2024/04/03
New Policy Runs Counter to the Benefit of the AG community.
Industry forums do not want to lose “eyeballs”. That is what they sell to advertisers. They are therefore loath to alienate those “eyeballs”. Advertisers don’t want to lose the right to sell their products. Advertisers pay forums for “eyeballs”. If advertisers only knew how many “web bots” are being reported as “guests” in forum statistics, they would pay less. That is, however; a different problem.
I have a theory. There is a small group of influential people in the airgun community, people who have never read the Crooker v. BATF ruling and even if they had, would misinterpret it. They have a clear vision of what is good for the community and they believe they have the right to force that vision on any member of the community. That vision and the attendant coercion may have worked 20 years ago when the community was much smaller than it is today. Their paranoia has driven nearly every Airgun forum in the community to censor any speech about the construction of silencers, moderators, or whatever the “term du jour” is for suppressor, even though there is no law abridging that speech. When a forum manager refuses to allow an American citizen to use the name of a federal agency on his forum we have reached a level of paranoia which can only be described as infantile. This group is an enemy of the airgun community, not it’s friend.
VENDORS AND MANUFACTURERS TAKE NOTICE: During the preparation of this paper the link above which was cited at Findlaw disappeared from their site. It has been there for more than three years and was there yesterday but today it is gone. I had to find the original PDF at the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals site and link that. If you need a copy of the PDF of the court’s findings let me know. One wonders just who might have convinced Findlaw to removed a citation which has been on their site for years, and why? We live in interesting times.
What follows here is an unqualified opinion by a lay person who has no education in the law. IOW it is worth what you paid for it.
After reading and rereading and rereading the court’s opinion, I take away this understanding:
Intent is not the sole criteria, but intent is an indicator which must be considered.
If it can be attached to a firearm without modification it can be considered a regulated device whether or not the intent is to use it thus.
If the intent is to use it thus, even if it must be modified, it can be considered a regulated device. e.g. If you are in possession of a sack of potatoes and intend to use them as firearms silencers you have broken the law.
By exclusion we are left with the one case; If you do not intended to us it as a firearms silencer AND it would require modification to be used as one then (and only then) it can not be considered a regulated device. (e.g. as by the attachment of an adapter).
Printing “Airgun Use Only” on it does not preempt point #2 above. You can’t declare your intention is not to do something and then do it. The thread pattern is crucial. It is either made for use with a firearm or it is not. What you write on it is irrelevant.
In flowchart form it looks like this:
This all leads me to conclude that single use technology is the safest approach. A moderator which can’t readily be attached to a firearm and/or which would not be safe to use if it was attached to a firearm is pretty solid evidence that it should not be considered a regulated device.
What you see above is an unqualified opinion by a lay person who has no education in the law. IOW it is worth what you paid for it.
There is no law which prohibits the study of airgun silencer technology, the documentation of such studies or the building of them, even building them for sale. One is on fairly solid footing so long as the Appellate Court’s decision is observed. That is about as far as the solid ground runs though. As soon as you begin implementing thread patterns which are used on firearms you are treading on quicksand because a thread pattern can indicate intent. Worse still is the “slip on” moderator. It is definitely “dual use”. A slip on moderator can not meet the test explained in the court’s opinion. If you possess a firearm threaded with a pattern commonly used on airgun moderators and an airgun moderator, you are treading on quicksand, even if your intent is to never put that moderator on that firearm.
Discretion is prudent, cowardice draws fire. It is unfortunate that the AG industry does not understand that. That said, the law itself is very clear. It is illegal to build a firearms silencer without the appropriate licenses, stamps, and permissions. That is what is regulated.
What is not regulated?
STL files
drawings, images
design information
implementation details
construction of airgun moderators
sale of airgun moderators
If this were not true, there would not be literally dozens of retailers and airgun suppressor manufacturers building and selling these devices on the web in the United States today. This discussion is being driven by the paranoid ideation of a small group of influential people in the industry and on the forums. These are people who demand the right to control your speech and have absolutely nothing to do with any federal agency whether or not it may be named. It is cowardice in it’s rawest form. You are being played.
One wonders when the AG industry as a whole will adopt a standard pitch and diameter thus precluding the inevitable regulation of their products. A recent “poll” indicated that 19 out of 20 airguns which have threaded barrels are threaded at ½ x 20 UNF. If the owner could say, “It is the standard pitch and thread for the airgun industry as a whole”, nobody would pursue him. Moreover; the small shop producing new airgun specific technology would be in a much more secure position with respect to the law.
The industry needs to spend more time working together. It needs to spend less time selling 25 dollars worth of aluminum and plastic for ten times that. Worse even than the scalping which is common with aftermarket vendors of these devices is the motivation of each vendor to build in a proprietary attachment so that nobody else can provide an alternative product. In my opinion that is where this censorship is headed.
Truthfully, the industry should be ashamed.
You can find me in the garage if you look here.
Keep watching, keep the faith and remember; You are supposed to run toward the gun fire.
God Bless America