Slashdot Mirror
Cody Wilson Wants To Help You Make a Gun
An anonymous reader writes In 2013 Cody Wilson posted online the design files needed to 3D print weapons. The files were downloaded at least 100,000 times before the U.S. State Department ordered him to take them down. Last fall he reemerged with a new project, the Ghost Gunner--a relatively small and affordable CNC milling machine that could easily manufacture the lower receiver of an AR-15. It was a different approach toward the same goal of multiplying the number of firearms in the world. But are we really facing a world where backyard bunker-builders are manufacturing their own gun components? Reporter Andrew Zaleski visited Wilson to check on the status of his project. What he found was a man in the throes of small-business hell. As Wilson puts it, "It's like the nightmare of a startup with the added complication that no one will allow you to do it anyway."
Somehow, I doubt Wilson has a full-auto rifle he hands to journalists. And he's not doing anything that you're not allowed to do in your own garage.
The First Amendment doesn't allow anything. Like the rest of the Bill of Rights (including the Second Amendment), it guarantees government cannot interfere with rights that preexist government.
But yes, that would be a protected publication. He never challenged it. The designs were already out there (so he won), and it would have been expensive. I believe they used the same ITAR crap that used to prevent us from exporting encryption. But the courts ruled there that printed copies of encryption algorithms are protected expression, so this should be as well. More importantly, the Constitution does not grant the federal government any authority over publishing firearms plans.
And finally, when have you ever known the federal government to abide by the Constitution?
Have you been to California, or Illinois, or DC lately? The anti-gun crowd are just fine coming up with all those repercussions on their own, and then some. It doesn't matter if someone is 'in their face with new technology' or not, these lawmakers that want to regulate and get rid of guns are already out of control.
California already has mandatory micro-stamping, which is technologically infeasible, and will be a de-facto ban on all new hand guns for some time to come (mean while more and more existing gun models fall off the roster while no new ones can be added due to the micro-stamping requirement). In the last couple years, the roster of handgun models have been cut in half. All handguns available for purchase are older models that were already on the roster prior to the micro-stamping law becomming law, AND which haven't undergone ANY functional (and sometimes cosmetic) changes in design.
btw, "well regulated" in colonial america speak means well trained
Right. There's no way to establish and securely maintain a country without an orderly military, and that means an armed force. Which is why the founders made a big point of making sure that said militia wouldn't be the only armed people in the country. They'd just had enough of that from Britain, and saw the results. In other words, "We'll be having an army to help protect the country, but in order to keep things in balance, the rights of the rest of people to own their own arms shall not be infringed."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Actually it is merely an introductory clause, the second clause does not require any of the first and can stand alone. The first clause establishes one reason for the second and strengthens it but the first clause is not essential to the meaning of the second clause.
To further break it down, regulated has also changed in meaning since the Bill of Rights was drafted. It's meaning back then was to be working or functional. So "A well regulated (meaning functional (or working)) militia (the citizens of the community who respond with their own privately owned arms) being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. If the people are disarmed the militia becomes non-functional, thus the need to protect the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.