'Ghost gun' maker goes dark

Source: NPR

September 5, 2024 4:47 AM ET


It's getting harder to buy "ghost guns" — the term critics use for firearms that are made from kits, and are often impossible to trace. First the Biden Administration cracked down: in 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives issued a rule that the kits should be considered firearms under federal law, which requires them to be sold with serial numbers and a background check. Then the gun kit makers were hit by a wave of lawsuits.

One of the most successful was Philadelphia's suit against two of the biggest gun kit sellers, Polymer80 and JSD Supply, which agreed last April to stop selling the kits in a large region around the city for four years. Now Polymer80 has apparently shut down altogether. The website isn't available, no one answers the sales phone number, and a social media post that appears to be from the CEO says the company is shut down "for now." The company did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.

Others in the build-it-yourself firearms industry assume it was the combination of tougher regulations and lawsuits that took the company down. "It was too successful. Polymer is a victim of its own success," says Cody Wilson, who's known as a pioneer of some aspects of do-it-yourself gun manufacturing, as well as his plea-bargain a few years later in a sexual assault case. He says his own company, in Austin, Tex., has faced similar legal pressures.

"Defense Distributed has been involved in maybe 15 federal court cases," he says. "Often these are at the direction of groups like Giffords, Everytown -- from our point of view, the usual suspects." The gun control groups take pride in their efforts to limit the spread of what they call "ghost guns," and they say Polymer80s apparent shut-down proves their argument about who's been buying the kits.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/04/nx-s1-5099467/ghost-gun-maker-goes-dark