NYPD grabs 27 ghost guns in Queens as more build-them-yourself weapons show up on city streets
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Four Queens residents turned their homes into workshops of death where they stashed 27 illegal “ghost guns” built from parts ordered online, prosecutors said Thursday.
Police uncovered the build-it-yourself weapons along with six commercially manufactured firearms and attachments like silencers, sights and a laser targeting system in a series of early-morning raids Tuesday on three houses in Bayside and Flushing, and an apartment in Auburndale.
The weapons have been dubbed “ghost guns” because they’re essentially untraceable — and they’re showing up with more and more frequency on city streets.
“The individuals that are building, trafficking and using these illegal, self-made firearms no longer need to travel the Iron Pipeline to Southern states to acquire firearms and distribute them in our community,” said Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz.
“Now at the stroke of a keyboard, the ‘Polymer Pipeline’ continues to allow gun traffickers to build weapon from the comfort of their homes.”
Polymer parts are common in guns and are the basis of do-it-yourself gun building kits sold at gun shops and on the internet. Polymer materials are based on nylon-type plastic, and can also include fiberglass.
The cops’ seizures included 22 semiautomatic home-built pistols, four home-built assault weapons, a home-built assault shotgun, 78 large-capacity magazines, 16 polymer-based lower receivers, about 10,000 bullets, silencers, holographic gun sights, bulletproof vests and a nighttime laser targeting system, as well as $50,000 cash.
The raids early Tuesday marked the sixth “ghost guns” bust in Queens since August, Katz said.
Police and investigators pulled the weapons and weapon parts from the two Bayside homes of Andrew Chang, 34, the Flushing home of Kai Zhao, 45, and Michael Frankenfeld, 55, and the Auburndale apartment of Seongwoo Chung, 35. None of them had licenses for any of the weapons, Katz said.
All four face a variety of weapon possession and sale charges.
Unlike factory-manufactured firearms, home-built ghost guns do not have serial numbers. Gun builders buy them in parts, and make them with help from instructional videos on YouTube and other sites.
Someone with skilled hands can build one from the parts in 20 minutes, Queens Assistant DA Shanon LaCorte told reporters Thursday.
According Deputy Inspector Courtney Nilan of the NYPD Intelligence Bureau, cops have recovered 85 ghost guns so far in 2022, up from 20 in the same timeframe of 2021.
