New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a suit against the maker of a safety gun part that she claims Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron was “easily” able to remove to carry out his deadly rampage.
The lawsuit — which was filed Thursday, just three days before the one-year anniversary of the racism-fueled shooting — was brought against Mean Arms for its magazine lock part called the MA Lock.
The 19-year-old white supremacist — who was sentenced to life in prison in February for killing 10 black people at Tops Friendly Markets — said in his manifesto that he was able to take the MA lock off of an AR-15 within minutes by “using basic tools in his family’s home and following easily available instructions,” the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit alleges.
Gendron then added a 30-round detachable magazine which he used to kill the 10 victims and injure three others — all within just “two minutes,” the filing alleges.
James says that Mean Arms’ knew that its device could easily be removed — and it even had instructions on how to do so on the packaging — yet it still advertised the item as making a gun compliant with New York laws designed to curb mass killings, the suit claims.
The MA Lock is made to fix a magazine in place to prevent the use of detachable magazines — which allow “a shooter to quickly switch out a magazine to keep shooting without having to stop and reload a magazine affixed to a firearm,” the suit explains.
“The racist mass shooting at the Tops grocery store in Buffalo was one of the darkest days in the history of our state and our nation,” James said in a statement. “We lost 10 innocent lives because a hate-fueled individual was able to make an AR-15 even deadlier through a simple change at home.”
“We cannot undo the devastating harm that was done, but this lawsuit against Mean Arms is part of our ongoing effort to pursue justice for the ten innocent lives that were unjustly taken,” James said.
Gendron pleaded guilty to murder and hate-motivated terror charges for the May 14, 2022, tragedy. He received 10 life sentences at his Feb.15 sentencing where Barbara Mapps said she wanted to “personally choke” Gendron for killing her sister Katherine Massey, 72.
Mean Arms didn’t immediately return a request for comment Thursday.