SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - A San Diego Police officer shot in the line of duty during a pursuit in Barrio Logan Monday is still recovering in the hospital.
A spokesperson for the department says the officer is in good spirits. During a news conference Monday, the police chief said the officer was shot by a man with a ghost gun.
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Police, along with San Diego city and county leaders have been working to get the homemade guns off the street for years. Investigators say the gunman in a mass shooting in the Gaslamp Quarter in April of 2021 used a ghost gun.
A parking valet was killed and three others were wounded. Steven Ely, a retired school teacher, was shot in the side.
"All of a sudden, I hear four shots ring out and I felt a rock hit me in the side, and I realized I'd probably been shot," said Ely.
The Scripps Ranch husband and father spent sixteen days in the hospital. The bullet is still lodged near his spine.
"The doctor said you're very lucky and I said I don't feel lucky and he said in another 2 millimeters you'd be paralyzed."
Ely was not surprised when he learned the weapon used in Monday's shooting in Mountainview was a ghost gun.
"You can't have people running around with toy guns that are unserialized and untrackable and untraceable and shooting police officers and shooting people at will and then running off and not being caught."
In 2021, San Diego became the first city in the state to pass an ordinance prohibiting the sale and possession of ghost guns.
The ordinance, known as Eliminate Non-serialized Untraceable Firearm (E.N.U.F.) The ordinance prohibits the possession, purchase, sale, receipt, and transportation of non-serialized, unfinished frames and receivers, and non-serialized firearms.
Council member Marni Von Wilpert authored the ordinance.
"By simply requiring the parts needed to assemble a weapon including the unfinished frame or receiver have serial numbers and require registration, that way they have to be sold just like any other normal assembled firearm," said Wilpert.
A spokesperson with Von Wilpert's office explained, "This year, the State of California placed a requirement on non-serialized unfished frames/ receivers and other gun parts that require a background check at the time of purchase. But they will still allow non-serialized parts and kits to be sold. Here in San Diego, we went one step above that to completely prohibit non-serialized parts/kits from being sold at all for fear of straw purchases continuing to flood our communities with these untraceable parts and completed firearms."
"What we're trying to do is simply prevent the flow of these unregulated gun parts from coming to our city which people with violent histories are using to assemble illegal weapons," said Von Wilpert.
San Diego County also passed an ordinance banning ghost guns, but that doesn't stop people from buying them out of state or ordering the kits online.
"For $2,400, in three days, I could have a 3D printer delivered to me and can make my own guns," said Ely.
According to a press release sent from the mayor's office shortly after the ordinance was signed, the number of ghost guns confiscated is dramatically increasing.
In 2020, San Diego saw a 169% increase in the number of ghost guns retrieved and impounded compared to the previous year. The vast majority of ghost guns recovered by SDPD are seized from people who cannot pass state or federal background checks because of a criminal conviction involving a felony, or violent misdemeanor, and from persons who are prohibited due to mental illness.
The ordinance is facing legal challenges. Opponents say it violates the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.
