Online Payment Firm Stripe Boots 3D Gun Designer Cody Wilson's Companies

SonicSpike writes with this news from Reason magazine: Cody Wilson, famous for making the first usable fully plastic 3D printed handgun and for his new project "Ghost Gunner" which mills metal lower receivers (the milling machine itself is of course not a weapon, and what it makes is not itself legally a weapon) for AR-15s, [informed me Monday] that his online payment processor Stripe has decided that his companies, all of them, qualify as forbidden "weapons and munitions; gunpowder and other explosives" services. This includes the Ghost Gunner and Defense Distributed.

Comments

Re:Lucky for Stripe

[jythie]

In the US this falls under 'public accommodation' laws which involve not being allowed to bar people from access to a service. Those laws would not apply here since we are looking at a product and not a person. Gun owners are not being denied access, only payment processing for some hazy definition of weapons. Companies are generally free to decide what they carry, but can get into trouble if they refuse to serve some people but not others.

Re:Lucky for Stripe

[rossdee]

The protection is for being able to own (and carry) a weapon, it doesn't say anything about who has to sell one to you.

Re:Lucky for Stripe

[Attila Dimedici]

Can you point to any place in the Constitution where people have to sell you things because of a right you have?

Yes. It is the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Can you point to the wording of that amendment which applies to private citizens? Here is the full text of the 14th Amendment: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." I am sorry, I do not see anything about where people have to sell you things.However, I do see it as making the argument the person you responded to was making.