Mayor Eric Adams called out by name a seller of firearm kits, a Nevada company called Polymer80, demanding it be shut down, blaming it for the proliferation of so-called ghost guns

"If you just look here in the city, a 16-year-old baby was shot in the Bronx, coming from school," Adams said. "It was a ghost gun, Polymer80."

What You Need To Know

  • Mayor Eric Adams asked the federal government to shut down a company called Polymer80 for selling firearm kits that end up in the hands of suspected shooters in New York

  • Each year, NYPD is seizing more ghost guns than the previous year. In 2021, 275 were taken off the streets, up from 17 in 2018, when the NYPD first encountered them

  • According to the NYPD, a gun made from Polymer80 parts was used in the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old Bronx girl walking home from school

A ghost gun - untraceable and made from a kit - was allegedly in the hands of 17-year-old Jeremiah Ryan, who fired into a Bronx street in April that struck three teenagers walking home from school. It killed 16-year-old Angellyh Yambo.

Now, Adams called on the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms to revoke the company's federal firearm license.

"We must shut down the online retailers like Polymer80 who feed these rivers of violence," Adams said.

"They have been reckless in the sales of these products to the population at large," said Keith Taylor, an adjunct assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who had an extensive career with the NYPD. "We know this because their guns, their gun kits that you turn into guns are being used in crime scenes."

"It’s like creating your own say Glock or 9 mm weapon out of scratch, basically from parts you order from the mail that totally circumvents efforts by this government and this country to regulate who gets guns making sure they have passed background checks that they’re not felons that they are not individuals under the age of 18 or those who are mentally unfit," Taylor said.

An NYPD official at the news conference said nine out of 10 ghost guns the NYPD seizes are made from Polymer80 merchandise.

And the number of ghost guns recovered are increasing each year since the first ghost gun seized in 2018, when 17 untraceable fire arms were taken off the streets.

Then the year after, 50 were seized. Then, the number tripled to 150. Then, in 2021, it nearly doubled to 275.

Now, this year through April, 153 ghost guns seized - four times as many as the same period through last year, according to the NYPD.

They are a small amount of the thousands of illegal firearms recovered each year. But Nick Suplina of Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for firearm regulations, said it’s important to stop the proliferation of ghost guns, before they proliferate further.

"These ghost guns are an innovation by the gun industry that is indifferent to the carnage that it’s causing our communities and so we are trying to catch this problem in the earlier stages," Suplina said.

NY1 reached out to a company representative for Polymer 80 and they have yet to respond.