Rep. Ritchie Torres takes ghost gun fight to Congress after DOJ rule
As the Biden administration works to reel in the raging spread of so-called ghost guns with a new Justice Department rule, Rep. Ritchie Torres said Thursday that he was taking aim at the lethal kit-assembled weapons by taking the fight to Capitol Hill.
Torres, a Bronx Democrat, said he plans to introduce legislation on Monday that would allow private parties to sue manufacturers of ghost gun parts after shootings.
The long-shot legislation would appear to face a Sisyphean path in Congress, where stringent gun-control proposals tend to wilt.
But Torres said he hoped the unique risks that ghost guns can pose to children might spur lawmakers to action. Ghost guns do not carry serial numbers and are typically sold in incomplete sets.
“We know the Republican Party has obstructed every attempt at gun safety,” Torres told the Daily News. “Having said that, it’s not entirely clear to me where every Republican stands on ghost gun regulation.”
“There’s a particularly powerful case for removing the civil liability shield on ghost gun manufacturers because ghost guns pose a particular threat to children,” Torres added. “There’s an aggravating factor here.”
Torres’ bill, which does not currently have a co-sponsor, would create a private right of action against the maker of any part of a ghost gun used to wound or kill a victim. It would also put anyone who sold such a weapon at legal peril.
In New York, Gov. Hochul signed legislation in October that criminalized the sale of ghost guns and outlawed the possession of unfinished gun frames by people outside the firearm industry.
But ghost guns seem to keep pouring into the five boroughs. Last Friday, bullets sprayed from a ghost gun near a South Bronx high school killed a 16-year-old girl, Angellyh Yambo, and wounded two other teens, according to authorities.
Torres described the shooting, which took his place in his district, as “alarming.”
“The gun violence epidemic is out of control,” Torres said. “It’s a crisis that is too glaring to ignore. I think New Yorkers, especially in the South Bronx, are feeling it more palpably than ever.”
In New York State, law enforcement recovered 220 ghost guns in 2020, a 479% increase over a three-year period, according to the Rockefeller Institute, an Albany-based think tank. The proliferation of ghost guns seems to have accelerated further.
Mayor Adams reported this week that authorities in the city had recovered five times as many ghost guns so far this year as in the same period last year. The mayor said the situation had reached a “crisis level.”
The Justice Department on Monday announced a rule that would treat the elusive guns like traditional firearms and force gun dealers to mark ghost guns with serial numbers before they sell them. That edict is expected to face legal challenges.
Makers of traditional guns are broadly shielded from liability if their weapons are used in crimes, under a 16-year-old federal law signed by President George W. Bush, though New York worked to chip away at the protections through a state law passed last year.
Torres charged that ghost gun makers have “exploited a loophole” in federal rules to avoid regulation.
“The gun manufacturers behind the ghost gun surge have blood on their hands,” Torres said. “I welcome the new rule from the Justice Department. But in the end, there’s no substitute for a congressional statute.”
