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THIS WEEK MARKS the two-year anniversary since Cody Wilson, the inventor of the world’s first 3-D printable gun, received a letter from the State Department demanding that he remove the blueprints for his plastic-printed firearm from the internet. The alternative: face possible prosecution for violating regulations that forbid the international export of unapproved arms.
Now Wilson is challenging that letter. And in doing so, he’s picking a fight that could pit proponents of gun control and defenders of free speech against each other in an age when the line between a lethal weapon and a collection of bits is blurrier than ever before.
Wilson’s gun manufacturing advocacy group Defense Distributed, along with the gun rights group the Second Amendment Foundation, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the State Department and several of its officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry. In their complaint, they claim that a State Department agency called the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) violated their first amendment right to free speech by telling Defense Distributed that it couldn’t publish a 3-D printable file for its one-shot plastic pistol known as the Liberator, along with a collection of other printable gun parts, on its website.
In its 2013 letter to Defense Distributed, the DDTC cited a long-controversial set of regulations known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which controls whether and how Americans can sell weapons beyond U.S. borders. By merely posting a 3-D-printable file to a website, in other words, the DDTC claimed Defense Distributed had potentially violated arms export controls—just as if it had shipped a crate of AR-15s to, say, Mexico. But the group’s lawsuit now argues that whether or not the Liberator is a weapon, its blueprints are “speech,” and that Americans’ freedom of speech is protected online—even when that speech can be used to make a gun with just a few clicks.
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/3-d-printed-gun-lawsuit-starts-war-arms-control-free-speech/
Here’s the full complaint from Defense Distributed: https://www.scribd.com/doc/264435890/Defense-Distributed-et-al-v-U-S-Dept-of-State
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @06:20PM
It's even easier to bully when you have a gun. Not everyone who supports gun control hates freedom, in fact very few do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @07:48PM
Given the number of people that support the NSA's mass surveillance, the TSA, the prohibition of drugs (besides perhaps marijuana, as there's more opposition there), censorship, and many other things, that seems *very* unlikely. There are simply too many people on who support any of those things to say that very few gun control advocates hate freedom (though that position is anti-freedom in and of itself).
And many gun lovers love the second amendment but are eager to discard the rest of the constitution, so there are many unprincipled people in both camps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @01:34AM
Nice demonizing assumption there, that gun control advocates are all in favor of the NSA's mass surveillance, the TSA, drug prohibition, and many other things. It is, in fact, the other way around - the pro-guns-for-everyone camp are the authoritarians in favor of everything you've listed.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @03:55AM
They're all against marrying cute young girls.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @05:51AM
...if one (simplistically) considers the right to bear arms as pure freedom (which I think many 2nd Amendment advocates do). Having to arm oneself because of the proliferation of weapons around them isn't freedom.