Case Summary
Americans have always valued ingenuity and self-sufficiency over the culture of control. That is never more apparent than with our natural right to self-defense—a right we enjoy separate and apart from any government or governmental entity. Americans also have the right to self-manufacture those arms that they deem necessary to defend themselves, their loved ones, and their property. But a handful of progressive cities and gun control activists want to end that practice.
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Case History
In August 2020, a group of cities led by Syracuse, NY—along with two of Everytown’s legal funds— sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). The Petitioners claimed the ATF had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by employing an objective test, based on the actual manufacturing process involved, to determine if an item is considered a “firearm” under the Gun Control Act of 1968. In reality, these cities and gun control groups wanted to substitute their own definition for that of the ATF, by using inflammatory terms and demonizing the individual manufacture of personal-use firearms.
People have been crafting and customizing personal firearms since before the Revolutionary Era—long before protection of the right to keep and bear those arms was written into the U.S. Constitution under the Second Amendment. The mass production of arms that came later, like the mass production of nearly everything else, meant that fewer Americans needed to build their own arms—but technological developments don’t change the rights of all Americans.
What gun owners view as a virtue, gun-control advocates have come to see as a vice—arguing that the non-regulation of self-made and hand-crafted weapons hampers the apprehension of criminals and opens a “loophole” that gangs will exploit to flood the black market. These advocates have sued to impose redefinition and regulation.
The objects at issue in this case are often colloquially referred to as “receiver blanks,” “frame blanks,” “partially-manufactured frames,” “partially-manufactured receivers,” “80% frames,” “80% receivers,” “unfinished frames,” or “unfinished receivers.” While these objects vary widely, what they all have in common is that they are not “firearms” as defined by the Gun Control Act, nor can they be readily converted into firearms. Instead, just as with a raw block of aluminum in the hands of a machinist, individuals can fully manufacture firearms from these non-firearm objects using their own experience, know-how, and machining equipment. Because they are not firearms, the ATF and the federal government lack any authority to regulate them as such—a fact gun control activists refuse to accept.
MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms (CKBA) has sought intervention in the case on behalf of its clients, Zachary Fort, Frederick Barton, 80% Arms, and Firearms Policy Coalition.
“For decades, the ATF has enforced a bright-line delineation as to when an object becomes a ‘firearm’ under the Gun Control Act,” said attorney Adam Kraut, Firearms Policy Coalition’s Director of Legal Strategy.
“Since our nation’s founding, Americans have self-manufactured their own firearms at home,” said CKBA client Zachary Fort. “The ability to exercise one’s rights privately, without government intrusion, is a cornerstone of a free society. To arbitrarily change the definition of a firearm, to include non-firearm objects, would be a gross overreach of government and could expose Americans to criminal liability.”
While ATF once seemed committed to the limited goal of defending its existing rules, political shifts have brought even this into question. In 2021, the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice proposed new ATF rules that would redefine “firearms.” These proposed rules would give the activists and states exactly what they sought in the Syracuse lawsuit—as well as in the very similar case of California v. ATF, in which CKBA has also sought intervention.
In January 2021, the district court denied CKBA’s clients’ intervention in the Syracuse case. CKBA’s clients were denied intervention on the premise that ATF adequately represented their interests—but this had never been the case, and certainly was not true after ATF’s dramatic change in position.
CKBA’s clients appealed the district court’s denial of intervention to the Second Circuit from February 2021 to December 2022. Meanwhile, in April 2022, the ATF published its final rule adopting gun control activists’ desired changes on the definition of a “firearm” and other issues related to self-manufacture.
In December 2022, the Petitioners agreed to dismiss their lawsuit, ending the underlying case in which CKBA’s clients had sought to intervene. While the larger fight over self-manufacture will continue, CKBA appreciated this dismissal of a case that should never have been brought in the first place.
