Baltimore Mayor BrandonM. Scott said Tuesday that the city plans to sue Polymer80, one of the country’s largest manufacturers of “ghost gun” kits — untraceable firearms that have proliferated on city streets and contributed to a surge of violence.
Officials plan to file the suit Wednesday, the same daya state law to ban the sale, receipt and transfer of an unfinished frame or receiver that does not have a serial number by the manufacturer takes effect.
“Ghost guns are a devastating menace to the people of Baltimore,” Scott said in a statement. “The availability of these weapons — particularly to criminals, juveniles and other people who are prohibited from owning a firearm — presents a growing public health crisis. We do everything in our power to stop the companies involved in the proliferation of ghost guns and profit off of the destruction of our communities.”
Baltimore is the latest big city to announce plans to sue Polymer80. Two years ago, the D.C. attorney general filed a lawsuit against the company, and last year Los Angeles also took the company to court.
With gun restrictions stymied in Congress, President Biden took executive action in April that imposes a new rule on “ghost guns,” designed to tamp down the surge being felt across the country.
Maryland’s largest city has reported more than 300 killings annually in the past seven years, and city officials are grappling with ways to stem gun violence. Police recovered 352 ghost guns last year — an increase of more than 1,000 percent from 2019. So far this year authorities have seized 187 weapons with no serial numbers, according to a city spokesman.The police chief earlier this year said officers had connected 69 acts of violence to ghost guns that were recovered in 2021.
An official with Polymer80 did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The company in response to Biden’s rule announcement in April said it would “mount a rigorous defense of our Second Amendment rights” in an Instagram post of the president holding pieces of a ghost gun kit.
“Polymer80 will continue to operate lawfully,” the account stated. “Our products are still legal, however, please be sure to check your state and local regulations to ensure compliance.”
Law enforcement officials from local to federal levels have sought more tools to combat the growing use of the unmarked guns as violent crime has surged, but it’s too soon to gauge how successful early efforts to regulate them have been, said Alex McCourt, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and director of legal research for the Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
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Photo: Ghost guns that were secured by D.C. police in 2020. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
