Author: Zinoviev

Yesterday the Supreme Court granted certiorari in VanDerStok, the so-called “frame and receiver” case where Defense Distributed and Polymer80 are major intervenor plaintiffs. The case’s docket page can be found here.

The Court has posted the case’s “Questions Presented” document, which you can download below. In short, these questions are:

Briefing and Argument

July 8 is the presumptive deadline for our brief on the merits, assuming ATF files on June 6.

July 15 is the deadline for amicus briefs supporting SAF and DD’s side, again assuming that ATF files on June 6. 

Amicus Briefs

If you’d like to file an amicus brief, contact SAF, FPC, or DD at [email protected].

Oral Argument

We expect oral argument to be between October 7 and 16. Let me know if you’d like to attend.

Thank you for your support resisting the receiver rule since 2021. Defense Distributed and LEGIO were instrumental in narrowing the first version of the rule, preserving the errors of the second, and successfully challenging the rule in the Western District of Texas and the Fifth Circuit. Only one more stop to go.

If you would like to support these legal actions, please join LEGIO.

Yesterday Defense Distributed filed its long-delayed 3D gun brief with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. This one has become the grandfather case to determine the free speech value of CAD files. Its anomalous procedural history shows just how dangerous the federal courts have found it over the years.

Gift Exchange

Justin Lee at Compact Mag has written a thoughtful piece about Jessica Solce’s film Death Athletic, and the philosophy behind the founding of GunCAD. I encourage you to read it: https://www.compactmag.com/article/cody-wilsons-deadly-gift/#

If you would like to support these legal actions, please join LEGIO.

This week saw FPC’s and New Jersey’s briefs at the Supreme Court in VanDerStok, the “frame or receiver” rule case against the ATF. Today we filed our brief as well, joined by Polymer80 and JSD Supply.

The differences are merely in emphasis. Where FPC spends paragraphs on Due Process vagueness and the Second Amendment’s necessary inclusion of a “right to make”, the Defense Distributed brief devotes pages.

Thank you for your enthusiastic feedback on our recent podcast about the history of GunCAD.

If you would like to support these legal actions, please join LEGIO.

Last night I joined Garret on YouTube to answer questions concerning DEFCAD in support of victims of domestic FOSS.

One of the questions we take up is: Why does DEFCAD require a membership even though most 3D gun files have free software licenses?

On June 9, 2021, BIS sent Defense Distributed the first and only EAR enforcement letter concerning the 3D gun question since the completion of the Export Control Reform Initiative, the settlement of Defense Distributed v. U.S. Dep’t of State, and the regulatory transfer of firearms technical data from the USML to the CCL in March of 2020.

So a simple answer. But this little letter hides a lot.

The policy statement in the BIS letter would seem to contradict the reading of 734.7(c) suggested in 85 FR 4172, which provides for a “CAD/CAM distinction” as an answer to the First Amendment questions raised in Defense Distributed v. U.S. Dep’t of State. Everytown, among others, pressured BIS in the spring of 2021 to erase this reading of the CAD/CAM rule, and BIS would eventually bury a contradictory interpretation (now a distinction without a difference) in official online guidance that they’d tweak for weeks. Their May 28, 2021 publication follows:

Gun people understand rogue federal agencies can subvert Congress’ legislative power through the process of official rulemaking. This isn’t even that. This is lawmaking by FAQ.

The BIS revisionism in Question 2 of this FAQ is a fun point of departure, for those still interested. It frames the four most fateful weeks in modern guncad. Shall we read it together?

This story about the Ninth Circuit decision (which allowed 3D gun files back on the Internet) is necessary because DEFCAD immediately published, for free, every 3D gun file from across the Internet on April 28th. And published loudly. You’ve read the DEFCAD newsletter. When DOJ threatened to prosecute Defense Distributed again, we immediately went to court for a TRO.

An excerpt from our emergency injunction request that same week in Texas:

In short, the feds were saying “No, you can’t publish yet.” And so was The Gatalog.

To ensure judicial notice of their public domain status, we included the best of the Gatalog designs in our re-release of free files. But this was an outrage for which Gatalog high command required payment. While it may offend modern sensibilities (in 2024 we all know it’s wrong to ask for money for free files), in the wild weeks of May, 2021, free files were pricey things. Just try to remember these were men of their time!

For the FGC-9 Mk II alone, the Director of The Gatalog (then, as now, a little-known figure) demanded a wire payment of $2,500 to his personal shell company. And so this was the price to officially open source the FGC-9 Mk II.

The reader will note I paid for the FGC-9 the day after the Ninth Circuit mandate issued, on May 26th. But it’s also the same day The Gatalog Foundation was formed in Florida. Could these two facts be related?

By June 1st, 2021, DEFCAD went back to a paywall, The Gatalog became a corporation, and BIS would assume jurisdiction of 3D gun files, pretending nothing had happened the previous four weeks.

JStark was dead a month later.

ATF petitioned for cert in VanDerStok v. Garland, our “frame and receiver rule” case that The Fifth Circuit just won’t let Joe Biden win. It’s nice to read the words “Defense Distributed” in yet another Supreme Court petition. Polymer80 and JSD Supply have agreed to join our pending brief, where we will also request the Supreme Court grant cert to at last consider the grand question: what is the definition of a firearm?

We’ll know something here by June.

John Walker

In DD’s longest running case, Defense Distributed v. Attorney General of New Jersey, No. 23-3058 (3d Cir.), I’d like to highlight the role and contributions of John Walker, who we learned passed on February 2nd.

Mr. Walker was the founder of Autodesk, a libertarian philosopher in the Atlantic tradition, and the earliest financier of Defense Distributed. In our New Jersey line of free speech cases, beginning in late 2018, Mr. Walker contributed authoritative declarations supporting the speech value of CAD files. I’d like to share one of his original declarations below, which will be used in our upcoming Third Circuit brief :

Kind of difficult for Everytown and the New Jersey AG to contradict the testimony of the inventor of AutoCAD. May he rest in power.

If you would like to support these legal actions, please join LEGIO.