Fighting for Victims. Investigating the Truth. Demanding Accountability.
Ghost guns are built to be hard to track. The injuries they cause are not. When an untraceable firearm shows up in a shooting, the harm is immediate and often permanent: catastrophic trauma, lifelong disability, and wrongful death. McEldrew Purtell investigates how these weapons enter communities and whether the companies behind them ignored known risks, skirted safeguards, or profited from predictable misuse.
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What makes a “ghost gun” different
Ghost guns often referred to by agencies as “privately made firearms”, are firearms that may be assembled from parts or kits and can lack serial numbers, making them difficult (and sometimes impossible) to trace through normal law-enforcement channels. Federal authorities have documented a sharp rise in recoveries of these weapons tied to crimes in recent years.
In April 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal rule that requires key components in many “ghost gun” kits to be treated like firearms for purposes of serialization and background-check requirements an acknowledgment, at the highest level, of how quickly these kits can become functional weapons in the real world.
The scale of the problem and why it matters in Philadelphia
Nationally, the Justice Department reported that between 2017 and 2023, tens of thousands of suspected privately made firearms were recovered and reported alongside significant growth rates year over year.
Locally, Philadelphia has been confronting the surge for years. At a 2024 hearing, officials cited a 311% increase in ghost gun recoveries between 2019 and 2022. And the human toll is not theoretical: on July 7, 2025, a mass shooting in the Grays Ferry neighborhood left three people dead and nine others injured, underscoring how quickly a single incident can create a dozen families facing life-altering trauma and loss.he recalled build range.)
Catastrophic injury and wrongful death after a shooting
Gunshot trauma commonly creates “high-stakes medicine” from the first second, massive bleeding, complex orthopedic trauma, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, organ damage, loss of vision or hearing, amputations, and severe psychological injury. For many survivors, recovery means multiple surgeries, long rehabilitation, permanent limitations, and a future shaped by pain management and adaptive care. For families who lose someone, the devastation is total, and the financial consequences can be crushing.
Where products liability enters the picture
A civil case is not about blaming a victim or rewriting criminal accountability. It’s about whether a product and its distribution pipeline created an unreasonable risk, then delivered that risk into the public with inadequate safeguards. In ghost-gun cases, that can mean examining whether sellers or distributors ignored obvious warning signs, marketed products in ways that predictably bypassed compliance norms, or continued practices despite known links to shootings, youth access, or prohibited possessors.
Philadelphia itself reached a settlement in 2024 with Polymer80 and JSD Supply two widely cited suppliers connected to ghost gun recoveries requiring them to halt certain sales practices in the city and providing funds tied to the harms alleged.
How McEldrew Purtell builds a ghost-gun case
We treat these matters like the complex product investigations they are. That means moving fast to preserve the firearm and components (when available), tracing the upstream chain of distribution, analyzing warnings and prior incidents, and identifying the points where responsible actors could have acted differently but didn’t. We also work to document the full scope of catastrophic harm: the medicine, the long-term care, the life-care planning, and the loss of future income and support.
Recent recalls and safety actions we’re watching
Ghost-gun litigation is part of a broader reality: when firearm-adjacent products fail whether through defective design or predictable access failures the outcome can be severe injury or death.
- StopBox USA (2025) – AR-15 Chamber Lock Pro: CPSC announced a recall tied to risks of serious injury and death, instructing consumers to stop using the recalled lock and pursue refund/replacement remedies.
- Bulldog Cases (2024) – Biometric gun safes: Recalled because the biometric lock could be opened by unauthorized users, posing a serious injury hazard and risk of death.
- SA Consumer Products (2024) – Sanctuary & Sports Afield biometric safes: Recalled due to reports that the biometric lock can be opened by unauthorized users; CPSC advised disabling biometric access and using keys until repaired.
- Awesafe (2024) – Biometric gun safes: Recalled with similar concerns, unauthorized access through biometric features, because failure here can have immediate, deadly consequences.
- Stack-On (2025) – CPSC stop-use warning (not a recall): CPSC urged consumers to stop using the biometric feature after reports of access by unpaired fingerprints, including an incident involving a child and a severe gunshot injury.
- SIG SAUER (2025) and Holosun (2025) – firearm optic recalls (button/coin battery hazards): CPSC recalls addressed battery-access issues and required warnings/packaging, hazards that can be catastrophic for children.
Talk to a team that handles catastrophic harm
If you or your family has been devastated by a ghost-gun shooting, whether in a mass shooting, robbery, drive-by, domestic violence incident, or neighborhood gunfire, we can help you understand whether there is a path to civil accountability. Reach out for a confidential conversation.
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