October 25, 2021

After two months of being roundly trolled on Twitter by designers like xYeezySZN, Everytown for Gun Safety decided to be MAD ONLINE, and has just asked a federal court to take down DEFCAD and Odysee files lampooning their shitty trademarks. They even want pictures of these renders taken down from Twitter.

Setting aside their asinine theory of jurisdiction, Everytown’s infringement theory is outrageous. They literally argue it’s trademark infringement if a third party service or social media user shares a computer file that could allow a recipient to print a piece of plastic reproducing their shitty trademarks.

And why would Everytown want a New York federal judge to find the mere sharing of files by anons to be trademark infringement? So that they may take their ruling to Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. and kick you off of the Internet for enjoying your First and Second Amendments.

DEFCAD will of course litigate ferociously.

So whatever you do, Legion, DO NOT join DEFCAD and Odysee and blast these Everytown files all over the goddamn Internet.

You are not owned, Everytown! You are not owned!

If you would like to support this or our other legal actions, please join LEGIO.

October 1, 2021

Legion,

Business Insider has posted another capable piece concerning the state of the ghostly, gunnery union. We commend Adam Skaggs for his eloquent salesmanship.

I promise to share some terribly spooky news with you soon.

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

August 27, 2021

Legion,

If you haven’t seen it already, we recommend the new Vice documentary on the state of the 3D gun printing union:

It’s capably made and its editorial tone is unbelievably objective. A fine record of what we’ve all been up to the last few years.

I’ve read news of our brothers getting censored by the enemy’s cynical abuse of the DMCA process. We invite you to share your files at DEFCAD, a platform built to defend trademark parodies, which knows these parodies are non-confusing fair use, and will not for a moment tolerate the enemy’s abuse of IP law.

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

August 4, 2021

Legion,

New Jersey did its best to defend their illegal speech crime in New Orleans at the Fifth Circuit yesterday. You can listen to the oral arguments below:

https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/OralArgRecordings/21/21-50327_8-3-2021.mp3

There’s no need for further comment.

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

June 23, 2021

Hey 3D gun kids, what are your summer plans? How about visiting New Orleans to watch New Jersey try to defend their illegal 3D gun law?

August 2nd, 2021. Will be a riot.

May 25, 2021

Legion,

Uncle Joe’s new ghost gun rule has been published in the federal register, and so the 90 day comment period begins. DD has made a comment submission form available at Ghost Gunner, and will publish one on this site as well.

Though we as an organization will submit a larger, official comment by letter, we share here an outline that you may adapt to your own purposes. Please do take the time to record your comment in opposition of this rule.

With its definitions of “partially complete receiver” and “readily,” ATF 2021R-05 would codify arbitrary and capricious classification standards. The vague definition of “partially complete receiver” contains still more vague definitions, like “clearly identifiable”, “unfinished component part of a weapon”, “critical stage of manufacture”, “sufficiently complete to function”, and “primordial state.” The new definition of “readily” contains so many factors, and of such ambiguous weight and meaning, that the test can only be meant to confuse and intimidate non-FFL entities before ATF’s awesome authority. The multi-factor test for “readily” amounts to lawless Caesarism, and invests the ATF Director with more power than Congress has authorized. ATF would like to legitimize its wholly arbitrary sample submission process– one which is not derived from the GCA, and which ATF emphasizes does not even obligate them to respond. This is a farcical and irregular process that lacks any pretense of Fifth Amendment protection, and, by literal definition, gives the Director unlimited discretion.

Did ATF examine relevant data?
No. ATF admits in this rule’s Regulatory Impact Analysis, Chapter 3, that it did not attempt to collect the relevant data on “partially complete” receiver and kit sales. ATF has no idea how much commerce will be affected and instead tauntingly asks reps from Ghost Gunner, by name, to share their own analysis.

Did ATF rely on factors Congress did not intend the agency to consider?
Yes. Congress explicitly states in Sec. 101 of the GCA: “it is not the purpose of this title to place any undue or unnecessary Federal restrictions or burdens on law-abiding citizens with the respect to the acquisition, possession, or use of firearms..” and “this title is not intended to discourage the private ownership or use of firearms by law-abiding citizens.” ATF makes no analysis of how the definitions, without tailoring, might contradict GCA or discourage the private ownership of firearms

Did ATF fail to consider important aspects of the problem?
Yes. ATF failed to include any Second Amendment analysis. Further, since ATF would award itself the power to determine when a component has become a firearm based on included “instructions” or a firm’s “marketing,” ATF failed to include a First Amendment analysis. Further still, ATF fails to offer a Fifth Amendment analysis of its purposefully opaque sample submission process.

Is ATF’s explanation counter to the evidence?
Yes. Press accounts from 2021 show groups like Everytown met with the White House to lobby for an ATF reinterpretation of the word “firearm”. We see ATF’s prior regulatory rationale on the “partially complete receiver” question in City of Syracuse, NY, v. ATF, 1:20-cv-06885 (SDNY) and State of California v. ATF, 3:20-cv-06761 (N.D. Cal.). But the rule has no treatment of this ATF record. We may reasonably conclude this rule is made at the direction of activist elements outside of the ordinary legal and administrative center of the agency.

Did ATF consider all regulatory alternatives?
No. The Wall Street Journal published a story recounting a 2021 meeting ATF leadership arranged with the wider firearms industry, where the “ghost gun” question and this rule were discussed. So rushed was this agency to publication that there is no mention of any one of the regulatory alternatives proposed by the industry.

Did ATF adequately explain its massive “flip flop” on 80% receivers?
No. ATF hides from its public record of decades of determination letters, produced in City of Syracuse, NY, v. ATF, 1:20-cv-06885 (SDNY) and State of California v. ATF, 3:20-cv-06761 (N.D. Cal.). The agency does not explain if it is judicially estopped from withdrawing these. ATF is so cowardly that in 100 pages it would rather imply the overturning of these letters and ask commenters if they believe a flip flop has even occurred. This is shameless and deserves chapters of explanation.

In these more than 100 pages we see a textbook demonstration of undisciplined, bureaucratic decision-making. The new definitions of “partially complete receiver” and “readily” guarantee arbitrary and capricious outcomes and threaten a host of activity, commercial and non-commercial, protected by the Second Amendment. This proposed rule ignores the realities of the design and engineering process, how marking of components in an “active state of manufacture” is actually performed by real manufacturers and producers, and it incentivizes technical developments that will create an even worse black market of untraceable firearms, contrary to the rule’s stated goals.

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

May 6, 2021

Last night Defense Distributed filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against the State and Justice Departments.

Our argument is easy for anyone to understand:

1. The First Amendment protects 3D file publication
2. The State Department no longer has regulatory jurisdiction over 3D files and has defended this in the Ninth Circuit
3. The State Department has a settlement agreement with Defense Distributed to permit 3D file publication
4. ITAR enforcement under these circumstances is a severe and malicious inequity

This does not mean we will get the injunction. The Honorable Robert Pitman is a party jurist and I have no faith in his administration of justice.

If you would like to support our legal action, please join LEGIO.

April 30, 2021

The DOJ has demanded we take down the 16,000 files that have been newly issued to the public domain at DEFCAD. They claim the Ninth Circuit injunction is still in place, despite the stone cold legal fact that it is NOT.

This is an artless pretext to somehow buy time for Uncle Joe to place firearms CAD data back on the ITAR.

That will not work now. The published files are public domain and future ITAR designations will not apply to them.

We have filed motions for emergency relief in court. Tell your friends.

In five days it will be 8 years fighting this criminal use of the ITAR. Further commentary on this horseshit is beneath me.

If you would like to support our legal action, please join LEGIO.

April 28, 2021

Legion,

In news that should not be a surprise but has truly shocked our enemy, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated the injunction against the State Department’s transfer of 3D gun technical data to the Commerce Department. The opinion is below.

In short, 90% of the files at DEFCAD are now free for the public to download, without an account, worldwide. As of this hour, those CAD files have been validly and irrevocably committed to the public domain. Forever.

Enjoy your speech to Congress tonight, Mr. President.

April 22, 2021

Legion,

These notes reflect my understanding of the 107-page text leaked on April 19 as applied to the 80% trade. I do not bring to this analysis knowledge or interpretations from outside the text.

ATF offers the motive of clarifying the definition of a “frame or receiver.” The first ten pages are a justification for how the Agency has classified “split/multi-piece receiver[s]” for decades, despite the inadequacy of these classifications in recent court decisions. The next seven pages are about how “privately-made firearms,” or PMF’s, escape and negatively affect industry recordkeeping obligations. This is summarized on pg. 18.

Pg. 19 introduces a re-interpretation of “readily convertible” and is applied to complete parts kits, making them “firearms” under GCA. The definition is meant to mirror recent federal court decisions on this question, provided in the footnotes.

Pg. 21 begins the expanded categories of “frame or receiver.” ATF proposes a general definition along with several “supplemental” definitions. The general definition is: any part of a firearm that provides housing or a structure designed to hold or integrate any fire control component is a “frame or receiver.”

The supplements to this list are four: 

• Silencer receiver
• Split or modular frame or receiver (Pg. 27)
• Partially complete receiver
• Destroyed frame or receiver (not a receiver)

The “split or modular frame or receiver” supplement walks back the expanded definition of receiver on pg. 21 for those parts of firearms that have “previously been determined by the Director to be the frame or receiver.” The supplement will include a list of split receiver firearms that only have one receiver per prior ATF determination, to include AR’s, Glocks, Sigs, etc. New split receiver guns not on the list have more than one receiver unless ATF says otherwise.

Pg. 30 introduces the “partially complete” receiver class, which is any part or parts that have reached a stage in manufacture where they “may readily be completed, assembled, converted, or restored to a functional state.” Partially complete will further mean any forging, casting, printing, extrusion, machined body, or similar article that has reached a stage in manufacture where it is clearly identifiable as an unfinished component part of a weapon.

To determine partially complete status, the Agency will look at instructions, included jigs and tooling, as well as marketing materials. ATF will deem any component that is “readily convertible” to a receiver to be a receiver.
The expanded definition of “readily” begins on pg. 32 and is said to mean: “a process that is fairly or reasonably efficient, quick, and easy, but not necessarily the most efficient, speedy, or easy process.” ATF then outlines an insane 8-part, subjective test to determine how “readily convertible” is a partially complete receiver and/or a weapons parts kit.

Pg. 34 begins the new definition of PMF, or “privately made firearm,” and the next 20 pages include a new Gunsmith definition, outline how ATF wants licensees to mark PMF’s for A&D, and list more burdensome recordkeeping requirements.

The new Rule’s cost/benefit analysis begins on pg. 54. Of note is an analysis of “partially complete firearms kit” sellers on pg. 56. Here ATF considers non-FFL manufacturers who make:
1) kits that allow a person to make only a frame or receiver, and 
2) kits that allow a person to make a complete weapon.

ATF says if a receiver kit is “readily convertible,” it is a receiver, and if a weapons parts kit contains an unfinished receiver it is a “firearm.”

Finally, pg. 57 has a sentence so mystically turgid that I have tried to mark it with waypoints. The Agency predicts non-FFLs “[will] either [1] become FFLs or [2] would take a loss in revenue to sell a parts kit that does not contain a frame or receiver, or [3] simply sell the frame or receiver, but [4] not both.”

After three days, I cannot interpret this beyond understanding not to sell frames with parts kits. For more details, we are asked to refer to Chapter 3 of the Rule’s Regulatory Impact Analysis.

In closing, the black letter of this rule outlaws all “complete kits” like the Polymer80 BBS, but it’s not clear what happens to the current 80% receivers. 

Every 80% receiver would seem captured by one of the two proposed tests for “partially complete receivers,” on pg. 30, namely that they are either “readily convertible” to functional, or are “clearly identifiable” as an unfinished component of a firearm. So why does the rule continue to hypothesize a marketplace of receiver kits and sellers including instructions and jigs? Why even create the asinine test for “readily convertible” if “clearly identifiable” gets you there to begin with?

Lastly, on pg. 56 ATF expresses the belief “that the majority of the industry [already] complies with these requirements,” and that the “new definitions would mostly affect new designs or configurations of firearms.”

More analysis to follow. We’ll see if this version of the Rule makes it to publication before May 8.

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