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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: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday May 08 2015, @07:42PM
there won't ever be any new ammendments. its impossible and you know it.
Then tough luck. Gun control will remain unconstitutional.
My point was that if these people want gun control so badly, they need to amend the constitution in order to make it truly constitutional. Instead they do what the guy below your comment does and assert that the constitution is a "living document" just so they can ignore it as is convenient, leading to predictably disastrous results.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @08:27PM
Gun control will remain unconstitutional.
In your interpretation of the constitution. On the other hand, it will be constitutional to courts, law enforcement, all your fellow citizens. Sucks to be you, especially an armed you.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday May 08 2015, @09:30PM
In your interpretation of the constitution.
My interpretation of the constitution isn't based on convenience like it is with the government. You see the same thing with mass surveillance; they'll try to justify it at every turn, as you are doing with this now.
Sucks to be you, especially an armed you.
I've never owned any guns.
(Score: 2) by naubol on Saturday May 09 2015, @03:18AM
It is a bit of a scary road to insist that your interpretation is the only correct interpretation in a manner that assumes there can be no reasonable disagreement.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Fauxlosopher on Saturday May 09 2015, @10:24AM
If the legal equivalent of "two plus two equals four" is scary to you, then I'm afraid you'll either have to learn to deal with it, or keep your head embedded in the sand and hope reality chooses not to intrude upon you.
I've written two short journal [soylentnews.org] entries [soylentnews.org] that cover the mechanics of what Pumpernickel is claiming. The super-short version is that, as the USA was created with the delegated authority of individuals, the authority of the USA's governments cannot exceed that of a single individual. If I as an individual cannot justifiably shoot you in the face for a given reason, neither can government do or threaten to do the same.
Gun laws, drug laws, speech laws, domestic spying, "civil forfeiture", taxation, slavery - all illegal and void.
(Score: 2) by naubol on Saturday May 09 2015, @01:15PM
Your comment sounds very reasonable except that there is a significant amount of disagreement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_interpretation) about how to interpret the constitution in the judiciary. To act like you have the only right opinion, bar all arguments, is an interest mixture of willful ignorance and arrogance.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Fauxlosopher on Saturday May 09 2015, @01:57PM
I could take this opportunity to detail a multitude of repugnant decisions reached by vaunted courts, all of which should give a thinking person pause as to entrusting "interpretation" of a document's plain language to a single instutiton which also derives its power from said document (Dred Scott vs Sandford; Marbury vs Madison; Buck vs Bell; Wickard vs Filburn; DC vs Heller)...
Instead, I will note that you have not addressed what I wrote and therefore will repeat myself: the totality of judicial authority is limited to be no more than its originating source, and that source is the authority inherent to a single individual. I've stated my claim and pointed you to writings that make claims of historical fact, ready and waiting for you to find specific fault with them.
(Score: 2) by naubol on Saturday May 09 2015, @02:40PM
Marbury v Madison is widely hailed as one of the most important cases in the history of common law anywhere, and not for the practical effect of its ruling. Judicial review and courts of last resort have been eagerly imported by many other nation states. People on both sides of the current ideological divide in America are emphatically for judicial review. Even senators who say that the courts are legislating would agree that judicial review is a necessary element of a modern democracy. Of the three branches of government, historically the courts have maintained the highest approval ratings. The court is fallible and history has correctly judged the dred scott decision to be wrong on the elements, however it may have been the right tactical move by a fledgling state with serious internal problems. To get from A to Z you have to pass through B, and Dred Scot may have been B.
Marbury feels particularly unfair to cite as repugnant because Marshall was likely using an issue that he had to agree with in order to establish a much much larger prize, judicial review.
If you want a list of excellent supreme court decisions (by my lights):
Marbury v Madison
Miranda v. Arizona
Baker v Carr
Griswold v Connecticut
Lawrence v Texas
Brown v Board
Reno v ACLU
US v Windsor
Boumediene v. Bush
And... I'm hoping... Obergefell v Hodges will join their ranks, soon.
The court has definitely succumbed to tyranny a few times, plessy, dred scott, bucks, bush v gore, Korematsu, blah blah but they've also, over time, corrected many of their mistakes and helped guide US politics away from many tyrannical positions. What is more, they've provided a way to resolve disputes over quotidian matters which do not surface in daily speech. I suspect that the courts will eventually rule that the OP is a violation of free speech. What's more, it might not become a commonly cited case by armchair pedants like you and me, but such cases become bricks in a jurisprudence that is one of the best in the world and certainly has been copied by many modern democracies.
I feel that your emotional comment regarding the multitude of repugnant decisions is implying that the courts are a failed institution, a framing I would emphatically reject and for which I think you would find little consensus, which brings me back to my point. A point, I feel, that you didn't deal with. The constitution cannot be exact, and attempts at making it a more literal document would water down its value. Thus, interpretation is necessary by someone. This currently is done by all three branches of government. If the courts were to so seriously err in their interpretation, there are provisions for impeachment in that document. Interpretation being necessary, there are more opinions about how to do it than there are sitting federal justices, and I'm not so sure this is a bad thing. To disagree, and believe the matter to be straightforward and easy, is to be willfully ignorant and arrogant.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Saturday May 09 2015, @03:31PM
Let me be as plain and direct as possible: in all matters where US courts and judicial decisions are used to impose upon people beyond what is permitted by the authority possessed by a single random individual, actions taken by government agents in response to such overreaching judicial arguments are literally criminal.
Arguing over an unlawful action's fine details or whether or not it was beneficial does not change the underlying issue of the action being unlawful. Majority opinion does not shape the nature of reality. Plenty of folks in the North, South, and around the world thought (and still do) think that human slavery was fine and dandy.
(Score: 1) by Oakenshield on Saturday May 09 2015, @05:24PM
Your comment sounds very reasonable except when you look at where all this judicial interpretation has gotten us. Personally, I would rather the government's feet be held to the fire and follow the unambiguous wording of the constitution regardless of convenience or convention.
(Score: 2) by naubol on Saturday May 09 2015, @07:58PM
Where has it gotten us, exactly? One of the most enviable court systems in the world?
The constitution is not unambiguous, it is ambiguous, even by design. My point is to fail to acknowledge that ambiguity is to foster poor civil discourse.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Saturday May 09 2015, @04:35PM
When the courts ignore the constitution so they can increase the power of the government, there is tyranny. I don't know why it's so difficult for people to comprehend that the constitution can be amended when necessary. I know the authoritarians in the government realize that, but it's far easier for them to just ignore it than to admit that what they want is currently a violation of the highest law of the land, so they would rather deny it and ignore what it says.
I've often seen people argue that mass surveillance is now "reasonable" under the constitution because the times have changed. What other sorts of oppression will become "reasonable" if we go with this wishy-washy "living document" method of interpreting the constitution, where the government's power is consistently expanded as it is convenient? The TSA, the drug war, obscenity laws, DUI checkpoints, and other things are all different examples of the government using the most convenient 'interpretation' of the constitution to claim it has more power than the constitution gives it, and all of them have led to drastic reductions in freedom. And now people want to do the same with the 2nd amendment, where random types of arms are arbitrarily banned, even though the 2nd amendment doesn't list any exceptions. When it doubt, err on the side of the people's freedom, not granting the government more power. If you want your restrictions so badly, the only way to have them be constitutional would be to amend the constitution, and that is difficult for a reason.
The problem is that you seem to be saying that all these viewpoints are equal; that people who want oppressive mass surveillance or arbitrary firearm restrictions have interpretations of the constitution that are just as reasonable as the interpretations of people who actually care about freedom. I would say that is completely false, because one group clearly wants to ignore the constitution to expand the government's power, which prevents them from having the moral high ground.