youth and handguns: Boy with sound-muffling head phones holds and shoots a rifle at a range.

Study: As young as 12, some rural youth regularly carry handguns

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About 25% of rural youth in a University of Washington analysis said they were as young as 12 when they began carrying handguns and 20% of the roughly 2,000 rural youth and young adults studied carried a handgun at least 40 times during the last 12 months that they self-reported that activity, according to research published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association.