blog
Biden Harris 3D Gun Executive Order
September 26, 2024
Today the White House announced an executive order creating new funding and an interagency task force to handle the emerging threat of 3D printed guns. You can find the fact sheet below.
The timing of the order, like the press preceding it, is meant to front run and influence the Supreme Court and the public understanding of VanDerStok, but the effects will be much wider.
One agency in particular will be given the funds and permission to play a much larger role in our story. Things will begin to move quickly now.
If you would like to support these legal actions, please join LEGIO.
This Week in Guns
September 19, 2024
In Garland v. VanDerStok, the famous “frame or receiver” case at the Supreme Court, the ATF has filed its Reply Brief. Pretty standard hand-waving on the government’s part.
A fun little bit:
Respondents specifically object (VanDerStok Br. 39-40; Defense Distributed Br. 25-26) to the Rule’s clarification that a part is not a frame or receiver if it has not “reached a stage of manufacture where it is clearly identifiable as an unfinished component part of a weapon.” 27 C.F.R. 478.12(c). But that provision and the accompanying examples were included at the request of commenters in the firearms industry in order to provide the regulated community with greater clarity about parts that are not covered by the Rule, such as unfinished frame or receiver blanks.
ATF Reply Brief Pg. 21
Thanks for the clarity, guys. This case’s arguments are less than three weeks away in D.C.
In other legal news, the Third Circuit noticed a merits panel for Defense Distributed, et al v. Attorney General New Jersey (CA3 no. 23-3058) in Philadelphia for November 4th.
Oral argument on the question of the free speech value of 3D gun files. In our Great Nation’s first capital. Just in time for the Election of President Harris!
Aside from these updates, it’s been unusually quiet and uneventful in DD litigation land.
If you would like to support these legal actions, please join LEGIO.
Influence Operations
September 5, 2024
A telling piece of public opinion-setting from NPR this morning.
https://www.npr.org/player/embed/nx-s1-5099467/nx-s1-5b6c1ff5-2731-426b-b81b-8b3e0cb4f0b2
Steven Inskeep invites Martin Kaste to share the good news of the demise of Polymer80, who “still [hopes] the Supreme Court can save them.” David Pacino of Giffords led the suits that ended the rash of murders driven by this American ghost gun seller, but he warns us the pesky Supreme Court might still throw these bad actors a lifeline.
Everytown and The Trace, Bloomberg organizations, began the push for victory lap pieces on Polymer80 last month. After drifting prole-ward, the news became a part of the elite pressure campaign on the Supreme Court for next month’s oral arguments in VanDerStok.
This is a technical case about federal regulations, Mr. Kaste reminds us, and this is technically true. But the framing is a way to support the modern, adaptive fiction of “our democracy.” A good (democratic) outcome may be undone on a technicality by a political (non-democratic) Supreme Court at the 11th hour. Nevermind that the VanDerStok plaintiffs have been winning since day one, or that the Supreme Court has only been sending lifelines to a hapless, pleading ATF.
That this is national news at least helps us understand the nature of the Republic, so-called Constitutional law, and the role of the “specialized class” of American journalists. The US government is a network of competing power centers. When the New York Times (or The Trace) runs a story on the “secret,” unseen environment in which common sense (democratic) gun laws are undermined in the federal courts, understand that this is one power center of the Republic attempting to influence and delegitimize another.
Of course the useful idiots in our space will fall for this trap and label their mistakes “journalism,” so a rule of thumb: Journalism, since at least Walter Lippmann, is another word for the “post-partisan state,” which is another word for “gun control.”
If you would like to support these legal actions, please join LEGIO.
NRA’s VanDerStock Brief
August 21, 2024
Of the eleven amicus briefs filed yesterday at the Supreme Court in Garland v. VanDerStok, I’d like to highlight the NRA’s. Joseph Greenlee expands on his previous work to explain how the right to privately build firearms is “deeply rooted in our nation’s historical tradition” and is a necessary part of the Second Amendment.
We digital gunsmiths could say: “But of course.” But this an argument Cooper & Kirk may have been too shy to make! The NRA, and Mr. Greenlee, deserve real credit and thanks here, and I will certainly renew my membership.
After cases like Rahimi, some say the golden age of Bruen is now past. Two short years! So I’m glad Greenlee’s work has the chance to become authority. While it’s on my mind, and because I’ve only had one other chance to fight for the historical tradition of firearms manufacturing technologies in court, I’d like to supplement Greenlee’s work, which often relies on Sawyer’s Firearms in American History vol’s 1 and 2.
I agree with Sawyer’s general divisions of this history into 1) American colonial riflemaking, including the birth of the Kentucky Rifle, 2) the work of Simeon North and John Hall as contractors for the federal armories, and 3) Samuel Colt’s development and production of the patent revolver. And this gets us to the 1850’s, where Bruen asks us to go. But Sawyer’s work shares the style (and accuracy) of 19th century history, and there is a stronger and more interesting story to be told.
In Chapter 1 of David Hounshell’s From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932, we find a commanding and well-sourced account of the origin and mechanization of American small arms production. Some historical points of entry:
It’s no exaggeration to say the story of the private manufacture of firearms with machine tools = the story of American mass production, and this is why I find the California (and now Massachusetts) CNC laws backwards and worth fighting by any means. There would be no CNC without the American tradition of privately made firearms.
For details about Simeon North, Thomas Blanchard and John Hall’s work, I recommend Charles R. Morris’ The Dawn of Innovation.
If you would like to support these legal actions, please join LEGIO.
Supreme Court Brief (Garland v. VanDerStok)
August 14, 2024
Brief of Respondents
Yesterday DD filed its Brief of Respondents in Garland v. VanDerStok, which will be argued before the Court on October 8th.
The filed version is also at the Court’s website here.
Next: Reply & Oral Argument
Our side’s amici will roll in over the next week, and I expect some good ones, but we will, as usual, be outnumbered by Giffords, Everytown and the blue state coalition. ATF files their reply after that.
As mentioned, oral argument is set for October 8th. Cooper & Kirk won the coin toss to do the argument for our side, but we will still assist.
The most important arguments are about how the Rule flatly contradicts the GCA. We advocate for the most natural and concise construction of the statute, making a nice contrast to the pages and time it takes ATF to explain how natural and ordinary their construction of the statute is.
Not that we expect the Court to get to it, but we ultimately make a unique Second Amendment avoidance argument. By now everyone has seen Greenlee’s article, so we add John Dillin’s The Kentucky Rifle to the record as a secondary source on the history of making arms from unfinished components. OG Legio members will note we first cited Dillin on the history of making in 2022’s Defense Distributed v. Bonta in California.
***
Counsel, are you saying making guns from readily convertible components is the country’s very oldest tradition?
Mr. Chief Justice, I am saying the hunters and woodcutters who slept in their boots by the dying light of their thousand fires and went on, who, eyes incandesced by their massive rapacity, wave on wave of the violent and the insane, mindless and pale with a longing that nothing save dark’s total restitution could appease, made their guns before they could make human speech.
If you would like to support our legal actions, please join LEGIO.
Massachusetts House No. 4885
July 25, 2024
A friendly journo from WGBH Boston asked me what we think of Massachusetts H4885 serializing all the guns and banning all the gun equipment. I’ll tell you what I told her.
The journalist asked where I got the idea that guns should be unserialized in the first place. I said a couple hundred years ago or so there was a blockade of Boston Harbor that led to a siege. She and her Governor should look it up.
If you would like to support these legal actions, please join LEGIO.
JStark’s Incel Podcast Interview
July 11, 2024
Internet detectives have recently discovered JStark’s appearance as “K” on the “Incel” podcast from late 2019. I know JStark’s voice well and can personally confirm its authenticity here.
Published six months before the FGC-9, what’s most notable in this interview is JStark’s fatalism and biological reductionism. He is convinced he has a serious, congenital mental impairment, and he sought a diagnosis of “autism” in Europe to confirm the essential reality of this experience (9:37).
The “neurodiversity” narrative is part of an autism critical discourse, but it still leaves JStark trapped in the iron cage of scientism. His recommendations for young, male autists are to forget about PUA and self-improvement and to take an Autism spectrum test. If you score more than 40, you should take good photos, download Tinder and spoof your GPS for matches in Bangkok, Thailand or Manila, Philippines. This is called SEAmaxxing, and JStark said he learned the technique from sex tourist James FT and Incels.co forum user “itsOVER” in 2018. When Stark himself traveled 10,000 km to the Philippines, where some 800,000 women and children are trafficked, he said it was the first time in his life he didn’t have to pay for sex. It was the first time in his life he was happy.
Stark makes prototypical political statements in this interview. His promotion of the popular social construction of autism in the posture of a disability activist suggests left wing sympathies, but his race realism (15:48) and espousal of intrinsic gender differences (33:26) mark him as a man of the right.
The question of suicide is ever-present: “It was in the third grade that I wanted to kill myself for the first time” (9:16). And the most interesting revelation to me is the title of Stark’s (now deleted) first YouTube video: “Love or Death” (27:45). Here is the ur-text and prefiguration of Stark’s famous take on “Liberty or Death.” It is the esoteric signature of his death drive as a sexual drive.
I’ve spoken elsewhere about JStark’s funeral ideology. A more lasting political question may be why, after finding a girlfriend, did Stark continue to identify as an incel?
Busting the Fudd Busters, Part II
June 21, 2024
To demonstrate how much the logic of copyright has rotted his brain, the President of The Gatalog Foundation insists that it was he, and not FPC, the NCLA or Mike Cargill, who won in the recent Garland v. Cargill decision. How did old Fudd Busters manage this achievement? You see, he commissioned the images in an FPC amicus brief in a totally separate case from October 2019.
The only problem is the Supreme Court didn’t cite those images. Justice Thomas’ opinion uses images from an even earlier brief in Guedes, which was written and filed before old Fudd Busters had ever worked for FPC in any capacity. So why does he have to lie about it? And why must Second Amendment advocates endure this bizarre, symptomatic behavior in an otherwise flawless moment of victory?
Fudd Busters makes a scene and breaches attorney-client privilege for … Twitter credit. The Supreme Court did not cite “his” images, and “his” images are clearly derivatives of those in the March 2019 Guedes brief. His real complaint seems to be that no one at FPC, the NCLA, or even Mike Cargill, knew how an AR-15 worked. You are free to believe that FPC didn’t agree with its own public positions in publicly-filed briefs, but that is certified, food-grade Fudd. It is fetishistic disavowal in practice.
Let’s reverse the situation. Say the Supreme Court actually cited any Fudd Busters work product and that FPC denied him his due. This kind of conduct on Twitter, in full view of our friends and enemies, would still be pathological. And I don’t mean this in a moral sense. Fudd Busters is publicly struggling to make his career in the 2A space bearable, or even understandable. He needs the idea of “theft” to maintain his imaginary identifications and ego, and this has begun to affect those around him.
If images can be “property” and if employers can be “authors,” as the Copyright Act and Gatalog Foundation insist, then there’s no possible controversy. And we know Fudd Busters understands this. In his own Copyright Office registration of the SF5 3D gun files, he has clearly listed himself as an employer who commissioned work-for-hire drawings. The SF5 is officially a “work-for-hire” product, and its registration denies Fudd Busters’ underling his proper, public credit.
I will fix this.
If you would like to support our legal actions, please join LEGIO.
The Gatalog Foundation
June 3, 2024
The Black Flag White Paper is now on Amazon. Thank you for the enthusiastic reception. Yes, I’m showboating in places, but it was fun to stretch my legs. To make the same points, all I really had to do was post the longtime motto of the Deterrence Dispensed Keybase: “Code is free speech. Copyright is theft.”
I wonder where they got that?
These days, you’ll find the admins of that very Keybase misguiding newcomers to our space with entirely opposite (and embarrassing) legal takes:
All we’re left with after such friendly and frequent legal misstatements is the impression these people will proudly suffer comparison to Taylor Swift. Conceptual failures this great invite questions, and I answer the more serious of these in the Black Flag paper.
The most obvious remaining question is cui bono?
In 3D2A, the principles dictate the methods. After JStark died and his Keybase was flushed, his lieutenants had, at best, a casual grasp of the principles. They assumed 3D2A meant property, that copyright meant good title, and they ended up teaching gun control to hundreds of would-be developers without even realizing it.
Consider the new website for The Gatalog Foundation. Though Gatalog Command quickly took it down after publication of the Black Flag, we can still examine the site’s most recent snapshots from May:
$400 a year. Now, I know what you’re thinking. And yes, it does seem a little underpriced.
“Digital Right” means intellectual property. They have no other theory of right. The word “steward” is custodial and similarly propertarian. For $400 a year, these guys will sell you a letter from Ashley at the Copyright Office and a full federal doxxing as title to your work.
And I don’t have to imagine the dumb shit they wrote in their copyright registration applications. Ashley will show me. Did you know it’s a crime to lie to her?
The Gatalog embraced IP to maintain the appearance that they somehow lead community sentiment rather than get led by it. There’s something more than dishonest about this. They misguide the “masses” and demand the impossible of the law in order to be affirmed in their own ideological naïveté. What, for example, am I to make of this text?
By my count, it’s been 5,568 hours since that was sent. Were repression and private vindication not the desired outcomes?
Chief among their feminine habits in conflict, The Gatalog Foundation employs the Fudd Busters method of disavowal.
The Fudd Buster is much more concerned with the possibility of manipulation than with the traumatic dimension of reality. His theories (consumer, legal, media) are entirely anchored in the will to not be deceived; in the will to let others know he is not.
His trivial knowledge of firearms, or really anything, serves as an object-fetish that allows him to ignore and survive the real. We can read The Gatalog Foundation’s tagline differently now: “A pro-gun org run by people who actually like guns.” Ah, so that’s what was missing from 2A advocacy and litigation. Nobody liked the guns enough.
$400 a year is ten times more expensive than an NRA membership. It is twenty-six times more expensive than an annual membership with the Second Amendment Foundation. That organization is running almost sixty cases nationwide, and all the Fudd Buster can do is tell you they’re somehow ripping you off. This becomes even easier for them when there’s no chance they will be invited to participate in major 2A litigation.
So, gun printer to thy guns? Not quite. Though a Creative Commons membership is free, The Gatalog Foundation’s membership fee is less than the $425 required to join the American Intellectual Property Law Association. I’m not saying legal amateurs shouldn’t organize and build what they like, even if that means IP organizations. The American tradition in arms is an amateur tradition.
Marx himself praised the “watchmaker [James] Watt” for inventing the steam engine. So you see, even the best of us get fooled by IP. James Watt improved the steam engine. He patented this improvement, fought his competitors for title in the idea, and delayed the mass adoption of the steam engine by two decades.
Now you’re nobody’s fool. That’ll be $400.
If you would like to support our legal actions, please join LEGIO.
Memorial Day Weekend
May 24, 2024
There’s a weird trend in our space of ersatz anarchists more or less begging for federal protection of their files. Just a sample:
Big maudlin. One blanches.
It’s become a convenient piece of rhetoric that no one can sue DEFCAD because they’d have to give up anonymity. This is, of course, not true. Our Everytown case was, in the end, about your right to proceed anonymously. I support your right to proceed anonymously. The reason you don’t sue is because you got the law wrong on copyright. That and because you’re a huge pussy.
Anyway, I wrote a paper to commemorate the great pirates who lit our way. They pillaged so we could plunder.
Enjoy your holiday weekend. If you would like to support these legal actions, please join LEGIO.
