About those 3D guns…
In May 2013, Cody Wilson, through his Austin-based company Defense Distributed, created the Liberator, a nearly entirely 3-D printed, single-shot .380 ACP pistol for which he freely shared the plans for online. In the first two days, the files were downloaded nearly 100,000 times. Then the federal government, specifically the State Department under John Kerry, demanded the plans for the Liberator be pulled from the website until further notice under international arms regulations, citing “the United States government claims control of the information.”
Wilson, allied with the Second Amendment Foundation, challenged that logic in court and won the settlement announced this week that will see DefDist once again post 3-D gun files starting Aug. 1 via Defcad.com. “The age of the downloadable gun begins.”
And they aren’t just about the Liberator anymore:
More in my column at Guns.com.
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.jsYou think he’s a hero? Just wait until someone uses one of his guns to kill a loved one when they have been denied gun ownership.
I typed this with my thumbs. Please excuse my brevity.
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Aron,
Always good to hear from you.
As far as Wilson being a “hero,” the government did not challenge the First Amendment right of DefDist to distribute the 3-D gun files domestically, only that it took an exception to the international distribution of what they argued was information that could be used by others to produce guns overseas, saying that it violated ITAR. Sites like FossCad and GrabCAD already have 100s of 3D gun files up to share and download long before this settlement, so anyone in the U.S. already had access to the information before the lawsuit was even filed– and still do. It was the aspect of State coming in under ITAR– which realistically was set up to block transfer of sensitive defense industry information (i.e. plans for missiles, night vision, etc) from going to near-peer countries and pariah states looking to upgrade– as applied to a single shot .380 handgun, that was out of proportion to reality and was (in my opinion correctly) challenged. Now, those with a soda straw sized access to the WWW coupled with strict gun control such as in places like Uzbekistan and Myanmar can access that information as well.