LOS ANGELES, California — Polymer80, the largest retailer of unfinished pistol frames, settled a lawsuit with the city of Los Angeles for $5 million and agreed not to sell its unfinished frames kit in California without first serializing the frame and running a background check on the prospective buyer.
“This settlement holds Polymer80 and its founders accountable, keeps guns out of the hands of prohibited people, makes L.A. neighborhoods safer and will help law enforcement to their jobs,” Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto said in a statement.
The company itself must pay $4 million in civil fines to the city, and the company’s two owners also personally must pay $1 million in civil penalties. L.A. is just one of the many cities around the country suing sellers of unfinished frames and receivers.
Anti-gun cities, politicians, and gun control groups have declared war on companies that sell unfinished frames and receivers, which they call “ghost guns.”
Even the White House weighed into the attacks on privately manufactured firearms (PMF) by ordering the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to make a new rule on unfinished frames and receivers. The ATF would eventually enact a new rule that banned selling frame blanks and jigs together at the end of August 2022. Gun control groups pushed the ATF to take the rule even further, leading to the ATF releasing a letter on December 27, 2022, claiming that frame blanks must be serialized regardless of if the kit included a jig.
Polymer80 and other companies sued the federal government over the ATF’s final rule on unfinished frames and receivers. Polymer80 was able to convince a Texas District Judge in the Fifth Circuit to issue an injunction enjoining the ATF from enforcing the frames and receivers rule on the Nevada-based company. The company would return to selling the original kits, including the frame, drill bits, rails, and jigs which infuriated anti-gun groups and government officials.
The uptick in lawsuits has come at the behest of anti-gun groups such as Brady that offer continuing legal education (CLE) classes that teach anti-gun lawyers how to sue the gun industry. Many think these suits’ ultimate goal is to put firearms and firearms-related companies out of business or get these customer lists to target these companies’ customers. New York City agreed not to seek a financial settlement with multiple companies in exchange for those companies’ customer lists.
Many of these anti-gun groups view homemade firearms as tools of criminals. Everytown and other anti-gun groups tend to lump unserialized firearm frames in with guns with obliterated serial numbers. These groups look past the millions of unserialized firearms built by law-abiding citizens who make guns for various reasons.
“Online, no-questions-asked sales of ghost gun-building kits have funneled too many firearms into the hands of felons, minors, and other prohibited people,” said Eric Tirschwell, Executive Director of Everytown Law.
The L.A. suit is just one of many lawsuits that are using taxpayer money to try to put companies out of business for selling a product they are legally allowed to sell.
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.
What are the changes Polymer 80 did $5 million worth of business in Commiefornia? The firearms industry must decide if doing business in states like California, New York and Illinois is worth the potential damage to their bottom line due to continued law suits of this nature. Including business with Law Enforcement.
All firearm manufactures should immediately refuse to sell guns to CA, NY, Il, NJ. etc., even to police forces. Let these states reap the rewards of their insane progressive greed!
They should immediateluy refuse to sell or service guns sold to those states. Civilian sales should continue.
No, what everybody needs to do first, is to stop calling guns firearms, and then get some education of just how corrupted the legal system is and learn how to step outside of its pretended jurisdictions!! WHERE is our bona fide obligation to obey a 100% corrupted band of criminals that we call the legal system? I don’t have one, and neither does anybody else!! No man or woman so far, has been able to show me the slightest error in any of my facts or logic regarding the legal system! Why is that? It. Is. Because. There. Are. NONE!!!… Read more »
no arms no ammo nothing
What about selling un-serialized 80% OUTSIDE the state of Kommifornia?
How about just obeying the laws of facts and logic, instead of insane laws, rules, regulations and ordinances that are handed down from insane men and women? Huh, how about us doing that?
When I read that, I thought the city of LA would be making the payments.
Why any company that has anything to do with firearms or parts stay in California, New York or any other gun hating state is beyond me.
Leaving the issue of slavery out, I am wondering now if a bunch of people now had wished the Confederate army had won the war ?
Don’t get me wrong, I oppose any slavery of a person as to what we call freedom but just think of it, we all are a slave to something, in a since like our job, and yes the Federal government
The South were the defenders of the Founders view on a homogenous society. Sir, look out West for your answer, where we still have segregation between the civilized and uncivilized cultures. The third world ethnic enclaves are not used by both parties to lower everyone’s quality of life down to the lowest, like urban black and brown areas are used. Our state went constitutional carry again, after telling the conservative police of our largest cities to foad, when they tried to blame our guns for the new minority violence. The war of northern aggression was like both parties today using… Read more »
I’d like to see the stats on home made firearms used in violent crime. Without the inflated stats of Felons simply owning them. Just the actual use of them in crime. The gun control machine is like aggressive cancer. It’s looking bad for gun ownership in the short term. I don’t see a liberty loving pro freedom candidate stepping up for the next election. Not to mention, the left learned a lot about making a sitting president ineffective in any action. I think they will “Trump” anybody that might try to fix this mess. Meanwhile, anti gun corporate gun hoplophobics… Read more »
We will never see accurate numbers like you ask for. The current statistics include personally made firearms equivalent to those from a manufacturer (80%, 0%, sheet metal AK’s, etc), “garage guns” (nail and pipe shotguns or pistols etc), serial number scrubbed firearms or those manufactured prior to serialization laws, and even stolen firearms or privately sold so that serial number traces do not point directly to the current possessor. “Ghost guns” is another made up terminology by the anti’s to fearmonger and rally the unthinking and willfully ignorant. Personally made firearms have been a historical tradition of our country since… Read more »
Sounds like a Pyrrhic victory to me. Was it worth it? Ask the Polymer80 owners. The mayor of LA must be on some kind of new designer drug to issue such a bullshit statement as “This settlement holds Polymer80 and its founders accountable, keeps guns out of the hands of prohibited people, makes L.A. neighborhoods safer and will help law enforcement to their jobs,” The only factual part of his statement is holding Polymer80 accountable. The other three have as much chance of happening as a snowball existing in hell.
But there’s NOTHING that was done wrong to hold them accountable for or to!!
That’s usually how extortion works.
I saw this and was very disturbed, well more than I am normally. As most of you also would think, at what point will the BATFE’s stop? When the receiver is a solid block of aluminum, or plastic? When that block of whatever material has one hole in it? Maybe like the so called “Key Card”, just a drawing of the receiver and that block of plastic makes it a firearm. Does this mean that in California you no longer have the ability to make your own gun, firearm, weapon, etc. for your own private use? And maybe the biggest… Read more »
Lot of good ideas below, “gun manufacturers should stop selling guns in New York and California”.
And then keep adding to it as time goes on add: Maine, Vermont, New Jersey, Washington, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, etc. Any where where the anti’s are illegally passing laws just stop selling guns there. Nice, very easy. Pretty soon no guns will be sold in your states. And since you are crossing off New York State, lets all make pretend that New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. versus Bruen never happened.
Yes.
These should be available at every liquor store and gas station in red states.
Anyone that fills up should be able to buy 2-3.
Since they are not Firearms they can be sold anywhere like candy.
If they find one used in a crime. Go F-ck” up the criminal that used it. Send him to the electric chair.
Leave me the f-ck alone!
Spot on. At full service gas stations after the attendant fills your gas tank and checks your oil he should bring with the cold drink or snacks your ordered the Polymer80 or two.
Why the hell would Polymer80 consent to give those bastards a single cent? It’s disgusting that they would even consider for a moment to capitulate to such a collection of insidious vermin.
F Kalifornia! Crunch…..crunch…..crunch……SNAP! ………gurgle….gurgle…..gurgle…..
So when SCOTUS finally rules on the Constitutional issue with these, California can return the funds and court costs.
Hahahaha.
Good luck getting a dime from that piece of Shit State.
All they do is take.
“…and one more step towards complete and total gun registry for the government.”
They wish!
https://ghostgunner.net/zero-percent/
Any Person Subject To… So just who is “Any person” and what EXACTLY is it that makes them subject to? In other words, what is the basic premise that is being operated off of, in that case? If we cannot be told with 100% precision what we need to know here, then we are being forced to endure some kind of a fraud. Who really knows if they are actually subject to a law, ordinance, statute or regulation, if it is not clearly spelled out for all to see? Or are we all just supposed to “go along to get… Read more »
Not sure who thumbed this down.. It is actually spot on. My girlfriend always says “Define your terms” Your post is exactly what she means. It really throws people for a loop when you make them define their terms. Especially the leftist lunatics. They usually can’t because their own rationale is severely flawed. She once chewed up and spit out an EveryClown donor. In front of 30 people. He said Assault Weapons kill thousands of people every year in this country. She said Define your terms: He said AR-15s and guns like it kill thousands of people every year in… Read more »
Spot on. At full service gas stations after the attendant fills your gas tank and checks your oil he should bring with the cold drink or snacks your ordered the Polymer80 or two.
This is so wrong on so many levels I can barely contain myself!! WHO gets to say where the boundary of 80% is? Is it the same for every gun (it’s not a firearm, that is a made up word meant to confuse people, BTW) or any other object? WHO came up with that magic number?? HOW did it come about? WHO is the one that we go to to get any kind of an opinion on it? Just HOW do we get it to be uniform 100% of the time? If it is not uniform 100% of the time,… Read more »
I am not familiar with the SCOTUS decision on serial numbers on guns, but only guessing that the crime lies in the removal of a serial number, and not in building a gun and not applying a serial number. Just like having a gun from before there was a requirement for the serial #, that would not be criminal, only if you were to remove the # from your new 1911.
The BATFE would say that you did it to avoid prosecution for something else, and therefore you are guilty of conspiracy. They are nothing if not a–holes.
Maybe F-cking A-holes.
Disband the FATF.
Remove it from existence.