The United States vs. some hunks of metal

I've mentioned Richard Celata, of KT Ordnance, before. According to Hairy Hobbit, there has been some more action on his case.

For those who are unaware, and are in too much of a hurry to check out the links, I'll provide a brief background. KT Ordnance offered incomplete (about 80%) firearm frames. The government, of course, regards the frame of a gun as being legally equal to a whole gun (other parts of the gun are just that--parts). Therefore, commerce in firearm frames is subject to the same regulatory morass (GCA, etc.) as commerce in complete firearms. By offering incomplete frames, KT Ordnance provided customers with the opportunity to do the finishing work themselves, and (as long as they never transferred the end product to another owner) build a firearm without the legal hoops our once proud republic has stooped to forcing its citizens to jump through--and this process would be completely legal.

Or so we thought. As it turns out, the ATF must have wanted to take a break from screwing over Jay Dobyns (Dobyns isn't really relevant to this post--I just mentioned him to give my federal secret admirer something else to look at--he seems to come here at least once almost every day to look at the same post about Dobyns and the ATF, and I'm afraid he's going to get bored--say "Hi" to the fed, everybody). So, they decided to decree that the 80% frames were too much like complete frames, despite the fact that machine tools, skill, knowledge, and time would be required to transform them into anything more than paperweights--more importantly, there are no published definitions of where the legal line is drawn between "complete," and "incomplete" firearm frames. That, I suspect, is how the BATFE likes it--the more ambiguity there is in the law, the more free they are to interpret (and reinterpret, when convenient) the law as it suits them.

To this point, Mr. Celata (owner of KT Ordnance) has not been charged with anything, despite the raid on his business having occurred back in June, with his entire inventory, plus computers and files, confiscated. Instead of charging him, they have taken the rather . . . interesting step of charging part of his inventory--apparently for the crime of manufacturing itself without a license.

Mr. Celata's legal team is attempting to get the "charges" dropped, on the grounds that the BATFE's legal definition of firearm is so vague as to be useless. Supposedly, the defense made the motion to dismiss last Friday (Feb. 2), but to this point, I haven't been able to find any information as to how that went.

Anyone who does know something, please post a comment.