Seattle police said Tuesday that the 15-year-old arrested on Sunday after a shooting at a food festival that left three dead and at least four wounded, including a toddler, had used a ghost gun, an untraceable firearm assembled without serial numbers.
The youth apprehended in the closing hours of a food festival near the city’s Space Needle had used a weapon that included an extended 33-round magazine, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes said. Nineteen rounds remained when he was brought into custody. The gun was created using parts from Polymer80, a now-shuttered manufacturer of weapons kits.
“For those who may be unfamiliar, a ghost gun is an untraceable weapon that lacks a serial number,” Mr. Barnes said. “They are typically homemade, and they are illegal.”
Last year, the Supreme Court upheld federal restrictions imposed on ghost guns by the Biden administration. The regulations required some level of traceability on the parts used to make the weapons, as well as background checks on the buyers of those parts.
Those restrictions have been challenged by the national gun lobby and conservative legal groups, and the popularity of the weapons has continued to rise, particularly among convicted felons, minors and others barred from buying firearms.
While they have been linked to mass shootings in the past, such as a 2019 school shooting in California, gun-safety groups say ghost guns are most frequently used in day-to-day street violence. Seattle’s assistant police chief, Nicole Powell, said Monday that investigators believe the Seattle Center shooting was gang-related, with two groups exchanging fire.
In 2019 and 2022, Washington State passed laws to combat untraceable firearms that are considered among the nation’s most comprehensive. But the weapons remain a growing problem. In January, a 26-year-old Seattle man was sentenced to prison after police raided his apartment in 2024, finding a 3-D printer and dozens of firearms, including 20 homemade guns.
Nationally, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the number of ghost guns recovered by law enforcement in 2022 and 2023 grew 44 percent compared to the preceding five years, and rose by nearly 1,600 percent between 2017 to 2023.
One suspected shooter in Sunday’s attack, Junior Cee Niko Semo, was among the three killed, police say. They are continuing to search for a third suspect.