State Attorney General Letitia James announced on Wednesday that she has ordered nine Western New York businesses to immediately stop advertising and selling parts that are used to build homemade, untraceable “ghost guns.”
The parts themselves, called unfinished frames and receivers, are not considered firearms. With the use of common tools, though, they can be used to hold together the other parts of a ghost gun. State laws that took effect earlier this year criminalized the sale and possession of ghost guns.
The attorney general’s effort to clamp down on ghost guns comes less than three weeks after a gunman killed 10 people with a semiautomatic rifle in a Buffalo grocery store in a racially motivated assault. The defendant, Payton Gendron, wrote in a document he published online shortly before the slayings that he had purchased the weapon legally at a gun shop, but modified it with his father’s drill to circumvent the state law limiting the ammunition capacity of such a rifle.
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James’s office sent cease and desist letters this week to a total of 28 businesses across the state, warning that they could face fines or even imprisonment if they do not immediately stop advertising and selling the parts that are used to make ghost guns.
Most of the businesses had advertised the illegal parts either online or at gun shows, according to the Attorney General's Office. Some allowed buyers to purchase the parts online, while others directed customers to call and ask for a price.
James’s office would not release the names of the nine local businesses she sent letters to, and declined to publicly explain why.
Ghost guns are proliferating on the streets so quickly that Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia has said he considers it a pandemic.
Ghost guns have quickly become more readily available in Buffalo, as in other places throughout the country. In the first 10 months of last year, Buffalo police seized more than 50 ghost guns; in the three previous years combined, they seized 15.
“Across the nation, too many lives are being lost because of these untraceable and unregistered weapons that anyone can get their hands on without a background check,” James said Wednesday in a written statement.
