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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @11:31PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 09 2015, @02:04AM
what matters is that that group is growing
They aren't growing fast enough to be relevant. There just aren't that many gun deaths in the US in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @07:11AM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday May 09 2015, @02:02PM
Gun violence != deaths.
Gun violence severe enough to "lose loved ones" is.
Also, you should start watching the news.
Dumbest thing you'll write all day. News is entertainment not information. They have no interest in accurately portraying the US levels of gun violence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @09:51PM
Gun violence severe enough to "lose loved ones" is.
You tried to make the scope bigger, which didn't help your point.
News is entertainment not information. They have no interest in accurately portraying the US levels of gun violence.
I'm not talking about gun violence in the news. You said they're not growing enough to be relevant. You've been wrong for a few years now.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 09 2015, @11:35PM
You tried to make the scope bigger, which didn't help your point.
No, I didn't. Read my post, I don't change the scope at all. It was quite clear that the previous poster was speaking of gun deaths from gun violence which is why I used the term, "gun deaths". I assumed also he was referring to suicides and accidental deaths, which might be incorrect on my part. But having said that, if he were speaking of generic "gun violence" and I choose instead to speak of "gun deaths" from gun violence, then I would be narrowing the scope not widening it.
Nor does your accusation doesn't make sense even if we ignore the context of the thread. After all, if I widen the scope and hence, the number of people effected and still made my point, then I see no reason for complaint. It's like complaining that I won a chess game unfairly ("I didn't help my game") because I took one of my pieces away which substantially harmed my starting position.
Having said that, the following is how you make the scope bigger. While there is some attention paid to people who lost loved ones, no attention has been paid here to people who have saved their lives or property by use of a gun, not necessarily to kill someone or even fire the gun. Merely brandishing a handgun is often enough to prevent crime and the harm that can come of it. That group is growing as well.
This is the huge elephant in the tent that gun control advocates routinely ignore. There are a lot of people who have experienced a legitimate improvement in their lives by using a handgun to intimidate or even kill a criminal who was intent on doing harm. Those people won't be appreciative of efforts to cripple their ability to defend themselves.
I'm not talking about gun violence in the news.
Then you're not talking about anything I would consider relevant in this thread since we were speaking of gun violence and gun deaths. Nor am I interested in guessing what you mean by your coy, misleading insinuations.
As to the claim that somehow we in the US are closer to broad gun control measures, I think that's absurd. Here, we have on paper the strongest gun control advocates in the White House ever and despite being in the White House for six years, they have yet to propose any serious gun control legislation. States are rolling back gun control legislation. My state of residence, Colorado recently rolled back a relatively mild though idiotic gun control regulation by voting out most of the instigators. Similarly, the national park where I work (Yellowstone National Park) now allows people to have firearms in the park which is a recent change in policy. I believe there are similar small trends throughout the US to more liberal gun ownership.
I notice that there is this insistence on claiming that a belief is widely prevalent even though it is obvious that public sentiment isn't in line with that. I think it's the fallacy of appeal to consensus. Everyone has this opinion so you should do. The obvious rebuttal is that a casual glance at public attitudes and political movements don't show the consensus. My view is that it's going to take a lot more than the rare mass shooting or bombing to convince enough people that there is an actual problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 10 2015, @02:49AM
But having said that, if he were speaking of generic "gun violence" and I choose instead to speak of "gun deaths" from gun violence, then I would be narrowing the scope not widening it.
I inverted my terms, I apologize for the mis-communication. I'll rewind a bit and clarify: Guns are giving tons of people reason to hate them. It's not limited to deaths, either murder or suicide, it's jail time, long-term injuries, you name it. This number is not small enough to be irrelevant. Even if it was, it grows. Small number today, large number tomorrow.
Nor am I interested in guessing what you mean by your coy, misleading insinuations.
My point is you shouldn't have to guess. You have an opinion on a topic yet you're unaware of years of current events. This isn't coy, this is "ugh I'm not even sure how we're going to have this conversation without giving you a history lesson you're just going to argue with anyway."
My view is that it's going to take a lot more than the rare mass shooting or bombing to convince enough people that there is an actual problem.
Your view fails to take memory into account. Every tragedy that comes by means less people seeing value in allowing gun ownership. That clock is ticking. If you want to keep that right, start finding a solution. Others are, right now, acting on it. They're misguided, but they're doing it. What you want is action that isn't misguided instead of sitting there with your arms crossed complaining about how every solution is wrong.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 13 2015, @11:42PM
You have an opinion on a topic yet you're unaware of years of current events. This isn't coy, this is "ugh I'm not even sure how we're going to have this conversation without giving you a history lesson you're just going to argue with anyway."
I apologize for the late reply. I'm quite aware of current events. For example, most gun control laws get reversed either by voters or by being ruled blatantly unconstitutional in the courts. Gun violence, not just gun deaths is at a near future low. There is slight movement towards gun liberalization and not much going on at the state level. You could give me a history lesson, but reality already doesn't go your way. The precondition of giving me an erroneous history lesson results in the consequence of me correcting those errors to the best of my ability. It's not due to some mental problem on my part, it's just a simple matter of bad priors leading to bad conclusions.
What you want is action that isn't misguided instead of sitting there with your arms crossed complaining about how every solution is wrong.
Let us keep in mind that my alleged non-solution is better than most of the proposed solutions! You haven't even established that there is a gun problem which warrants such restrictions.
But since we have sort of transitions into speaking about actual solutions rather than merely dwell on my shortcomings, I'll propose a couple of solutions: 1) legalize all recreational drugs, and 2) enforce the Second Amendment rather than repeatedly try to undermine it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @03:59AM
Shoot them when they try to imprison men.