Big Loss for Biden's Crusade Against 'Ghost Guns'
A federal judge says the ATF can’t arbitrarily classify inert objects as gun parts.
A couple of years ago, an "80 percent" receiver I purchased refused to accept parts, let alone chamber and fire cartridges, until my son and I drilled and milled it to completion; that's because unfinished firearms are not firearms. For a long time, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agreed. But, pressured by the Biden administration, the ATF tried to extend firearms regulations to a lot of things that aren't guns but could, with work, become one. Now a federal judge is injecting some sense, ruling in a lawsuit that bureaucrats can't just decide that inert objects are guns.
The Rattler is a weekly newsletter from J.D. Tuccille. If you care about government overreach and tangible threats to everyday liberty, this is for you.
Feds Change the Rules on Gun Hobbyists
For years, through a page still on its website, federal gun regulators assured the public that "ATF has long held that items such as receiver blanks, 'castings' or 'machined bodies' in which the fire-control cavity area is completely solid and un-machined have not reached the 'stage of manufacture' which would result in the classification of a firearm." That's good sense unless you look forward to background checks and government scrutiny every time you visit the hardware store where all sorts of items that could be turned into guns are sold. It also gave guidance to companies that serve firearms hobbyists by selling unfinished receivers (the regulated part of firearms) and other components to people who build their own firearms using traditional workshop tools or high-tech computer numerical control (CNC) machines and 3D printers.
But everything that can be used can be misused. Anti-gun activists built those misuses into a moral panic over "ghost guns" based on a lot of florid language. Their efforts are self-defeating since DIY gunmaking gained popularity specifically as a means of rendering gun control unenforceable. But that didn't stop authoritarian policymakers, and the Biden administration went all-in on efforts to inconvenience DIY hobbyists in the name of stopping "ghost guns." The result was a hot mess of a rule change that would expand firearms regulation on the ATF's say-so without any legislation. That left legal analysts agreeing on little except that the agency gave its own people wide discretion and that lawsuits were inevitable.
The ATF Can't Just Make Things Up, Now or In the Past
One of those lawsuits, VanDerStok v. Garland, brought by Jennifer VanDerStok, Blackhawk Manufacturing Group, and other plaintiffs, has now resulted in a loss for the federal government. On July 5, building on a preliminary injunction issued last year, Judge Reed O'Connor of the U.S. District Court for Northern Texas wrote that the "Final Rule was issued in excess of ATF's statutory jurisdiction" and the "Definition of 'Frame or Receiver' and Identification of Firearms…is hereby VACATED."
Reed gave his reasoning days earlier, on June 30, in his memorandum opinion.
"A part that has yet to be completed or converted to function as frame or receiver is not a frame or receiver," O'Connor wrote. "ATF's declaration that a component is a 'frame or receiver' does not make it so if, at the time of evaluation, the component does not yet accord with the ordinary public meaning of those terms."
Elsewhere in the opinion, Judge O'Connor rejected the ATF's astonishment that any court could take issue with the agency's arbitrary reclassification of inert items as firearms.
"Defendants offer several classification letters in which ATF previously determined that a particular component was (or was not) a 'firearm' for purposes of the [Gun Control Act of 1968] based on the item's stage of manufacture," O'Connor chided the feds. "But historical practice does not dictate the interpretation of unambiguous statutory terms. The ordinary public meaning of those terms does. If these administrative records show, as Defendants contend, that ATF has previously regulated components that are not yet frames or receivers but could readily be converted into such items, then the historical practice does nothing more than confirm that the agency has, perhaps in multiple specific instances over several decades, exceeded the lawful bounds of its statutory jurisdiction."
In other words: Thank you for this evidence that you have repeatedly exceeded your authority!
"We're thrilled to see the Court agree that ATF's Frame or Receiver Rule exceeds the agency's congressionally limited authority," commented Cody J. Wisniewski, who represented the plaintiffs in this case as counsel for the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC). "With this decision, the Court has properly struck down ATF's Rule and ensured that it cannot enforce that which it never had the authority to publish in the first place."
"With this effort to rewrite federal regulations, Biden tried to make countless individuals criminals," agreed plaintiff's co-counsel Mountain States Legal Foundation. "But Mountain States and FPC sued, and argued that the rule was illegal, on behalf of Jennifer VanDerStok, Mike Andren, and Tactical Machining. Our winning argument was that the ATF exceeded its authority, as outlined by Congress."
It's Not Over Yet (But the Control Freaks Are Doomed)
As strong a decision as this is, it's at the district level and can be expected to run the gauntlet up the judicial food chain before being ultimately decided one way or the other. The U.S. Department of Justice has already filed a notice of appeal in the case as well as an emergency motion for stay to try to keep the rule in effect while litigation continues. Clearly, the feds fear losing control of the situation.
But, as mentioned above, governments lost control long ago. DIY gunmaking became popular as a deliberate effort to evade draconian laws. Then 3D printing and CNC machines helped make DIY gunmaking that much simpler. After the ATF released its restrictive new rules regarding unfinished receivers, the industry, led by Ghost Gunner, moved to "zero-percent" blocks of material to be finished by hobbyists (In June, Reason TV interviewed Cody Wilson, who brought us Ghost Gunner as well as 3D-printed firearms).
There are also the rapidly growing ranks of gun owners to consider. Driven by the social tensions of recent years, gun sales rose to record levels and came to encompass Americans who didn't adhere to traditional stereotypes of white, rural conservatives. "Liberal, female and minority: America's new gun owners aren't who you'd think," CNN headlined a story last September.
Researchers say that these new gun owners are even more protective of their privacy than those who came before them. That leaves anti-gun politicians to wonder if they can still assume their constituents are as unlikely to be directly harmed by gun restrictions as in the past; elected officials love using legislation to lash out at perceived enemies, but pushing punitive laws that hurt your own base is no way to win reelection.
For now, Judge O'Connor's decision in VanDerStok v. Garland is a small but significant win in an ongoing dispute between pro-liberty activists and control freaks who want to disarm the public. But no matter how the legal battles shake out, advocates of control effectively lost the war long ago. Many people are working to ensure that, no matter what government officials want, guns will remain in private hands.
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An actual good article by Tucille.
Will wonders never cease?
Now let’s do silencers.
For years there was an entire industry selling silencers parts under the name of solvent traps.
These tubes, discs and threaded caps were meant to allow hobbyists to easily make a silencer after receiving a tax stamp on an ATF form 1.
All that was needed was to drill a series of perfectly concentric holes in the discs.
Some even came with dimples or marks to show the exact center spot to drill.
The ATF lately decided that these steel tubes and solid discs were silencer parts and shut down this industry.
Now when a person submits a form 1 to make a silencer, it is automatically denied if they admit to having purchased tubing or washers.
Only form ones approved have been those that deny buying any materials or those who propose milling a solid block of steel or aluminum.
We have a small machine shop at work for making prototype parts. I’ve noticed recently that when I buy certain raw materials I have to verify that I am not using them for the manufacture of firearm parts.
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I’ve recently started seeing a lot of ads for a “cleaning aid” which is actually a machined adapter designed to attach the muzzle of a particular model of Ruger 22LR onto the screw top of a standard plastic bottle. The stated purpose is to catch any extra carbon/chemicals/oil that might leak out of the muzzle while cleaning the barrel (I’ve never had an issue with on any caliber/barrel length of firearm while cleaning it, and attaching a container would make the use of any pull-thorough swab or snake rather than swabbing with hard rods (which on a 22LR seems more dangerous to the rifling than on any larger bore weapon).
With the addition of a small amount of duct tape, this device would make using/swapping out bottles for use as a so-called “ghetto silencer” much easier though.
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A couple of years ago, an “80 percent” receiver I purchased refused to accept parts, let alone chamber and fire cartridges, until my son and I drilled and milled it to completion;
Jesus is that sentence terrible. Too bad it didn’t come with a tooling jig like the one you used on the receiver. It feels like something written by someone who assembled some Ikea furniture and is trying to portray themselves as someone familiar with furniture-making.
That’s basically what he did though. He wrote an article about it on this very site. I don’t think he comes off as someone posing as a gun nut with that sentence. He very much sounds like he’s at the Ikea furniture level and pointing out that even at that level of experience he has enough knowledge to know that a few sheets of particle board and some plastic pins is not a couch.
+++
I didn’t say gun nut. Someone who’s aware of how to make a chair isn’t a furniture nut. The issue is the sentence is forced and awkward, if not self-aggrandizing, AF: “My Ekluggsmal refused to accept parts until we followed the instructions and used the assembly guides.” or “My partially-finished car refused to run until we put all the missing pieces on it, per the instructions.”
Or, more accurately:
“My 80%-completed Ekluggsmal refused to accept parts until we followed the instructions and used the assembly guides to attach the last few pieces.”
Tuccille and his son slew the stubborn dragon that was already 80% dead.
Or more accurately still, “My lump of metal could not fire bullets until we machined it into a gun shape”.
Your classification of his sentence is the “clumsy AF” grammar here.
The ONLY relevant issue is the possession of a small arm, a gun as distinguished from a rocket launcher for example.
For the uninformed, a serviceable receiver is what legally constitutes a gun. Not the handles, barrels or optics etc.
If you possess a receiver, you possess a gun. Whether you made it or not is irrelevant.
The ONLY reason to track the location of guns is to be able to confiscate them. The data can never be reliable. In any conflict it must be assumed that a weapon is possessed.
People either meet the criteria to legally possess firearms or they don’t. That’s all we need to keep track of in our civilization.
More irrelevant noise from Nazi scum.
The irony.
You’re confusing your lying and bigotry with irrelevance again.
Fuck off and die, lying pile of Nazi shit.
You being a Nazi is relevant to all of us. Non-Nazis. Everyone here hates you. You should leave.
You need to watch the movie 1984. Were you in the audience?
“WHO CONTROLS THE PAST CONTROLS THE FUTURE
WHO CONTROLS THE PRESENT CONTROLS THE PAST”
I’ve provided irrefutable evidence of correctly applied logic and science to refute the holocaust story as told.
Certainly nobody here can provide any evidence of ever refuting what I’ve said.
Besides your bigotry, what’s stopping you from recognizing that I’ve demonstrated the truth?
Are you waiting for the govmunt to admit to their lies, lynchings and corrupt money transfers over the last 80 years?
Don’t hold your breath.
Hahaha.
I think this was meant to be facetious, as in an 80% receiver is not a gun part–you can’t attach parts to it or use it to fire a gun. The inanimate block of metal “refused [to work as a firearm]” despite what the ATF had to say about it.
“The laundromat dryer refused to dry my clothes until I inserted four quarters and slid the mechanism.”
Isn’t that the entire point of why an “80 percent” kit isn’t regulated as if it were a fully functional receiver? The fact that it requires fundamental modification before it can be used as a component to assemble a functioning firearm?
I once bought a box of Bisquick and it turned out to need to be combined with other ingredients and then cooked before it could be consumed in the form of pancakes, waffles or biscuits. None of it was really all that much quicker than if I’d bought flour, salt, and baking powder and combined them myself before adding the “wet” ingredients of the same recipes. Talk about a misleading label…
If these administrative records show, as Defendants contend, that ATF has previously regulated components that are not yet frames or receivers but could readily be converted into such items, then the historical practice does nothing more than confirm that the agency has, perhaps in multiple specific instances over several decades, exceeded the lawful bounds of its statutory jurisdiction.
So, does this mean that shoelaces aren’t machine guns anymore?
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Fuck Joe Biden!
He’s not interested. I’m not a 10 year old girl.
I’m pretty sure I can scrounge around my garage and find the necessary parts to build a crude zip gun, does the ATF assert jurisdiction to regulate bicycle inner tubes, clothespins, nails, and galvanized pipe nipples?
Got any shoelaces?
“…does the ATF assert jurisdiction to regulate bicycle inner tubes, clothespins, nails, and galvanized pipe nipples?”
Give them time. Back in the ’70’s, law enforcement broke up a “zip-gun manufacturing “ring,” Inside an Arizona state prison.
From what I understand, prisons have very tough gun laws.
We’re having a great run against gun control in the courts thanks to suits filed by and successfully agued by council for the SAF, FPC, and GOA. (Remember when all the pundits bemoaned the NRA having politicians “balls in a money clip?”)
Just finished a rifle built on an “80%” lower. Takes some essential tools and patience, and don’t cheap out.
One of those lawsuits, VanDerStok v. Garland, brought by Jennifer VanDerStok, Blackhawk Manufacturing Group, and other plaintiffs, has now resulted in a loss for the federal government
The same asshole the Democrats tried to put on the Supreme Court. Literally being sued, continuously, for violating our civil rights. Which is a drop in the bucket compared to the DOJ’s censorship activities of the past few years. Such a miracle the Republicans kept his ass out.
Of course, I’m sure Garland would’ve provided more popular “reproductive freedom” rulings. Boggles the mind to knowing we got Gorsuch instead.
Any takedown detent pins go flying across the room?
Always assemble your AR with a cat in the room. If a part goes flying look at the cat, she’ll be looking at the part.
Unless it poked her eye, amiright?
Good idea; I’ll try it next time (though I keep a good supply of various springs and detents on hand for the inevitable acrobats.
“Just finished a rifle built on an “80%” lower. Takes some essential tools and patience, and don’t cheap out.”
I’m a firm believer in using quality parts and tooling. However, I’ve heard claims of printing polymer lowers that function reliably up to a few thousand rounds. The smart move is to mill a quality, aluminum one, but it’s intriguing to think they can be printed, and swapped out every couple thousand rounds, at nearly zero cost, if you have access to a printer.
The smart move is to mill a quality, aluminum one
Only true if you’re a “Before the AR-15 there were none.” zealot. Otherwise, “lowers” have been made of wood/polymer/fiberglass/plastic for decades and at-home milled aluminum is just the new hotness.
Not saying you’re wrong or polymer is better or worse than Al or whatever, just trying to avoid implicit retcons based on assumptions about platforms rather than technologies.
Good points.
I’m hoping the DIY culture/gear market embraces magazines soon, then I’m bound to start investing in some good tooling myself.
“…it’s intriguing to think they can be printed, and swapped out every couple thousand rounds, at nearly zero cost, if you have access to a printer.”
I doubted poly lowers would work, so I looked it up and sure enough you’re correct. You’ll still have to disassemble the old one and put the parts into the new one.
Most handguns use polymer frames (lowers).
It’s an artifact of the AR-15 that there even is an “upper” and “lower” that are interlocked and critically mechanical in such a fashion. The Steyr AUG has been chambered in 5.56 had a polymer “lower” since practically forever. Similar with CZ Bren rifles and HK MP-series weapons. Even Springfield has offered an M1A variant in a polymer stock for at least the better part of a couple of decades. For better or for worse, pretty much everything Kel-Tec has ever made has been metal for mission-critical and polymer for the rest. Not to mention, as you correctly point out, that polymer handguns have largely replaced steel/metal frames for the bulk of modern handguns.
Growing up, had but didn’t really use, a .22lr Remington Apache 77 (a.k.a. K-Mart Nylon). Those things have been in plastic since the late 50s/early 60s.
I wanted to get a Kel-Tec Pro Team shirt, if they existed.
I prefer metal but the market likes polymer more.
While some folks might run 1,000 rounds though their carbine every few weeks, many won’t ever put that many through in the time they own it.
I personally would never opt for a polymer lower and certainly not an upper receiver.
The claims about NRA having “bought off” a bunch of GOP pols to take the same position on 2A as 60-70% of the voters in their districts was always fairly laughable.
Then came opensecrets, and all it took was a phone and a minute to prove that Bloomberg alone spent more funding propaganda and psyops through Everytown in a year than the NRA’s total lobbying budget for any 10-year period on record.
Kind of like how the Koch brothers were supposedly running amok “buying elections” for pols willing to support their “existential threat” agenda, until it could be shown that there hasn’t been a year since 2k in which the entire Koch family managed to outspend Soros, OR Steyer, OR Bloomberg, let alone even compete with those three in combination. Of course, as with every other form of speech, expression, lobbying, activism, or other political-related activity, “It’s just different” when leftist-aligned individuals or groups jump with both feet into whatever their ideological allies have long claimed constitute some kind of existential threat to democracy when anyone they happen to disagree with engaged in any version of them.
Ironically; The very definition of the USA (the US Constitution) has a lot of “gun control policy” written in it. Gov-Gun control policy (i.e. Biden’s-Guns control policy”). Of course the Democrats Nazi-Empire really doesn’t care at all about that aggressive/progressive gun control policy which ironically also declares defensive guns of the people shall not be infringed.
And that is exactly why Democrats are enemies of the USA and are slowly but surely destroying it with their Aggressive Gov-Gun usage w/o any “gun policy” (US Constitution).
The very definition of a tyrannical government is one who aggressively uses their ‘guns’ (Gov-Guns via policy) against a disarmed citizenry. An armed citizenry is exactly what initiated/started the USA.
Has the ATF changed position on 80% lower ghost assault fire extinguishers?
What about 80% of a ghost bear in a trunk?
You can make a perfectly functional shotgun with a couple of pieces of pipe and some hardware. Are hardware stores going to have to get a FFL to sell you pipe?
Long years ago I made a zip gun with a cap pistol that worked well shooting .22 rimfire. Are cap guns going to be illegal?
By the “logic” any piece of scrap metal could be regulated as a firearm.
Any accumulation of 5-6 lb of scrap 6061 Alumiunm Alloy (used in window frames, sliding/screen doors, camping furniture, and hundreds of other everyday consumer applications), sometimes marketed as “Aircraft Aluminum” because it’s been used in the past (and maybe still in the present?) to construct parts of commercial aircraft, can be melted down and re-cast in to a semi-finished blank of a lower reciever for any AR15 or AR10 rifle, which can then be finished in to a functioning product with home CNC equipment which is already available (and will likely be less expensive than a legally purchased AR Lower within maybe 5 years) commercially.
We need universal mandatory background checks on all home renovations and energy efficiency upgrades as well as all camping gear and many kinds of pots and pans, starting yesterday or else your kids will be gunned down in school tomorrow….
Since the tensile strength of the 3004 aluminum alloy used in soda cans is comparable to that of the 6061 Alloy used to make “mil-spec” rifle components, it could be hypothetically possible that simply collecting about 8-10 lb of empty soft drink cans could yield enough raw material to cast a finish-able receiver blank. Perhaps in the interest of protecting the children, we should be more closely monitoring the collection and handling of these cans by the homeless populations of major urban areas, especially in CA where they tend to live outdoors and without much supervision; who’s to say they aren’t running makeshift smelters and churning out scores of ghost guns in exchange for food and/or their next fix?
Thank you, Donald Trump. Up yours, TDS-addled shits like Tuccille.
Who appointed this judge
This is what’s happened with the war on drugs: many useful chemicals have become illegal because of it, and lab equipment has become subject to government tracing and legal justification for invasions of privacy.
And if the anti-Second Amendment forces have their way, the same will happen to much of metalworking: any raw material and tools that can be used to make guns. That includes metal blanks, lathes, CNC machines, and drill presses.
Leftists and wealthy Democrat donors like that because not only does it give them generally more control, it also means that any kind of serious manufacturing can only be carried out by large corporations and subject to government control. Your “10 lathe license” will come with an annual tax, and requirements for ESG compliance, regular inspections, and pay-offs for local politicians and bureaucrats.
My longtime Usenet ally, Christopher Charles Morton, made this point repeatedly on usenet newsgroups.
lab equipment has become subject to government tracing and legal justification for invasions of privacy.
What? What lab equipment are you buying? I used to work in a drugs of abuse testing facility when I was in school. The only equipment that was in anyway drug regulated were the rooms for storage and dispensation of drugs and, even then, they were only regulated specifically for the drugs. The metabolite and herbicide/pesticide labs, which were virtually identical, were completely free of any similar drug-related regulation.
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The government has essentially unlimited resources to appeal every decision a lower court makes against them, while the private citizens who are fighting government abuse and overreach have limited resources. So much for equal protection under the law. Also, I’ve never quite understood what the lower courts are for if every adverse decision is appealed. I thought that it was not allowed to appeal the decision, only the technicalities. What technical mistakes did the lower court judge make in this case that allows an appeal?
So the states are still allowed to violate our rights?
Some, like the Northeast and West coasts, really aren’t worth the trouble. I say let them pursue their noble experiments to the inevitable and bitter end. And then let’s kill ‘em all, because they will not learn from their mistakes.
Take that, ATF. Oh, you want some of this DOJ? Hey, Biden – get some, get some, yeah!