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

Not cool, Stripe

[shaven_llama]

Foisting your politics on your customers, eh? Stripe was one of my favorite services - to the point I never even thought about using any other payment processor. I see that may need to change...

Re:No man is an island

[ganjadude]

they are entitled to not do business with him, just as im free to not do business with them. a shame too as i was recently recommending them to a few friends of mine, guess I will have to tell them not to use them now.

The only people who lose here are stripe

Contingent liability

[sjbe]

The only people who lose here are stripe

You think they lose? Let me introduce you to a little concept called contingent liability. They are making the perfectly sane decision that the potential liability and government scrutiny that could arise from facilitating these payments is not worth it. Honestly I might have made the same decision. Has nothing to do with approving or disapproving of the product being sold. It's simply an actuarial analysis that says the costs outweigh the benefits. They are in business to make money, not to facilitate business models that could cause them legal heartburn later.

Re:Contingent liability

[swillden]

The only people who lose here are stripe

You think they lose? Let me introduce you to a little concept called contingent liability. They are making the perfectly sane decision that the potential liability and government scrutiny that could arise from facilitating these payments is not worth it. Honestly I might have made the same decision. Has nothing to do with approving or disapproving of the product being sold. It's simply an actuarial analysis that says the costs outweigh the benefits. They are in business to make money, not to facilitate business models that could cause them legal heartburn later.

That argument would be a lot stronger if there were a pattern of payment service providers being held liable for damages due to criminal acts performed with firearms purchased with payment via their services. AFAICT, not only is there no such pattern, there isn't even a single example. There are a small number of examples of gun stores being sued (with little success except where the gun store broke the law), but no case where payment providers were even named in the suits, that I can find, anyway.

Given that, this decision seems more politically than fiscally motivated.

Re:Lucky for Stripe

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no provision in the U.S. Constitution protecting the civil rights of gays. There is a whole amendment for protecting the civil right to own guns.

Re:Lucky for Stripe

[redmid17]

Animal House was an awesome, irreverent movie that has stood the test of time and become one of *the* classic comedies.

Animal Farm is a dystpoian, allegorical novella about government overreach and oppression, which is what I think you're going after here.