The Right to Bear Arms + the [1st Amendment] Right to Share Information = Downloadable 3D Printable Guns Available Online on Wednesday - Freedom Haters Organize Stop It
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"The same people who fear firearms in the hands of the people also fear information in the minds of the people." Dr. Blynd.
From [HERE] and [HERE] A federal judge on Friday tossed out a motion from three national gun control groups seeking a last-minute halt to a settlement that would allow for blueprints of 3-D printed firearms to be posted and dowloaded online.
Reuters reports that U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in Austin, Texas, blocked the motion filed earlier this week seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction on the case to halt design plans for 3-D printed guns from going online.
Defense Distributed, a non-profit organization run by Cody Wilson, an Arkansas-born techno-anarchist, that develops and publishes open source gun designs, so-called "wiki weapons", suitable for 3D printing and digital manufacture and the gun rights group the Second Amendment Foundation filed a lawsuit against the State Department claiming a violation of their 1st and 2nd amendment rights when the government blocked their efforts to post information or code online enabling the download of 3d guns.
The U.S. State Department said the online gun instructions posed a national security risk and violated the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) export laws - laws that prohibit disclosing technical data about military equipment and munitions to foreigners. These laws were designed to stop someone from, say, copying the blueprints of a nuclear submarine and passing them on to China. Mr Wilson countered that the application of these laws to his case was misguided, given that gun-making manuals already exist in the public domain.
Wilson and his team of lawyers focused their legal argument on a free speech claim: They pointed out that by forbidding Wilson from posting his 3-D-printable data, the State Department was not only violating his right to bear arms but his right to freely share information. By blurring the line between a gun and a digital file, Wilson had also successfully blurred the lines between the Second Amendment and the First. [MORE] "If code is speech, the constitutional contradictions are evident," Wilson explained to WIRED when he first launched the lawsuit in 2015. "So what if this code is a gun?”
However, 2 months ago, the Department of Justice quietly offered Cody Wilson a settlement to end a lawsuit.
Now Wilson is making up for lost time. Later this month, he and the nonprofit he founded, Defense Distributed, are relaunching their website Defcad.com as a repository of firearm blueprints they've been privately creating and collecting, from the original one-shot 3-D-printable pistol he fired in 2013 to AR-15 frames and more exotic DIY semi-automatic weapons. The relaunched site will be open to user contributions, too; Wilson hopes it will soon serve as a searchable, user-generated database of practically any firearm imaginable.
All of that will be available to anyone anywhere in the world with an uncensored internet connection, to download, alter, remix, and fabricate into lethal weapons with tools like 3-D printers and computer-controlled milling machines. “We’re doing the encyclopedic work of collecting this data and putting it into the commons,” Wilson says. “What’s about to happen is a Cambrian explosion of the digital content related to firearms.” He intends that database, and the inexorable evolution of homemade weapons it helps make possible, to serve as a kind of bulwark against all future gun control, demonstrating its futility by making access to weapons as ubiquitous as the internet.
Amateur gun-making is not new. Federal law allows anyone to manufacture guns at home; a license is required only to sell or trade them. But gun-control advocates worry that the technology’s ease of use can turn anyone—especially those who might fail a background check—into a gunsmith. Technical know-how would no longer be required to make a firearm. {MORE]
Gun control advocates are alarmed. Statists and their media are setting off a whirlwind of fear mongering - trying to trigger panic.
Ignoring straight forward and constitutionally sound arguments, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords Law Center argued in Wednesday's filing that the government provided no explanation for reversing a policy to allow the legal download of products previously considered to be a national security threat. lol.
“The Settlement Agreement raises very serious national and international security concerns and would cause immediate and irreparable harm to the United States and its citizens and the global community,” their court filings read.
With less than a week to scuttle the settlement, Wilson was bombarded with last-minute legal threats from lawmakers and advocacy groups.
Defense Distributed agreed to temporarily block Pennsylvania Internet users from its website in an emergency hearing Sunday. The move followed threats of legal action from state Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
“These downloadable firearms were just about to be widely available online,” Shapiro said on Twitter. “It’s an existential threat to our state and we stepped in to stop it. The site is — and will remain — dark throughout [Pennsylvania].” [MORE]
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) led the call to action on Saturday, warning of the dangers posed by the weapons, sometimes dubbed “ghost guns,” which are made from plastic and cannot be sensed by metal detectors.
“Ghost guns are as scary as they sound — a terrorist, someone who is mentally ill, a spousal abuser or a felon can essentially open a gun factory in their garage. No background check, no training,” he told The Post.
On Tuesday, Sen. Edward J. Markey (Mass.), joined by Sens. Bill Nelson (Fla.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Chris Murphy (Conn.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), all Democrats, sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanding that he explain the government’s decision to settle. (The Department of Justice declined to comment for this story.) Nelson also plans to introduce a bill that would prohibit online publication of any digital file that can be downloaded or programmed to print a 3-D gun part.
Throughout the week, other lawmakers have joined the push: New Jersey’s attorney general sent Wilson a cease-and-desist order, warning that making the digital files available to New Jersey residents was a violation of New Jersey law. Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) wrote a letter Thursday co-signed by 40 members of the House and calling for a hearing before the deadline.
“Maybe when my colleagues realize that the end result is a plastic gun possibly getting through security in the Rayburn [House office] building, they’ll return to Washington and let us hold hearings on stopping this danger before it gets too far,” Deutch told The Post. [MORE]
