Ypsilanti teen sues 'ghost gun' supplier that sold kit for gun his friend shot him with

Ann Arbor — A 19-year-old Ypsilanti teen who was shot accidentally by a friend in 2021 is suing one of the nation's leading ghost gun kit sellers for allegedly supplying an underage buyer with the kit used to assemble a firearm.

The suit brought on behalf of Guy Boyd is being filed against online firearms dealer JSD Supply by several groups, including the legal arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, the University of Michigan Law School's civil-criminal litigation clinic and a New York-based law firm, Bloch & White. The suit was filed Monday night in Washtenaw County Circuit Court.

Boyd was shot in the face accidentally in 2021 by his then-best friend, Kyle Thueme, who at the age of 17 had purchased a ghost gun kit from Pennsylvania-based JSD Supply, allegedly without any sort of age verification. It's illegal for minors to purchase firearms. Thueme also is named as a defendant in the suit.

"I'm here because I don't want to see anybody suffer like I did," Boyd, who was 17 at the time of the shooting, said at a Tuesday press conference announcing the lawsuit.

The "negligent and illegal sales of ghost gun kits to a teenager was no random accident," the lawsuit said. "For years, defendant JSD proudly, publicly, yet falsely advertised that the guns assembled from its kits required no licensing, could be owned completely 'off the books,' and required 'absolutely no paperwork.'"

The complaint alleges negligence on Thueme's part, and it accuses JSD of negligent entrustment, violations of the state's consumer protection act.

JSD Supply did not immediately return a call and email Tuesday seeking comment.

In the May 31, 2021 shooting, Boyd lost his right eye, suffers from ongoing, life-threatening seizures and "will forever experience decreased physical and mental functionality."

Thueme, the suit alleges, purchased the kit from JSD, which labels its kits as "80% pistols" but often included "everything needed to finish your own pistol." The company advertises its kits as needing no "serialization, no background check, no government fee," the lawsuit alleges.

The "uniquely dangerous method of marketing and distributing its ghost gun kits placed the public at risk of harm from the foreseeable misuse of guns by prohibited users, including minors," the lawsuit alleged.

The sale of the gun to Thueme, the lawsuit alleges, occurred weeks after JSD, following an investigation by the Pennsylvania attorney general's office, agreed to take steps to ensure customers were of legal age and not prohibited from possessing a firearm.

Thueme, according to the complaint, paid $464.97 for the "Build and Completion Kit" on April 9, 2021 to be shipped to his home in Ypsilanti. When his mother discovered the firearm, she took it away, the lawsuit alleges. Thueme then bought a second batch of kits on April 27, 2021 for $474.92, the complaint said.

On the night of May 30, 2021 and into May 31, 2021, Thueme and Boyd were hanging out in a trailer in the driveway of Boyd's then-girlfriend, drinking and smoking marijuana, the complaint said. Thueme at one point brought out his firearm, and with the barrel pointed at Boyd, pulled the trigger "hoping it was empty," according to the filing. The gun fired a bullet through Boyd's eye.

Surgeons were unable to remove all of the bullet from Boyd's head and, to this day, fragments remain lodged in his brain, the complaint said.

Last month, Nevada-based Polymer80, a manufacturer and supplier of ghost gun kits reached a settlement with the city of Baltimore that included $1.2 million in damages and an agreement to stop selling the unassembled firearms in Maryland, the Washington Post reported. Similar settlements have been reached after suits were filed in California, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.

But Maryland's went a bit further than those settlements because it also required Polymer 80 to supply quarterly reports to Baltimore reporting all ghost gun sales in neighboring Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

JSD differs from Polymer80, plaintiffs' lawyer said Tuesday, because it is not a manufacturer, just a third-party supplier.

The crackdown in other states comes as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has reported increased recoveries of "ghost guns" at crime scenes. In 2022, the agency reported the recovery of 20,000 ghost guns from crime scenes, a ten-fold increase from 2016.

eleblanc@detroitnews.com