Bryan Muehlberger, father of Gracie Muehlberger, victim in the Saugus Shooting, commented on recent developments in a federal ghost gun investigation Sunday.
In 2019, a Saugus High School student used a ghost gun to shoot five students, killing two, 15-year-old Gracie Muehlberger and 14-year-old Dominic Blackwell.
The shooting led the Blackwell and Muehlberger families, alongside the State of California, to open a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), in order to crack down on so-called “ghost guns” that skirt laws requiring background checks and age verification.
“Ghost guns are untraceable weapons that have been used in mass shootings throughout the country and right here in California — from Santa Monica in 2013, to Tehama County in 2017, and at Saugus High School just last year,” said Attorney General Becerra in a September statement. “We can’t afford to wait for another tragedy to happen before we take action. It’s time for ATF to prioritize the safety of our communities by calling these products what they are: firearms, and regulating them accordingly.”
See Related: Lawsuit To Crack Down On ‘Ghost Guns’ Prompted By Saugus High Shooting
On Thursday, Dec. 10, federal agents raided one of the nation’s largest ghost gun part manufacturers, which allows people to make firearms at home, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Polymer80, a Nevada based company, was raided for illegally manufacturing and distributing firearms, failing to pay taxes, shipping guns across state lines and failing to conduct background investigations, according to the Wall Street Journal and an application for a search warrant unsealed Thursday after the raid took place.
The investigation focuses on Polymer80’s “Buy Build Shoot Kit,” which includes the parts to build a “ghost” handgun, officials said.
ATF investigators have determined the kit meets the definition of a firearm, meaning it would have to be stamped with a serial number and couldn’t be sold to consumers who haven’t first passed a background check, obstacles that ghost guns circumvent.
“Finding out the gun in the shooting was a ghost gun, we started working with Giffords Law Center,” said Bryan Muehlberger. “And since we didn’t know where it came from we went to the ATF. As we were looking at it, the manufacturers, they found a loophole, they say that these (weapons) have 80 percent of the work left to complete to be a firearm based on design requirements defined by the ATF, in reality it’s more like 1 percent.”
As a test of how easy it was for someone to acquire one of these weapons, Muehlberger himself bought a ghost gun using Gracie’s name and his own credit card to order a ghost gun kit. It was delivered without a single hitch, even though the alleged buyer was not only underage, but also deceased.
The California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Firearms, which conducts enforcement investigations to confiscate firearms from prohibited persons, noted a 512% increase in ghost gun seizures in such investigations in 2019 compared to 2018.
“We filed the lawsuit with California, against ATF, there’s been some back and forth advocacy saying it’ll kill their business…” Muehlberger said. “Manufacturers are violating all firearms laws, no background checks, selling across state lines, selling to underage people.”
Although the ATF had previously given Polymer80 permission to sell unfinished receivers, the Buy Build Shoot Kits weren’t submitted to the agency for approval, according to the search warrant application.
These kits can be “assembled into fully functional firearms in a matter of minutes,” reads the warrant application.
During the course of the investigation, ATF officials discovered that a working firearm could be easily assembled in approximately 21 minutes from kits acquired from Polymer80, with the help of a convicted felon confidential informant familiar with projectile weapons, according to officials.
Bryan Muehlberger saw the Polymer80 raid “a huge win in terms of (their) efforts.”
“I don’t believe that people should have their arms taken away, but it shouldn’t be this easy for the people who shouldn’t have firearms to get them,” Muehlberger said, a gun owner himself. “We want to see change that impacts and improves the safety and livelihood of everyone, we want our kids to be able to go to school and feel safe, and these loopholes need to be corrected.”
To read the full text of the ATF lawsuit, visit this site.
Ed. Note: David Melnarik contributed to this report.
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