SAN DIEGO (CN) — The state of California sued on Friday a Texas-based maker of milling machines, saying that the company specifically markets the machines — which allow people to build their own firearms and evade federal firearms regulations — to Californians wanting to bypass the state's strict gun laws.
In a complaint filed in San Diego Superior Court, the state says computer numerical control milling machines allow customers to manufacture their own firearms without serial numbers known as ghost guns, making them harder to track by law enforcement.
California names Austin-based company Defense Distributed as a defendant, alongside Coast Runner Industries and Ghost Gunner, which it says are merely alter egos for Defense Distributed.
“Defendants flout California law with too-cute-by-half sales and marketing tactics. The Coast Runner is not a joke — it is an illegal device designed, marketed, and sold to enable its users to make firearms and to violate California’s gun violence prevention laws,” the state says in their complaint.
In 2022, Defense Distributed filed suit against the state in federal court to stop the enforcement of restrictions on ghost gun machinery as well as a provision in one of the new California laws that was modeled on Texas's controversial abortion law and that makes a plaintiff liable for the state's legal costs in defending an unsuccessful challenge to its gun laws.
The company dropped the suit the same year, but the state claims that soon after a new company called Coast Runner Industries started to market the "Coast Runner," a very similar milling machine to a product sold by Defense Distributed called the "Ghost Gunner."
That’s not a coincidence, the state claims, because Coast Runner Industries is an alter ego of Ghost Gunner, and their milling machines are exactly the same.
Coast Runner, they add, is specifically marketed to Californians because the state’s strict gun laws are targets of Defense Distributed and Ghost Gunner founder Cody Wilson, the state claims.
A “CR Wilson” is listed as the organizer of Coast Runner Industries Inc on the company’s certificate of formation, the state says in the complaint. An Austin address that’s also listed on corporate fillings for Defense Distributed as Wilson’s address leads the state to believe that he is the “CR Wilson” in Coast Runner’s certificate of formation.
One description of the Coast Runner’s physical overview diagram also refers to the product using the initials “GG,” which the state claims refers to Ghost Gunner.
“It appears that in preparing the Coast Runner Operator’s Manual, defendants simply used a global find-and-replace function to replace ‘Ghost Gunner’ with ‘Coast Runner’ — but failed to catch this use of the initials ‘GG’ for ‘Ghost Gunner,’” the state says in their complaint.
Tools to manufacture ghost guns are specifically of interest to criminal groups, because the unregistered guns are harder to track by law enforcement, making them grave and urgent dangers to Californians, the state claims. The state recovered 12,894 ghost guns that were involved in crimes in 2022.
The state is asking a judge to order the company to stop violating gun laws, and to award the state damages and civil penalties for each violation of state gun regulations.
Representatives of Coast Runner Industries did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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