By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr. on Tuesday announced the filing of an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Garland v. VanDerStok, in support of federal regulations issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that require ghost gun parts to have serial numbers and compel background checks for prospective buyers of ghost gun home-assembly kits.
According to Adams, co-chairman of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, ghost guns are just as dangerous as traditional firearms, as they are “functionally indistinguishable from pre-assembled guns,” and “home-assembled firearms recovered by the NYPD have typically corresponded to specific models of commercially available pre-assembled guns.” Furthermore, “easily assembled ghost guns have become increasingly prevalent among individuals who would otherwise be banned from possessing firearms in New York,” and “home-assembly firearm kits are explicitly marketed as a means of bypassing gun-control laws.”
The brief argues that both the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have been at the forefront of combating the proliferation of ghost guns. Since the start of the Adams administration, the NYPD has already removed approximately 17,000 illegal guns from city streets, including more than 1,050 ghost guns. In 2020, the NYPD also created the Major Case Field Intelligence Team, which works closely with the city’s five district attorneys, as well as state and federal law enforcement, to stop the flow of ghost guns.
The brief also states that, “in just six years, the number of ghost guns in New York City has exploded by nearly 30 times.” The lack of federal regulation of “ghost-guns kits and components has allowed these firearms to fall into the hands of dangerous individuals who would otherwise be ineligible to possess these weapons under New York law.”
“Ghost guns are guns, plain and simple, and they are dangerous,” said City Hall Chief Counsel Lisa Zornberg.
“Ghost guns are one of the fastest-growing threats to public safety, and this Supreme Court case threatens to open the doors wide open for even more of them to flow into our communities,” Adams said. “President Biden and ATF Director Dettelbach have led the strongest gun safety administration in history, and the ghost gun rule they finalized saves lives. It’s commonsense: ghost guns are guns, so they should be regulated like guns — and we’re grateful to our state lawmakers for passing laws that recognize that. We will continue to do everything in our power to dam every river that feeds the sea of gun violence and endangers New Yorkers, especially our young people.”
Shootings and homicides were down by double-digits in each of the administration’s first two years in office. Both shootings and homicides remain down across New York City year to date as well.
CORRECTION
In last week’s edition of The Forum, a story (“Homeless Man Indicted for Allegedly Shooting Two Cops in East Elmhurst”) mistakenly featured a photo of Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato (D-Howard Beach).
It was an honest blunder. The Forum regrets the error.
