Largest 'ghost guns' parts maker agrees to stop selling in California
Polymer80, the leading manufacturer of "ghost gun" kits, has agreed to stop selling them to California residents and will pay $5 million in penalties as part of a lawsuit settlement with the Los Angeles city attorney.
The agreement to halt sales of the kits in the nation's most populous state comes after a D.C. judge last year entered a permanent injunction and a $4 million judgment against Polymer80 for selling gun parts in violation of city law. The company's website now prominently advises it will not sell parts to residents of California or the District of Columbia.
Ghost guns are homemade firearms, built without serial numbers, that can't be traced by police after they are used in crimes. The number of ghost guns seized by law enforcement has skyrocketed in recent years, from less than 3,000 in 2017 to nearly 26,000 last year, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Meanwhile, the number of homicides involving all types of firearms has risen by about 50 percent nationwide within that time frame, from less than 14,000 in 2018 to nearly 21,000 in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Los Angeles settlement is the latest attempt to stop the flow of untraceable guns to criminals. Last year, the Biden administration and ATF issued a rule legally defining "frames" and "receivers," the unfinished parts used to construct ghost guns, as firearms, subject to background checks and serial number requirements.
Polymer80 joined gun rights groups who sued to stop the rule, and a judge in Texas issued an injunction against it earlier this year. The Biden administration recently asked the Supreme Court to review the case, and the high court allowed the rule to remain in place until it decides the issue.
A number of shocking incidents prompted Los Angeles to take action, notably the ambush of two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies who were repeatedly shot in the head as they sat in a patrol car in 2020 by an assailant using a gun built from Polymer80 parts. The deputies, who survived, sued Polymer80 and have reportedly reached a settlement.
A 16-year-old used a ghost gun at a high school in Santa Clarita, Calif., to shoot five classmates before killing himself in 2019. And in Glendale, Calif., three people were fatally shot in 2019 with a weapon made from Polymer80 parts.
As part of the settlement, entered Aug. 24 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, internal documents from Polymer80 were filed that indicated the company received calls from angry parents whose teenagers had purchased ghost gun kits online.
"I get calls periodically on our pistol sales," a Polymer80 executive wrote in an email in 2017, "because some 16-year-old has ordered a pistol using his parents' address and credit card. Moms get pretty furious and I hate being on the other end of those tail-tucking calls."
But Polymer80 did not stop selling gun parts to teenagers. The number of incidents in which a youth used a ghost gun to wound or kill others has soared in recent years, police and federal authorities say. Part of the reason is because they can be ordered online without a background or identity check, since makers of ghost gun parts do not believe the parts legally qualify as a gun.
In 2021, an 18-year-old in Fairfax County, Va., assembled a gun from parts ordered online, then fatally shot two 17-year-old schoolmates he barely knew.
ATF has estimated that Polymer80 was responsible for more than 88 percent of the ghost guns recovered by police from 2017 to 2021, although there are nearly 100 manufacturers selling parts, or full kits, that can be made into guns without serial numbers, according to a list compiled by Everytown for Gun Violence, which joined Los Angeles in suing Polymer80 in 2021.
"This settlement is an unprecedented victory for gun industry accountability," said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law, "and it sends a clear message to other bad actors that they are not above the law."
Hydee Feldstein Soto, the Los Angeles city attorney, said in a statement after the settlement was announced that in addition to essentially banning Polymer80 from California, the settlement "keeps guns out of the hands of prohibited people, makes L.A. neighborhoods safer and will help law enforcement do their jobs."
Loran Kelley and David Borges, the co-founders of Polymer80, and their attorneys did not respond to requests for comment. Kelley told Pro Publica last year that putting a serial number on his products would not hurt his company, but he said requiring background checks would be a "critical threat" to his business because his customers include a large number of people who "value their Fourth Amendment rights" to privacy.
"There's a problem when people's right to privacy is infringed and a government agency is looking at what you bought whenever they want," he said.
Documents filed with the settlement show that Polymer80, based in Nevada, sold more than 200,000 unserialized gun kits into California, including more than 1,600 "Buy-Build-Shoot" kits, from 2017 to August of this year. "Buy-Build-Shoot" kits contain all the parts needed to build a full gun. "It's basically a pistol in a box," a Polymer80 executive wrote in a 2020 email disclosed in court records, "and the only item the customer needs to acquire after purchasing a Buy-Build-Shoot kit is some ammo."
Tirschwell said that "these admissions, coupled with police estimates showing that nearly 40 percent of crime guns recovered in Los Angeles are ghost guns, paint a clear picture of how Polymer80's business practices helped to fuel California's gun violence crisis." Tirschwell said records showed California was Polymer80's largest market.
In a pretrial deposition, Kelley said his company was no longer selling the Buy-Build-Shoot kits anywhere, in part because of the new rule promulgated by the Biden administration, and also because of a criminal investigation launched by ATF in 2020, in which Polymer80's headquarters in Dayton, Nev., was searched. In the affidavit used to obtain that search warrant, ATF Agent Tolliver Hart wrote that an informant for the bureau, using a Buy-Build-Shoot kit, had "assembled a fully functional firearm in approximately 21 minutes."
To avoid criminal prosecution, Polymer80 entered into a three-year cooperation agreement with the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles in October 2022 in which it acknowledged that Buy-Build-Shoot kits, and any of its kits with parts from which a gun can be assembled, "are to be classified as and considered 'firearms' and 'handguns,'" according to records in the California case.
In addition, Polymer80 agreed not to directly sell Buy-Build-Shoot kits online in California, and that any kits sold by California gun dealers be subject to background checks and marked with serial numbers. It also agreed to fully cooperate with federal authorities in investigations involving guns made from Polymer80 parts and kits, court records show.
The settlement of the lawsuit by Los Angeles and Everytown went further. Polymer80 agreed to stop selling all of its unserialized gun kits in California, including those that only include frames or receivers. Polymer80 also agreed to post notice on its website that "unserialized, unfinished frame or receiver kits" are not to be sold in California, and there is no expiration date to the agreement.
A dozen states have passed laws requiring serial numbers and background checks before selling gun parts, according to a list compiled by Everytown, and Polymer80's website indicates it does not ship parts to those states, or to D.C.
The California settlement came one year after a D.C. Superior Court judge issued a permanent injunction and a $4 million judgment against Polymer80, ruling that the company falsely informed consumers for years that buying the pieces to make such guns was legal in the city.
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