Baltimore City will receive $1.2 million as a result of a settlement in a lawsuit against Polymer80, the nation’s largest company that sells “ghost guns” or untraceable “build your own firearm” assembly kits.
In 2022, the city sued the ghost gun manufacturer alleging that its untraceable guns — those produced by the kits have no serial numbers — were contributing to the gun violence epidemic in Baltimore City.
In addition to damages, the settlement requires Polymer80 to cease the sale and advertising of the assembly kits in Maryland. Dealers in neighboring states are also prohibited from selling the kits to Maryland residents. The company is also required to provide Baltimore City with quarterly reports detailing the sales of manufacturing kits from dealers in neighboring states.
In a Wednesday press release, the city called it, “the most expansive and strictest injunctive terms so far of any of the lawsuits against ghost gun manufacturers brought by jurisdictions across the country.”
Los Angeles settled a similar lawsuit last year, although that settlement did not yield an outright ban but instead required them to conduct background checks on buyers and prevented the sale of products without serial numbers. Washington D.C. settled a similar lawsuit and Philadelphia sued the Nevada-based company last year, as well.
“We must hold everyone who has a hand in this violence accountable, from those who choose to pull the trigger, all the way up to the gun dealers and manufacturers responsible for the flow of guns into our City. This settlement — and the statement it sends about the harmful impact of these ghost guns — is a critical victory for the effort to confront gun violence in our communities,” said Mayor Brandon Scott, a first-term Democrat who is up for reelection in November, during a Wednesday morning press conference.
In the city’s 2022 lawsuit against Polymer80, Baltimore used numbers from the Baltimore Police Department citing that the number of kit made guns increased from 29 in 2020 up to 126 in 2021. According to then BPD Deputy Commissioner Sheree Briscoe, one of those ended up in the hands of a teenager as young as 14 years old.
According to BPD, the department seized 462 ghost guns in 2023. In this year to date, they report a seizure of 43 ghost guns — up 30% from this time last year.
Under federal law, the frames and receivers on a firearm must be stamped with a serial number. By selling frames that are 80% complete, the company is able to circumnavigate that requirement — hence the “80” in Polymer80.
Some of the settlement is actually already covered under Maryland law. In 2022, the state passed a law requiring that all firearms must be imprinted with either a serial number or a personal identification number registered with the state. The law applies to unfinished frames or receivers found in the kit.
“One particularly notable part of Baltimore's settlement is that it will not only stop Polymer80 sales in Maryland, but will also stop sellers in adjacent states from selling those ghost gun products to Maryland residents. That's really important because we know that traffickers often go across state lines to source ghost guns and traffick them back for sale in jurisdictions that prohibit them,” said David Pucino, who provides counsel and is the legal director for the Giffords Law Center, a non-profit focused on ending gun violence.
“The people who want to buy “build it yourself” kits from Polymer80 typically want to avoid the regulatory system that lawmakers have put in place,” said Daniel Webster, a professor and firearms researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Obviously, this includes individuals with felony convictions or other conditions that prohibit legal acquisition of firearms including underage youth, individuals subject to restraining orders for domestic violence, and persons who are a danger to self or others due to mental illness.”
Ghost guns present particular challenges for law enforcement, Webster said in an email, because it is impossible to know where a gun was bought, who it was sold to, or even if it was stolen.
Webster agreed with Baltimore’s claim that the city’s settlement seems to be the most “expansive” against the national ghost gun manufacturer.
“It is too early to tell whether prior settlements yielded public safety benefits and there have been no formal studies that I'm aware of,” wrote Webster, noting that ghost guns now represent a significant share of guns recovered in Baltimore and across the country. “In my opinion, if these settlements are enforced, the settlements could prevent many future crimes of violence.”
At the same time Baltimore sued Polymer80, it also sued Hanover Armory, an Anne Arundel County gun shop, claiming that the store flooded the city’s streets with the untraceable weapons. That lawsuit is not settled and is currently set to go to trial in October of this year.
The city is pulling out all of the stops when it comes to using the court system to try and stem gun violence. In December of last year, Baltimore sued the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives for data on the top ten sources of crime guns in the city from 2018 to 2022. The ATF claims that it is forbidden to do so under the Tiahrt Amendments, which they say prohibit ATF from releasing data from its firearms trace database to anyone other than law enforcement.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct year in which BPD reported 462 ghost guns.
