The nation’s three largest gun control advocacy groups are asking a Texas judge to prevent the impending release of a “trove” of digital blueprints for 3D-printed firearms.
“It is dangerous, irreparable and … raises issues of national defense and national security of the highest order,” the groups said of a June settlement by the Trump administration that would allow for the data files to be freely downloaded as of 1 August.
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence are the three organizations seeking an immediate injunction.
The request pertains to digital blueprints first released in 2013 by the then University of Texas law student Cody Wilson for a single-shot 3D-printed handgun named “the Liberator”. Within a matter of days, the state department ordered Wilson to take down the files, arguing that making the blueprint available would be akin to a violation of arms export statutes.
A legal battle between Wilson and the government ensued until June this year, when the Trump administration unexpectedly settled Wilson’s lawsuit, permitting the publication of the files as of 1 August.
Over the five-year course of Wilson’s lawsuit, a non-profit he founded called Defense Distributed has collected what the gun control groups call a “trove” of data files which would allow for the 3D printing of parts that could be used to produce a number of untraceable and unregistered weapons, including AR-15 style rifles.
The gun control groups argue that the government’s sudden flip on 3D-printed gun files was “capricious and arbitrary”, and that the agreement may violate federal law. “If a minor, felon, domestic abuser or an individual who has been adjudicated mentally incompetent [uses the files], then the Gun Control Act is violated,” a letter to federal judge Robert Pitman reads.
Wilson, a self-described “post-left crypto-anarchist”, hailed the settlement as the figurative death of American gun control. “All this Parkland stuff, the students, all these dreams of ‘commonsense gun reforms’? No. The internet will serve guns, the gun is downloadable … No amount of petitions or die-ins or anything else can change that,” Wilson told Wired magazine.
It has been a banner week for gun rights activists. On Tuesday, a federal appeals court ruled that the second amendment unambiguously protects a citizen’s right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense, in defiance of a number of state laws which place limitations and regulations on open carry. The ultimate decision on the question will probably be made by the supreme court.
