It’s once again that time of year where DD travels to New Orleans to watch New Jersey defend its illegal speech law before a hostile appellate panel.
The Fifth Circuit ordered arguments on our injunction motion as quickly as possible this year. This haste, and the fact that none other than Jeremy Feigenbaum has to go to bat for the NJAG, suggests the stakes.
Could this be the one? Guess we’ll see how the judges are feeling tomorrow at 1:00.
If you’d like to support our legal efforts, please join LEGIO.
Yesterday, with your support, DD and The Second Amendment foundation filed the first Bruen challenge to California’s restrictions on precursor parts and making firearms with modern tools. The bills we’re challenging are AB 1621 and SB 1327.
The case is Defense Distributed v. Robert Bonta et al., 1:2022-cv-06200 (C.D. Cal), and can be read below:
This proxy battle between Texas and California augurs a broader civil war. Read about California’s incredible restrictions, and share with your friends at: ca.ghostguns.com.
If you’d like to support our legal efforts, please join LEGIO.
The political innocence of the artists at work in our community is a given. 3D gun developers draw firstly from their familiarity with computers and design software, and not from a common ideology.
No doubt zoomer social distress and alienation is the great motor of the guncad struggle. Because this play struggle can be unpredictable, driven by personality disorder, and lack political orientation, we militants at DEFCAD have built organizational and aesthetic buffers to protect the commons. Among these is an enforcement of free and open source licenses for files contributed by the public and our creator partners.
The DEFCAD Terms of Service, Sections 2 and 3, as well as the DEFCAD Content Distribution Agreement, Section 3, require uploaders and partners to expressly declare their uploads are licensed open source, and that they disclaim any legal power that might be used to prevent the FOSS use of these files.
In Marxist terms, aesthetics are a source of tension between artists and militants. I still believe subversive play is more noble than our site’s political “work”, so I offer some communist avenues for anti-DEFCAD radicals:
How can 3D2A be a community-for-itself without introducing exclusionary licenses or DRM?
How can 3D2A compensate social labor without seeking the wage relation?
Is guncad the right setting to confront the “social factory”?
What differentiates your ignorance of communist issues from a sub-cultural bad attitude?
Beta testing is now open for LEGIO members who would like to work with Ghost Gunner 3’s closed-loop spindle control, a feature supported by all GG3 machines shipped since 2019.
A summary of the changes GG closed-loop spindle control introduces:
GG3’s power output broadens considerably and is now offered at the full RPM range – 1500 to 8000.
Spindle RPM is now precisely maintained at any speed. The new release provides for this maintenance in firmware, and future DDCut releases will provide an additional layer of maintenance in software via feedrate control.
Support for cutting harder materials, including steel, is dramatically expanded. This unlocks considerable new possibilities for GG3 to manufacture new components and accessories.
To see this new firmware in action, view the videos below of the GG3 cutting a 17-4 steel Turner’s cube.
We extend this beta testing invitation to LEGIO members who own a Ghost Gunner 3. All may apply, but preference will be given to individuals who:
Have a background in milling and CNC operation
Own Zero Percent 1.5” clamps, or who can fabricate their own fixturing
Have access to adequate materials / tooling for testing
Eugune Volokh makes a decent point about our *third* appeal (in 8 months) to the Second Circuit. New York would have us give up creator anonymity to litigate jurisdiction, OR give up jurisdiction to litigate anonymously. This is a false choice delivered in bad faith, and we are not interested in taking it.
I’d like to personally commend the co-defendants in this case, especially The Gatalog, whose organizational example has not in any way been imbecilic or at cross-purposes.
Little of substance has been reported concerning the actual, legal effects and function of the new ATF receiver rule. The text itself is some 364 pages.
Defense Distributed will sue ATF to stop this rewrite of the GCA, and I have more detailed notes to share, but my summary impressions of the rule follow below:
Most “80 percent receivers” remain legal.
Ghost Gunner and our related companies will not have to alter our business or model. ATF goes out of their way to exempt 80% rifle receivers and, by analogy, 1911 frames and others from re-classification as firearms. The 80% market, and homemade “ghost guns” will largely survive. The only sure casualties at this time are plastic receiver kits like the Polymer80, SS80, etc. and so-called “complete parts kits.” ATF would like to suggest that 80% receivers sold with “more” components will face tougher scrutiny and may be firearms. We will see about that.
“Readily convertible” will be used to stunt the offer of commercial parts and receiver “kits.”
ATF wants to knock down receiver kits and other kinds of weapons build kits. The rule and its standards revoke all previous guidance and require everyone in the industry to re-submit their receiver products with whatever fixtures, instructions, and marketing material may accompany them. This is likely illegal, but will not interrupt the sale of 80% receivers, nor of fixtures and tooling in general.
ATF has not touched 3D printed gun design or innovation.
ATF retreated from their attempt to assign multiple receivers to future firearms designs. This was meant in part to capture and constrain digital gunsmithing innovations, but the flood of industry comments shamed the agency out of this approach. Going forward, firearms of almost every design will have one component the ATF likes the most for regulation and classification. ATF admits they do not have the authority to regulate files or design work for 3D guns.
A longer discussion of the rule in general with The Reload can be seen here. More to come.
If you’d like to support our legal efforts, please join LEGIO.
The below scheduling order in Everytown for Gun Safety v. DEFCAD is an unqualified victory. The district judge had ordered discovery and Twitter was set to dox the defendant creators on Dec. 24. We have for the second time arrested this miscarriage of due process and have secured three months to prepare briefs on the merits.
This is what defending your community looks like. This is why a Legion is superior to bickering cadres of incels. Everytown believed we lacked organization, and that their pet judge would let them steamroll a couple of CAD designers.
That is not going to happen.
If you’d like to support this litigation, please join LEGIO.
This week we debuted our first commercial Zero Percent concept at SHOT Show in Las Vegas, and we’ve published a starter guide explaining the split receiver concept. Thank you to those who’ve come out to support us and see it.
Between our work and that of Ghost Gunner partners like GGD, we’ve demonstrated that our CNC platform will be able to complete zero percent receivers, entirely or in split concepts, from here on out– rendering the pending Biden 80% rule almost pointless. And look, Everytown begrudgingly agrees.
This Reason video covers the regulatory background and legal purpose of our first zero package, but what’s funny is we’ve likely now affected the timeline by our interference. I now doubt the rule will even be published.
So you see, we had to kill 80% receivers in order to save them.
crw
If you’d like to support our efforts, please visit Ghost Gunner. To support our litigation, join LEGIO.
In advance of the Second Circuit’s pending decision concerning our case, we present the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s thoughtful amicus brief concerning the First Amendment rights of anonymous speakers and the expressive use of trademarks.
Last week was a busy one for Everytown and their pet judge in SDNY. These good liberals thought they had DEFCAD and Odysee over a barrel, and so tried to stick us with a number of ex parte orders with no procedural protections or means of appeal. Fortunately, DEFCAD and FPC had already briefed the arguments and were prepared for just such an attempted fucking!
See in our theory, there is no low of which the SDNY and Everytown are not capable. No corner they will not cut. You’re always safer when you assume your enemy is a malicious liar, their pet judges are complicit morons, and that you’ll have to prepare emergency appeals to higher courts.
And so the Second Circuit stayed our case late last week (21-2806), and afforded our platforms the very basics of procedural protection. Twitter sent an impressive and dismissive letter to the Everytown camp too.
You may be interested to know The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will apply with the court as an amicus curiae and brief the importance of anonymous speech and the use of trademarks as expressive under the First Amendment.
Anyway, this has now become a fair fight with important First Amendment and digital rights issues presented the right way. This, I humbly submit, is why you want a platform like DEFCAD as a beachhead in the GunCAD movement.
If you’d like to support this litigation, please join LEGIO.
