3-D Printed Gun Blueprints Have Been Taken Offline—For Now
Credit to Author: Brian Barrett| Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2018 15:01:00 +0000
A belated legal scramble to stop public access to 3-D printed gun blueprints has succeeded, at least for now. Late Tuesday, a federal judge granted a temporary nationwide injunction against Defense Distributed from making its designs available online. Several hours after the ruling, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson has finally complied.
The suit, filed Monday by the attorneys general of eight states and the District of Columbia, is just one of several last-ditch legal efforts to prevent the spread of 3-D printed gun plans. Last month, the State Department settled a long-standing Wilson lawsuit, opening the door for Defense Distributed to put blueprints and CAD models for most guns online. At that point, all someone would need to create an unregulated, lethal weapon is a 3-D printer and an internet connection.
'The law is clear. My settlement and license are not judicially reviewable.'
Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed
The challenges to the State Department accelerated as Wilson’s August 1 deadline for placing the plans online approached. In addition to the suit that spurred the injunction, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as the city of Los Angeles, had issued successful cease and desist letters against Defense Distributed. Several Democratic lawmakers have proposed legislation to prevent 3-D printed gun proliferation, although odds of passage appear slim in a GOP-controlled Congress. Nearly two dozen states are separately suing Defense Distributed and the State Department in an effort to rescind the settlement. Even President Donald Trump got in on the action, issuing a vague tweet Tuesday morning that 3-D printed gun availability “doesn’t seem to make much sense.”
On Tuesday, those efforts notched their most significant win yet. “There is a possibility of irreparable harm because of the way these guns can be made,” said Judge Robert Lasnik, ruling from the bench.
“I am thankful and relieved Judge Lasnik put a nationwide stop to the Trump Administration’s dangerous decision to allow downloadable, 3D-printed ghost guns to be distributed online,” said Washington state attorney general Bob Ferguson. “These ghost guns are untraceable, virtually undetectable and, without today’s victory, available to any felon, domestic abuser or terrorist.”
“Publishing blueprints for untraceable guns isn’t just dangerous—it’s illegal,” said Nick Suplina, managing director for law and policy at gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. “Attorneys general from Washington to New Jersey have stepped up to protect the public, and already their actions are keeping us safer.”
While gun control advocates have celebrated the decision as a victory, it comes with ample caveats. All parties will return to court on August 10, the next phase of what could become a lengthy legal battle. And while the 3-D printed gun blueprints have vanished from Defcad.com, the site that hosted them, 10 designs had been available from July 27 until late Tuesday night. Most of them had been downloaded thousands of times before the injunction.
“This site, after legally committing its files to the public domain through a license from the US Department of State, has been ordered shut down by a federal judge in the Western District of Washington,” the site now reads, followed by a link to join Legio, the organization that funds Defense Distributed’s work.
Judge Lasnik himself noted that there were “serious First Amendment issues” involved in the case, the foundation of Defense Distributed’s argument. And Wilson strongly rejects the legal basis of the injunction.
“The law is clear. My settlement and license are not judicially reviewable,” Wilson says.
The issue has shaped up so far as a clash between what Wilson sees as his First Amendment right to publish the plans, and the states’ argument that the Tenth Amendment lets them make their own laws, including those that restrict gun ownership. Being able to 3-D print your own AR-15 components at home, they argue, circumvents laws specifically in place to limit access to them.
“Defense Distributed was promising to distribute guns in Pennsylvania in reckless disregard of the state laws that apply to gun sales and purchases in our Commonwealth,” Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro said in a statement. “The nationwide restraining order we won tonight is an important step forward for states’ rights and public safety, but we will not rest until we permanently stop this company from moving forward with its reckless plans to make these 3-D gun files available everywhere on the internet.”
For at least the next 10 days, those files will remain unavailable to those who had not already downloaded them. But what happens after that is still anybody’s guess.
Additional reporting by Andy Greenberg.