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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

I have to hand it to the Defense Distributed guys, they sure know how to turn a non-story into headline news.

Short version: FedEx and UPS get worried about liability as DD tells them they are mailing 'make your own gun kits' and decline to ship, until they understand where the ATF stands on the issue.

There are a ton of things you can't ship. A number of those things are pre-cursor components to "bad things" be it bombs, weapons, or chemical compounds. Guess who takes it in the shorts for shipping them? The shipper. So our government has trained these folks to be conservative in what they will accept until they have their collective backsides covered.

I get that DD is trying to foster some sort of conversation about how easy it is to fabricate fire arms, but what I don't get it what they hope to achieve, other than sales to people who are paranoid about having the 2nd amendment repealed.

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Do you remember when, in the wake of Sandy Hook, &c, retailers and private sellers couldn't keep large-capacity magazines on the shelves, they were selling out so quickly, and at such a premium?

Now they're sitting in boxes on the floor at $10/per.

Nothing like a bit of artificially inflated demand for the old bottom line, eh?

How exactly would the ATF have jurisdiction over a CNC mill? And what liability would a common carrier be subject to for transporting a legal good?

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms [1] establishes rules and regulations regarding the ownership, sales, manufacturing, and transport of firearms across state lines. Great article on them here on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Alcohol,_Tobacco,_Fir...

[edit] I didn't answer your question directly, they also determine what "defines" a firearm, they are the folks with the whole serial number goes on the receiver rule and that is a firearm. There is an ongoing "discussion" or "debate" over how close you can get to finishing a receiver before it becomes a receiver and thus a firearm by ATF rules. It is within the power of the ATF to rule that a CNC mill that is pre-loaded with the ability to convert an partially finished receiver into a finished receiver, is a controlled item.

[1] My grandfather once called it "the bureau of fun stuff"

It is within the power of the ATF to rule that a CNC mill that is pre-loaded with the ability to convert an partially finished receiver into a finished receiver, is a controlled item.

Are you sure about that? Under what law?

This might or might not surprise you, but the BATFE essentially makes the law, interpreting 8 decades of often unclear statutory law. The latest example of this is their recent "On second thought, M885 ammo is bad"---although the statutory law sure seems to be clear to me, but I've come across lawyers on our side who think it's debatable.

Challenging them is very dangerous, they have an odd habit of using any and all means to destroy people they get upset with, even their own agents, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Dobyns And most Federal courts and judges are not exactly on our side.

Back when people were wondering how we could get "the people" upset enough about the NSA et. al. to have the same effectiveness as "the NRA" (really, the nation's gun owners), I pointed out more that a few atrocities would have to be committed and publicized. That "worked" for us because the BATFE is probably the dirtiest and nastiest of the Federal law enforcement agencies.

But I can point to a law that allows them to regulate M855, or at least gives them the wiggle room. I'm aware of no such law that even hints at their ability to regulate machine technology.

The same law they use to define a "finished" receiver as a controlled item. My guess (I am neither a law enforcement officer nor a lawyer) is that it would be part of http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=70394195a3edf623eba... given that covers most transportation.

That said, my father maintained a federal firearms license for 30+ years in order to be able to send and receive guns that he had engraved. In his dealings with the ATF he noted you could agree with them or take them to court but there really wasn't an option for suggesting directly they didn't have the right to do what ever it was they were doing.

I expect that should the ATF decide that these things should not be allowed to be transported, they will do so under some rationale based on Title 27. Whether or not it is legal for them to do so, is something the courts would have to litigate, and something which neither FedEx nor UPS would be likely to do (DD could as they would have standing as the party being harmed).

In the Ars coverage (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/fedex-wont-ship-t...) the ATF was quoted as saying:

As a way to get around that law, manufacturers can make a product that isn’t technically a gun, but gets as close to the line as possible. The Ghost Gunner CNC mill requires that the buyer provide their own semi-finished lower, which is sometimes dubbed an "80 percent lower."

"The term 80 percent receiver comes from the seller, that’s not a term that we use," a spokesman from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) told Ars last year.

"That’s a term from the seller or creator of the device that it’s 80 percent of a finished receiver, therefore it is legal. That’s not a determination we make."

In short, in the ATF’s view, either something is a firearm or it isn’t—and if it isn’t, it can be sold without restriction.

But in January 2015, the agency released ATF Rule 2015-1 and clarified that a gunsmith or machine shop cannot use its tool to refine an 80 percent to make it a suitable firearm, but the ruling does not affect CNCs owned by individuals.

"Nothing in this ruling affects the ability of individuals to make their own firearms for personal use, as allowed by law," Ginger Colbrun, an ATF spokeswoman, told Ars by e-mail on Tuesday.

But that just says that it is legal according to the BATFE - you can't use a tool to manufacture firearms unlicensed (or in this grey area, to complete someone's 80% receiver for them). That's a legitimate interpretation of an existing law - they're just saying you can't set up a service to finish up lowers for people - they define that as manufacturing. They'd change their tune if the smith was licensed to manufacture and added serial numbers.

I'm unaware of anything that regulates machinery used to make guns, which until about a year ago, was general purpose machine tools (and still is for practical purposes - these Ghostgunner things are political art, not machine tools). I think people WANT to be able to say "that's illegal, or it might be". But it's just not. Not yet. (as far as I know, I can be convinced if someone shows me a law).

I won't argue that the BATFE hasn't done illegal things in the past, and probably will in the future, but as far as I can tell, this is pretty black and white.

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