Texas ghost-gun machine maker must stop selling to Californians, judge says

SAN DIEGO (CN) — A Texas company must stop selling and advertising machines that make ghost guns to Californians while a lawsuit brought against them by the state of California advances, a San Diego judge ruled on Friday.

In 2024, California sued Austin, Texas-based company Defense Distributed, which produces so-called computer numerical control milling machines. The state says those machines allow customers to manufacture their own ghost guns — that is, firearms that lack serial numbers or purchase records, making them much harder for law enforcement to track.

In its suit, California also named the companies Coast Runner Industries and Ghost Gunner. California authorities say they are merely alter egos for Defense Distributed. They say company founder Cody Wilson specifically markets the Coast Runner brand towards Californians due to his distaste for Golden State gun laws.

At a hearing Friday, Coast Runner attorney Chad Flores of Houston-based Flores Law argued the company’s milling machines are simply “general machines” that can also manufacture things like screws.

“This machine does not have a sole or primary function of manufacturing firearms,” Flores said, appearing via video at an injunction hearing at San Diego Superior Court’s Hall of Justice.

Coast Runner has Second Amendment rights, and California can’t show it isn’t violating them, Flores said.

“There’s only one kind of Second Amendment analysis, and that’s with Bruen ,” he said. It was a reference to New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen , a 2022 Supreme Court ruling which held that all gun regulations should be consistent with those from the 18th and 19th centuries.

But even under the lax rules of Bruen , companies do not have free reign to sell ghost gun-producing machines, California argues.

“Coast Runner itself is not an arm,” said Sophie Kivett of Sullivan & Cromwell, representing California. “There’s no Second Amendment right to self-manufacture firearms.”

In a tentative ruling released on Thursday, San Diego Superior Court Judge Loren Freestone broadly agreed.

“There was no freewheeling historical right to manufacture one’s own firearms,” Freestone wrote. Instead, he said, historical precedent backed up rules on gun manufacture and serialization, as required under Bruen .

“The plain text of the Second Amendment only prohibits meaningful constraints on the right to acquire firearms,” Freestone added — and in this case, California was merely contesting whether people without a valid firearms-manufacturer license could acquire a specific machine to manufacture firearms. Noting that California had “demonstrated that defendants have likely attempted to evade the law by essentially rebranding the Ghost Gunner as the Coast Runner,” he worded his injunction to apply to “any similar rebranding efforts pending this litigation” and “any other substantially similar CNC milling machine.”

In 2022, Defense Distributed sued California in federal court to stop the enforcement of a California law restricting ghost gun machinery. That law was modeled after Texas’ controversial abortion restrictions, which allowed private citizens to bring public causes of action.

The company dropped the suit the same year — but California says Ghost Gunner continued to violate state law by selling a very similar ghost gun milling machine under the brand “Coast Runner.” In a lawsuit last year, California accused the company of simply replacing the word “Ghost Gunner” with “Coast Runner” in its user manual. And yet the state said the company “failed to catch this use of the initials ‘GG’ for ‘Ghost Gunner,’” which remained in the manual.

California is seeking an order stopping the company from violating state gun rules, as well as damages and penalties for violations. Last year, Defense Distributed tried and failed to move the case to Texas.

Precisely because ghost guns are harder to track, machines to make them are of special interest to criminal groups, California argues.

The state says that makes them grave and urgent dangers to Californians. In 2022, California authorities recovered 12,894 ghost guns that were involved in crimes.

Giffords Law Center litigation director Esther Sanchez-Gomez called the ruling “a major victory for gun safety and the people of California” and said the organization looks forward to the injunction becoming permanent.