SAN DIEGO — “California has instituted strong gun safety laws for public safety and to save lives,” states the opening of a lawsuit targeted at a maker of not firearms, but plastic. The lawsuit has all the markings of a New Jersey tactic to use civil actions to punish, coerce, vilify, and ultimately destroy any industry even remotely associated with firearms.
The People of the State of California v. Polymaker, LLC complaint, filed on October 5 in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Diego, names attorneys from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence as counsel for the plaintiff, alongside lawyers from the global law firm White & Case LLP. Giffords Law Center is the public-facing organization that has advanced gun control legislation and ardently backed gun bans. Its affiliated 501(c)(4) entity, GIFFORDS, is the recipient of significant funding funneled through sources such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the Far Star Action Fund. GIFFORDS’ 2024 revenue totaled $17.6 million.
The suit was announced by the County of San Diego Communications Office as part of a slew of lawsuits “aimed at protecting children, families and public safety.”
“When you’re legally targeting a company for a small slogan on the box, this ceases to be a 2nd Amendment issue and becomes a 1st,” stated the National Association for Gun Rights in a post. (Hat tip to John Crump, who likely broke this story.)
The civil case claims that Polymaker, a manufacturer of 3D printer filament, violated California’s Unfair Competition Law. The cause of action includes “the unlawful and unfair prongs,” specifically that Polymaker is violating California Business and Professions and Penal codes which specify that it is unlawful to “sell, offer to sell, or transfer ownership of any firearm precursor part … that is not a federally regulated firearm precursor part.”
The charge is that Polymaker is “engaged in an extensive business strategy to market its filaments to become the frame or receiver of functional firearms,” a violation of California law which identifies “firearm precursor part[s]” to include “any forging, casting, printing, extrusion, machined body or similar article … that is marketed or sold to the public to become or be used as the frame or receiver of a functional firearm once completed, assembled or converted.”
Under this broad interpretation, the same legal attack might be levied at any business buying or providing other raw materials, such as billet aluminum. Judge Reed O’Connor noted this slippery slope in his August opinion against the ATF, striking its frame and receiver rule as void for vagueness, and upholding the American tradition of making firearms:
So, at some unknown point between an ‘unformed block of metal’ or ‘liquid polymer’ and a fully completed firearm ‘a forging, casting, printing, extrusion, unmachined body, or similar article’ becomes a ‘frame’ or ‘receiver.’
The California suit against Polymaker comes as the state’s 3D printer ban measure appears to be running out of steam due to the non-existence of “firearms blocking technology” that it required to be implemented against 3D printers. Barring the existence of such tech, the law becomes unenforceable in 2029.
California’s hostile attack against a plastics manufacturer has the same feel and approach as New Jersey’s attempt to use a “public nuisance” measure against firearms manufacturers and distributors. New Jersey also leverages civil suits seeking liability against lawful businesses, but the Third Circuit recently decided, in September, that a lawsuit brought by gun rights groups against the state’s misuse of its public nuisance measure may go forward.
Similarly, New Jersey seeks backing from the gun control movement, announcing in August the hiring of a former Brady lawyer to work under the attorney general’s office to bring “civil enforcement actions against firearm companies to hold them accountable for violations of the law that harm the health and safety of residents.”
