Police arrived at the three-flat apartment in the city’s East Side neighborhood at 7 a.m. one day last summer.
Walking up from the basement, a young man met the team of Chicago Police Department and Illinois Department of Corrections officers in the building’s common area. It was time to conduct a parole check.
Two months earlier, he had pleaded guilty to aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, and was sentenced to six months of mandatory supervised release. Just the day before, on his 20th birthday, he had been shot in the shoulder.
Officers soon found several pistol and rifle magazines hidden in a dresser, an AR rifle buttstock, more loose rounds of ammunition under his mattress, and a few grams of crack cocaine. Also recovered were four 3D-printed lower receivers — the component of a gun containing the hammer and trigger that also holds the magazine.
“Upon furthering our investigation with the ATF, special agents related the 4 recovered 3D printed lower receivers classify as firearms,” a CPD officer wrote in the man’s arrest report before he was charged.
But despite the seemingly exotic nature of the discovery, the case is far from an outlier. Through mid-November, records show, CPD officers in 2025 have recovered nearly 400 “ghost guns” — effectively untraceable weapons, often sold on the Internet as part of kits, that can easily end up in the hands of criminals.
Reporting by the Tribune shows CPD has recovered about 400 ghost guns in each of the last few years, totals that have remained steady even after a state law meant to curb them went into effect in 2022.
“Privately made firearms” are now the sixth most common make of gun recovered by CPD, topped only by familiar brands such as Glock, Taurus, Smith & Wesson, Sturm & Ruger and Springfield. Data from CPD show the department logs, on average, one gun recovery every 44 minutes throughout the year.
Ghost guns have been recovered all over Chicago, but more than 10% of them were recovered in the Englewood (7th) District on the South Side this year, the most of any patrol district.
Effect of state law
The state legislation came after someone with a ghost gun shot and killed a teen boy in Millennium Park in 2022.
Gov. JB Pritzker signed the law banning the creation, sale or possession of the weapons in Illinois in an attempt to curb their production and use. The at-home assembly of a “privately made firearm” allows for anyone to purchase a weapon without being subject to a background check.
“A child should not be able to build an AR-15 like they’re building a toy truck,” Pritzker said during the bill signing. “A convicted domestic abuser should not be able to evade scrutiny by using a 3D printer to make a gun.”
In an interview last week with the Tribune, CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling praised the Crime Gun Intelligence Center, a hub connecting local and federal law enforcement agencies that helps link specific weapons to different criminal incidents. But he noted the obstacle that ghost guns present.
“The great thing about the CGIC Center is that they’ve been able to run certain guns that have been used in particular crimes, and they were able to tie those guns to those crimes or to a particular person, and we were able to take people into custody, solve cases and solve murders,” Snelling said. “That’s a lot harder to do with ghost guns.”
Politicians also have continued to try to react to the issue, including the 3D printing of parts that upgrade other weapons.
In June, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined a federal lawsuit with 15 other states’ attorneys general against the Trump administration stemming from the administration’s plan to legalize “forced-reset triggers,” which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire more quickly — similar to a “switch” on a handgun. Those parts can be produced like other components of ghost guns.
“Illinois law is also clear: Forced reset triggers are unlawful,” Raoul said in a statement. “I will continue to enforce the ban on forced reset triggers under Illinois law, and I will advocate against any policy that will contribute to the gun violence that has become common in too many communities in Illinois and across the nation.”
What qualifies as a ghost gun
“Privately made firearms” — the ATF’s official designation for ghost guns — applies to a variety of weapons and gun components.
The term can refer to pistols or revolvers made in someone’s home, but also to gun receivers and machine gun conversion devices.
The ATF notes, too, that nationally “from 2016 through 2021, there were approximately 45,240 suspected privately made firearms reported to ATF as having been recovered by law enforcement from potential crime scenes, including 692 homicides or attempted homicides.”
“Individuals who make their own firearms may use a 3D printing process or any other process, as long as the firearm is ‘detectable’ as defined in the Gun Control Act,” according to the ATF. “You do not have to add a serial number or register the PMF if you are not engaged in the business of making firearms for livelihood or profit.”
Snelling said earlier this year CPD had a meeting with the ATF, prosecutors from Cook County and other municipalities across the country, as well as local community violence intervention workers to discuss “what can be done, what can be proposed to legislators around these types of weapons that can’t be traced.”
“Nobody has a ghost gun because they’re law-abiding weapons owners,” Snelling added. “When we’re talking about someone who’s specifically converting a handgun into a machine gun, those people who, through 3D printing, are building guns with no serial numbers, we have to focus on that because those people don’t have good intentions.”
Standard weapons still most popular
While gun violence in Chicago and other major cities has fallen steadily in recent years, CPD officers still recover about 1,000 guns every month. Through mid-December, CPD had recovered 11,122 guns in all this year, according to a department spokesperson.
The seizures often occur during the execution of search warrants, or during routine traffic and investigatory stops. Several thousand guns are obtained through voluntary turn-in events, too.
Glock semiautomatic handguns remain, by far, the most common type of firearm recovered by CPD. Through mid-November, more than a third of all guns recovered — nearly 2,900 — were manufactured by Glock, according to CPD data analyzed by the Tribune.
More than 2,600 guns manufactured by Taurus, Smith & Wesson, Sturm & Ruger and Springfield were confiscated by CPD in the first 10 and a half months of 2025.
In 2024, the city filed a lawsuit against Glock and two suburban gun shops, alleging that the weapons maker willfully ignored design flaws in its handguns that allow for them to be easily turned to fire automatic rounds. The lawsuit points to the proliferation of machine gun conversion devices, also known as “switches” or “auto-sears,” that can turn a semiautomatic pistol into a machine gun capable of firing multiple rounds with a single trigger pull.
In September, a Cook County judge ordered that the still-pending lawsuit could proceed.
In a 17-page order, Judge Allen Walker wrote that “a reasonable jury could determine that the design and manufacture of a Glock pistol by Glock Inc., its subsequent sale by Eagle Sports Range and Midwest Sporting Goods, materially contribute to a condition in the City of Chicago that endangers the safety and health of the public.”
