In Buffalo, New York, Attorney General Letitia James said the Georgia-based manufacturer of a gun accessory tied to the 2022 Tops Friendly Market attack has agreed to a settlement that will send $1.75 million to survivors and the families of victims. James said the agreement reached with Mean Arms resolves the state’s lawsuit and also covers claims involving multiple victims’ families and survivors from the shooting that killed 10 Black people. The attorney general said the settlement also includes steps to bar the company from selling the device in New York.
James described the specific product at the center of her claims as a lock intended to prevent the swapping of high-capacity magazines onto an AR-15-style rifle. In her remarks Wednesday, she said Payton Gendron was able to remove the lock from the rifle, which she said enabled him to add high-capacity magazines that are illegal in New York. James also said Mean Arms included step-by-step instructions on the back of the packaging describing how to remove the lock.
“We hope that by holding this manufacturer accountable and banning it from selling this device in New York state, we can offer the people of Buffalo some measure of comfort,” James said during a news conference in the city. The settlement, she said, settles claims brought by her office and includes resolutions tied to additional civil actions that the victims and survivors had filed separately against Gendron’s family and a gun seller.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers said Wednesday they also reached agreements to resolve separate suits against Payton Gendron’s parents and against Vintage Firearms LLC. Attorneys for Gendron’s parents and Vintage Firearms declined to comment when contacted.
Some of the victims’ relatives joined James at the news conference and said the deal represented progress. Pamela Pritchett, whose mother, Pearl Young, was killed, said, “No one should be able to come into a store and, in two minutes, inflict so much damage to a community, to a family, to children.” Young, 77, was described as a Sunday school teacher who ran a food pantry.
Everytown Law, which said it helped represent some survivors and victims’ relatives, said in a statement that Vintage Firearms has permanently closed and that its owner agreed to refrain from obtaining a federal firearms license in the future. Everytown Law’s Eric Tirschwell said the terms of Everytown’s clients’ settlements with Gendron’s parents were confidential.
Authorities said Gendron, who is white, targeted Tops in a predominantly Black neighborhood. The victims’ ages ranged from 32 to 86, and the group included a guard and other shoppers, including a man buying a birthday cake and a grandmother of nine, as well as the mother of a former Buffalo fire commissioner. In criminal proceedings, Gendron is serving a sentence of life in prison without parole after pleading guilty in November 2022 to multiple state charges including murder.
A trial on federal hate crime and weapons counts is expected to begin this year. Prosecutors have said they would seek the death penalty, and the Justice Department said it plans to pursue those federal charges; Gendron has pleaded not guilty.