
Screening Prohibited Parties As the world becomes increasingly more complicated, one might imagine that there is an official list of “naughty” countries (or individuals) to…

Defense Distributed: The Final Chapter? Frequent readers of this column will note that we’ve been following the Defense Distributed case since inception and originally noted…

Export Reform, Continued Faithful readers of this column are well aware of the ongoing efforts to modernize and streamline the current procedures for the export…

Europe Discovers the Virtues of Personal Self-Defense While European Politicians Seek to Disarm the Continent. Gun control pundits have long extolled the virtues of an…

The ACE Secure Data Portal – Bringing International Transactions into the 21st Century. For many years, the import/export community has relied upon a combination of…

Defense Distributed – continued. A brief synopsis of the events thus far: January 2013: Defense Distributed, a nonprofit, gun-design digital publisher headquartered in Austin, Texas…

Dealing with the U.S. Government: U.S. State Department versus the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Dealing with the U.S. Government is not always…

AES – The Automated Export System As computing systems get more advanced, there are increased opportunities to automate previously mundane or tedious tasks. In automating…

First Amendment Rights Versus the ITAR On June 3, 2015, the U.S. State Department published a proposed rule on the publication of firearms related information…

Recalls and Warrantees Firearms, like most mechanical items, occasionally break. Parts can fail, and barrels become worn. If the firearm was made in the United…

M855 – What’s the Big Deal? Pay any attention to American politics, and the reader will know that the ATF recently attempted to reclassify and…

Shipping Hazardous Materials Shipping ammunition within the United States? Easy. Slap a UPS Ground shipment label and ORM-D sticker on it and off it goes….

What Is OFAC, the SDN, and Why Can’t Russian Arms Be Imported Into The U.S.? On July 17, 2014, the Obama administration announced additional sanctions…

The U.S. State Department “Eats Their Own Young:” The Basics of Mens Rea, Specific Intent, and Acting “Knowingly” American criminal legal theory is based upon…

“May you live in interesting times…” supposedly a Chinese curse, the U.S. arms export trade is currently facing unprecedented challenges and difficulties. Faced with threats from the United Nations via the Arms Trade Treaty, threats of new Federal and State legislation limiting the manufacture of firearms and magazines, and the recent unprecedented consumer demand for firearms have created shortages of nearly all firearms and ammunition. Those involved in the export of semiautomatic firearms from the United States know that sourcing firearms has been challenging since the end of 2012….

Policies and regulations regarding exports are constantly changing. With the high degree of compliance required to lawfully export firearms from the United States, it is…

When buying consumer items online, particularly within the United States, the cost of shipping the item is frequently borne by the buying consumer. Sometimes, the…

Those involved in the international arms trade are (or should be) intimately familiar with the International Trade in Arms Regulations, frequently known by its acronym,…