California Attorney General Rob Bonta, joined by San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, filed People of the State of California v. Gatalog Foundation, Inc., et al. in San Francisco County Superior Court in February 2026, targeting Florida-based Gatalog Foundation, Inc., CTRL PEW LLC, and three individual defendants for allegedly distributing computer code enabling the 3D printing of ghost guns, machine gun conversion devices, and other firearm-related components. My take: this is a dumb lawsuit on the merits — though that won’t stop it from inflicting real pain on defendants while it grinds through a California state court.
The Civil Lawsuit Tells You Everything You Need to Know
The first tell that California’s case is weak is that it is a civil lawsuit, not a criminal indictment. If Bonta genuinely had evidence that these Florida defendants were actively aiding and abetting crimes in California, he would have marched them to a grand jury and tried to put them in prison. He didn’t. That omission speaks volumes.
The complaint also leans heavily on crimes that happened outside California — including the Luigi Mangione shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan in December 2024. Why is California spending paragraphs on a New York City crime? Because they apparently can’t populate the complaint with strong California-specific evidence tying these defendants to California harms. When your own filing reaches across the country to find examples, you’ve told the reader something about the evidence you don’t have.
Paragraph 92 Is a First Amendment Red Flag
Look at paragraph 92 of the complaint. California singles out CTRL PEW merchandise carrying slogans like “F gun control” and the FGC-9 firearm model name — which stands for “F**k Gun Control 9mm.” The state is flagging the political speech of the defendants as evidence of wrongdoing.
That is a serious First Amendment problem. Viewpoint discrimination — penalizing speakers because the government dislikes their politics — is the clearest First Amendment violation there is. California would never bring this lawsuit against a company distributing 3D-printing tutorials for a product aligned with its policy preferences.
Beyond viewpoint discrimination, the underlying information — gunsmithing instructions, firearm schematics, technical data — is educational and scientific speech. Imagine repackaging every file on the Gatalog website into a book titled Gunsmithing 101. Could California ban that book? The fact that the same content lives on a website rather than printed pages doesn’t diminish its constitutional protection.
The Patent Office Argument — and the Supreme Court’s Own Suppressor Photos
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office — a federal government agency created under Article I of the Constitution — publishes every patent in full: schematics, dimensions, design drawings, and complete technical specifications for decades’ worth of firearm technology. It is all publicly available right now on a government website.
Then there’s Klein v. Martin, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), a per curiam Supreme Court decision issued just weeks before this lawsuit was filed. Pages 14 through 16 of that opinion include photographs — published by the United States Supreme Court — depicting a homemade suppressor constructed from a Gatorade bottle. Is California going to sue the Supreme Court next?
The notion that distributing publicly available firearm technical information is uniquely illegal when it appears on a Second Amendment-oriented website, while the same data circulates freely through government patent databases and Supreme Court opinions, is not a coherent legal theory.
Sony v. Universal City Studios — Justice Stevens Already Answered This
I wrote about this doctrine in a 2020 article published in the ASU Corporate and Business Law Journal. In Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), the late Justice John Paul Stevens — no friend of the Second Amendment — authored the 5–4 majority holding that Sony could not be liable for contributory copyright infringement for selling Betamax VCRs:
“The sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate unobjectionable purposes.”
California’s lawsuit against Gatalog is structurally identical to the losing argument in Sony. Because some people might misuse firearm schematics, California wants to shut it all down. Justice Stevens already held that widespread lawful use defeats that theory.
And who in California has lawful uses for these exact schematics? Under California Penal Code § 32650, the California DOJ may issue permits to manufacture machineguns. Under § 32700, it may license the sale of machineguns. Under § 33300, it may permit the manufacture of short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns. The complaint itself acknowledges that a California DOJ officer downloaded a schematic from one of the defendant websites — for a lawful purpose. That is the Sony principle in action: substantial lawful uses exist, so the enterprise cannot be condemned wholesale. Add approximately 19,000 active Type 07 FFLs nationwide, and the universe of lawful users is enormous.
What the Defendants Should Do Next
The defendants have already filed a counter-suit — CTRL PEW LLC et al. v. Bonta et al. — in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (Orlando Division). That’s the right move. If I were still a Wall Street litigator, I would also be on the phone with Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier the day the California complaint dropped. California is attempting to export its regulatory framework across the country and compel out-of-state Florida residents to comply with California law. That is a personal jurisdiction question and a political fight Florida has every reason to join.
The case sits in San Francisco County Superior Court, before judges selected through the California political process. I harbor no illusions about their sympathy for out-of-state Second Amendment defendants. The process is the punishment — that’s the entire point of this lawsuit. But on the merits, California is holding a losing hand.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.