SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – As long as he lives, Steven Ely will never forget the day when he was hit during a shooting spree in Gaslamp three years ago on April 21, 2021, at 10:45 pm.
“Took me a year to recover. The bullet went through my appendix, in and out of the appendix, lost part of my kidney, and it lodged into my spine. They couldn’t get it out because of the blood loss,” Ely said.
The shooter in that incident, who killed one and injured four others, used a ghost gun.
The City and County of San Diego have drawn a line banning firearms in the sand.
The County filed its first lawsuit against a ghost gun company on Friday.
“And we’re not going to be looking the other way; we’re going to be coming after them,” Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer from the San Diego County Board of Supervisors said.
Lawson-Remer told ABC 10News that the lawsuit claims that the company, Defense Distributed, has been illegally marketing and selling a machine called the 'Ghost Gunner,' which was designed to make ghost guns in California.
It also alleges that the company was banned from selling that machine, but rather than stop, it rebranded and called it the 'Coast Runner.'
“We know exactly what this machine is for. We know exactly kind of codes and manufacturing come embedded in what the machine is capable of making. And you can’t put lipstick on a pig, frankly,” Lawson-Remer said.
Lawson-Remer’s office said this is the County's first lawsuit since a 2022 policy she led to legally go after this kind of gun manufacturer.
“We’re telling them loud and clear that there will be no ghost guns and no illegal distribution of firearms allowed on our watch here in the state of California,” Lawson-Remer said.
While it may be the County's first suit of its kind, Ely told ABC 10News this kind of legal effort has to start somewhere.
“The ghost gun violence is just being proliferated by the ease at which people can get guns,” Ely said. “They’re just so easy to get. You got to stop somewhere.”
ABC 10News reached out to Defense Distributed for comment regarding the lawsuit, but we haven't heard back from them yet.
