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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."
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.