New York is suing maker of device that modified Buffalo Killer’s Gun

Five months before he murdered 10 black people in a Buffalo grocery store, Peyton Gendron wrote in his online journal that he found a gun, one fixed with a locking device sold by a Georgia company.

The device, called an MA lock, was ostensibly supposed to hinder Mr. Gendron, a white supremacist who was intent on killing as many black people as possible. Mean Arms, a Georgia-based company, markets the device to lock a magazine — the component that holds ammunition — onto a firearm.

The parts are intended to prevent shooters from using detachable magazines, which is illegal in New York because they can reload quickly. The company says its device makes a gun that complies with New York law.

But according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the New York Attorney General, Mean Arms knowingly sells a lock that can be easily removed and even provides step-by-step instructions for removing it on the back of product packaging. Indeed, Mr Gendron did not call the device a lock in his diary, but referred to it as an “issue” of a fixed magazine.

According to photos Mr Gendron posted in his calendar in January 2022, he was indeed able to remove the lock quickly and with little effort. In the shooting, on May 14 of that year, he used detachable 30-round magazines. Using the larger capacity magazines helped him avoid having to reload his gun and may have helped Mr. Gendron kill more people. Along with the 10 he killed, three others were injured in his attack.

“We lost 10 innocent lives because a hate-fueled person could make an AR-15 even more deadly with a simple change at home,” Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. She added that Mean Arms sold the locking device “knowing that it can be easily removed to make guns more dangerous.”

A lawyer from Mean Arms, based in Woodstock, Georgia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On its website, the company says the lock was designed as “a complete solution for fixed warehouses” and that it was “developed for states with intrusive laws requiring fixed warehouses.”

“Once installed, it cannot be removed with a tool that complies with CA and NY state laws,” the website says. Mr. Gendron’s diary and Mean Arms product packaging seem to show the opposite.