The County of San Diego filed a complaint against Defense Distributed, alleging the firm is selling a gun manufacturing device unlawfully in California, in collaboration with the national gun safety organization GIFFORDS Law Center.
“It’s offensive and absurd. We know exactly what this machine is for,” District 3 County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer stated.
The “Ghost Gunner,” a do-it-yourself gun-making tool, is basically a 3D printer.
“They have a machine that prints guns in your house, and it was branded as a ‘Ghost Gunner’ to print guns in your house that were untraceable firearms,” Lawson-Remer stated. “It was sold that way online and at gun manufacturing trade shows across our country.”
In essence, the “Ghost Gunner,” a tool for building guns on your own, is a 3D printer.
“The State of California passed a law that made that machine and the title of that machine illegal, but instead of actually discontinuing this manufacturing of death, they instead rebranded it,” Lawson-Remer continued. “The ‘Ghost Gunner’ became the ‘Coast Runner,’ and they kept selling it.”
“We have all these rules now if you have mental health issues or if you have past convictions, you can’t buy a firearm, but you can still order these parts online or order a machine to build this gun at your house,” Lawson-Remer stated. “There’s no serial number and there’s no background checks.”
However, some see this litigation as a Second Amendment assault.
“I know they like to call them ‘ghost guns,’ that’s kind of a pejorative term, but really what they’re talking about is the ability for people to home manufacture firearms, which Americans have been doing as long as there’s been an American,” Michael Schwartz, Executive Director of the San Diego County Gun Owners PAC stated.
According to Schwartz, home gun production is permitted by state law in California as long as you meet the requirements to acquire or possess a handgun and as long as you abide by certain regulations, such as registering the weapon by requesting a unique serial number from the California Department of Justice.
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Schwartz feels that the County of San Diego violated the right to bear arms as it approved a law in January 2022 that made it unlawful to own or distribute gun parts without serial numbers.
“In the State of California, even if you home-manufacture a firearm, it does have to have a serial number. The County of San Diego changed it to where you can’t even buy raw materials to make your firearm unless those raw materials are serialized, which doesn’t exist, so what they’ve done is they’ve stopped the ability for people to home manufacture a firearm,” according to Schwartz.
“If you’re a law-abiding citizen, there should be a clear path for you to follow the law,” Schwartz continued. “What they’ve done in the County is they’ve distorted and disrupted state law in order to stop law-abiding people from following the law.”
On the other hand, Lawson-Remer feels they are sending a crucial and unambiguous message by suing ghost gun makers like Defense Distributed.
“We’re telling them loud and clear that there will be no ghost guns, no illegal distribution of firearms allowed on our watch here in the State of California,” Lawson-Remer stated.
