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Didn't they at least slightly succeed in getting plain ol' firearms removed from the USML (from ITAR rules down to normal EAR rules)? That IIRC happened in 2020, although it was maybe not the huge legal win they were looking for.
Depends on how you look at it.
Defense Distributed 'won' a big victory where there was a full settlement announcement that Defense Distributed specifically would get one of the new licenses to distribute those ITAR'd files. Then the government moved the files from ITAR rules to EAR rules, and then successfully argued in court that they no longer needed to issue a permit. In theory, this meant Defense Distributed was free and clear so long as they were publishing information rather than ready-to-print files ... and then the Biden administration argued that an EAR exception for ready-to-manufacture code explicitly covered CAD-only files or instruction manuals for firearms, did so by FAQ, and coincidentally EAR rules are completely barred from judicial review. Defense Distributed has not received a license under the new regime, could not receive one to publish broadly -- that's explicit text in the Department of Commerce letter -- and it's basically in the same state as it was before the lawsuit, but with no recourse.
Strictly speaking, a First Amendment as-applied challenge might get past that reviewability bar. Good fucking luck.
For bonus points, EAR violations are 350k+ per item (presumably per-file) as civil violations, 1 million and years in prison as a criminal violation if willful, and come with the extra punishment of going on the Denied Persons List, aka 'no bank accounts allowed'.
Wow the transition to EAR rules and then defining online software files as world wide releases is quite harsh on anything open-sourced. I assume the files in question were just normal guns for manufacture? Nothing super high-tech, needing any sort of classification or export restriction?
I guess it's good to know that anyone complaining about the political targeting via ITAR rules is mostly complaining about their side getting hit with export restrictions.
The rules apply from the it's-kinda-dumb Liberator proof of concept to the modern-gen FGC-9, but they're nothing superscience or fantastical.
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