My understanding is that it’s perfectly lawful for a NY resident to acquire materials / components / parts and build their own rifle, even one based on an AR-15 lower receiver, so long as you don’t run afoul of the SAFE Act or various other pieces of gun control. Sure, the end result is a goofy-looking thing, but it’s legal, isn’t it?
Why is the AG demanding that these companies stop selling legal items to NY residents?
Is she going to get reamed out by these companies’ lawyers? Or is she on firm legal ground here?
IANAL, and I really can’t comment on whether it’s legal or not, but it seems perfectly fair to say that forbidding people from owning a certain thing also means banning them the components to have that thing.
Imagine if North Korea said, “We’re not violating UN bans on nuclear proliferation by selling Syria all the components needed to assemble a nuclear weapon, since it’s not an outright nuke itself.”
But the “components to have that thing” can also be assembled into firearms that are perfectly legal to own in New York. As a hypothetical, imagine that a state wanted to ban a certain 4-door pickup truck. There’s a two-door model that’s still perfectly legal. Is someone guilty of possessing “the components to have that thing” (the 4-door pickup truck) if they’ve got a rear axle that is used on both the 2-door and 4-door model?
Selling the common part would be probably be legal. But selling it as a kit that makes the illegal thing, that is the problem. Even if every part in the kit is used in a legal gun, selling the kit that makes the illegal device is still illegal.
Radar jammers are illegal in many states. Someone could build one out of off the shelf components. Each component is legal, but if you sold a kit with just the components and either include instructions or point to instructions, you are selling the illegal item.
What does “mens rea” have to do with it? It’s perfectly legal for NY residents to acquire a block of aluminum, mill it out, add an upper receiver, stock, trigger group, buffer tube, etc and turn those components into a firearm that is legal for them to possess in New York (at least, AFAIK). It’s certainly technically possible (and highly illegal) to use some of those same components, along with some different ones, to turn the same block of aluminum and various other components into an illegal machine gun or assault weapon. That doesn’t mean that the person / company selling the buffer tube, or rear sight, or whatever other component has any intention of aiding people in building machine guns or assault weapons or doing anything else illegal. Their intention is to assist people to build legal rifles. Someone may misuse their component to do something illegal with it, but that’s not the fault of the manufacturer or seller.
Seems like a conflict between federal and state law, with the NY interpretation being more restrictive. Whether the NY law runs afoul of the Constitution is for the courts.
The fact that the items are not firearms may actually make it easier for NY to ban them. By not being firearms, they don’t get the same protections and the state has more leeway in what steps they take to restrict them.
It’s clear the feds do not consider unfinished blanks to be firearms.
“Ghost gun” is a term a congressmen from my state came up with, in all of his ignorant glory.
That’s not, I believe, what these companies are doing. They’re not selling kits with “just the components” to make an assault weapon. The “kits” (80% lower and jig) can be used to make NY-legal firearms. Letitia seems to not understand this point. In her press conference, she said “There is only one purpose for the products that these companies are selling — to manufacture illegal and deadly assault weapons”, but she is wrong. There’s a completely lawful purpose for acquiring 80% lowers.
The state probably could ban 80% lowers (I believe CA recently did / is trying to do this), but NY has not yet banned them, at least to my knowledge. There’s no NY law to run afoul of here (with respect to 80% lowers). It’s just the AG sending out a threatening letter.
Maybe. I don’t know guns enough. But this sounds like a clear case of letter of the law vs. spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is that there shouldn’t be privately owned assault rifles in New York, and people are blatantly trying to flout that.
If I’m advertising all of the materials needed to create the 4-door model, along with all of the instructions and some of the more specific tools to create the 4-door model, and my selling point is “they won’t be able to take your 4-door away if they don’t know you have it,” then one could very well impute that I’m knowingly furnishing you with the means to create the 4-door. That’s what mens rea has to do with it.
I reiterate: no one is doing that. No one is selling them “all of the materials needed to create the 4-door model”, or the firearm equivalent of it: an “assault weapon”. They’re selling a single partially-completed component. It’s not unique to assault weapons. It’s a base component that could be used in either an assault weapon or a perfectly-legal rifle.
ETA: and the alleged marketing tag-line didn’t mention assault weapons either. It said “it” as in “If they don’t know you have it, they can’t take it.” There’s no reason the “it” there can’t be a rifle that’s perfectly legal to own in NY today.
Well, IANAL, but I trust that the members of the NY Att’y Gen’l’s Office are. So let’s take a look at the actual cease and desist letter:
[bolding mine]
If you’re a NY resident and you take issue with this, I recommend that you contact your elected representatives. Winning points on an internet message board will not provide the injunctive relief you seem to feel is in order. Good day, Sir.
The proper response to “I hereby demand that you stop the sale and advertisement to residents of New York of unfinished lower receivers and firearms components that are intended for the assembly of assault weapons” is “the blocks of aluminum we sell are not ‘intended for the assembly of assault weapons’, so kick rocks, hippy”, or something along those lines.
I remember well several debates that had to do with Blue states changing tax laws to allow citizens to make 100% tax deductible donations to the state, for the express purpose of evading Trump’s tax law limiting deductions of state and local taxes.
“Ho ho ho, just wait until the IRS says you can’t make such end runs around the law!” said some posters, barely containing their glee that transparent attempts to undermine the conservative agenda of sticking it to libs would meet with a governmental smackdown.
Now we see the rules lawyering explicitly applied to a law regarding guns, and suddenly finding ways to undermine valid laws is as good clean fun as blowin’ shut up. Yee-haw.
People in NY today can and do purchase stripped AR lowers (essentially a 100% complete lower receiver). It’s perfectly legal, and no more a violation of NY’s ban on “assault weapons” than the 80% lowers.
I’ll venture a guess that the NY AG’s office managed to figure out that someone might try that response, and thought their position vis-a-vis the relevant laws was strong enough to justify sending the letter anyway.
It seems that what you’re looking for here is an ironclad legal opinion on whether their position is justified. I don’t know whether you can find such an opinion here (or anywhere for that matter, until the courts have chewed over the issue), but in the meantime I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere with suggesting naive objections to the AG’s position that they’ve probably already considered.