Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott announced that Baltimore City filed a lawsuit against the nation’s largest ghost gun manufacturer, Polymer80.
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The lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, asks the Court to order Polymer80 to stop the public health crisis that the company has caused. June 1, 2022, represents the first day that Maryland’s recent ban on the ghost guns went into effect.
The lawsuit was filed by the Affirmative Litigation Division within Baltimore City’s Department of Law, Brady, a national gun violence prevention organization, and Sanford Heisler Sharp, a national public-interest law firm.
The lawsuit alleges negligence, and public nuisance, and violations of the Maryland Consumer Protection Act.
According to the lawsuit, Polymer80 intentionally undermines federal and state firearms laws by designing, manufacturing, selling and providing ghost gun kits and parts to buyers who do not undergo a background check.
Polymer80’s primary markets consist of those who want to evade law enforcement or who cannot obtain a gun from a Federal Firearms Licensee, including underage buyers, buyers with criminal convictions and gun traffickers.
While the Maryland ban on the sale of ghost guns went into effect on June 1, 2022, the lawsuit alleges that Polymer80 intentionally undermined other laws like the Gun Control Act, the Maryland Handgun Register law, and the Maryland Handgun Qualification License law for years prior to June 1, 2022.
Directly or indirectly through its network of dealers, Polymer80 has flooded Baltimore with these untraceable, unserialized firearms. The lawsuit also includes Hanover Armory as a defendant.
According to the lawsuit, Hanover Armory regularly sells Polymer80 kits in Maryland without determining whether its customers are prohibited from owning a firearm.
The City’s lawsuit also notes that Polymer80’s business model enables an active secondary criminal firearms market of sellers who re-purchase Polymer80 products.
For example, in 2021, Baltimore police uncovered a facility in which four individuals – Latoyah McCoy, Norman Forrest, Jordan Jones and Edward Miles – had the tools to assemble 40 Polymer80 pistols.
In a Baltimore Sun opinion piece published in conjunction with today’s filing, Mayor Scott and Kris Brown, President of Brady, call on Polymer80 to take three immediate steps: (1) stop the sale of ghost gun parts in Baltimore, (2) pay for the injuries and trauma ghost gun violence has inflicted on the city, and (3) implement a plan to address the harm caused by Polymer80’s ghost guns.
"This suit will hold Polymer80 accountable for the harm it has caused in Baltimore, sending a message to all others, not in our town, not in our city," wrote Mayor Scott and Brady’s Kris Brown.
The lawsuit requests compensatory damages for policing costs to the City of Baltimore, punitive damages and injunctive relief requiring Polymer80 to stop the flow of ghost guns into Baltimore City. ■