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Defense Distributed Sues State Department Over 3-D Gun Censorship
SonicSpike writes with word that Cody Wilson, whose projects to create (and disseminate the plans for) printable guns have fascinated some and horrified others, is not going to quietly comply with the U.S. State Deparment's demand that he remove such plans from the internet. Wilson, says Wired, is
picking a fight that could pit proponents of gun control and defenders of free speech against each other in an age when the line between a lethal weapon and a collection of bits is blurrier than ever before. Wilson's gun manufacturing advocacy group Defense Distributed, along with the gun rights group the Second Amendment Foundation, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the State Department and several of its officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry. In their complaint, they claim that a State Department agency called the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) violated their first amendment right to free speech by telling Defense Distributed that it couldn't publish a 3-D printable file for its one-shot plastic pistol known as the Liberator, along with a collection of other printable gun parts, on its website.
My understanding of the law, when it comes to gun manufacturing, is that an individual can make a gun themselves, but once they try to sell it (or in this case give it away, selling their "idea" if you will), then it is illegal without going ahead with all the legal paper work and such that other more traditional manufacturers have to deal with.
From what I can tell, they either want to criminalize the plans for the guns (which I think is not feasible) or they want to make 3D printers regulated (and costly) as high end printers that could potentially forge money. I can't see any "win" for them aside from publicity and very likely getting a lot of hate if they win.
Difference being that disclosing PII in that way is a violation of numerous federal laws, the penalties for which can land a person in jail and bankrupt the company they're working for. No such laws are being used to quash DD's speech -- there's just a lot of hand waving and vague talk about "the public good."
Is that the very thing they are afraid of happening (people taking the information & converting it to the real thing) appears to be legal:
https://www.atf.gov/firearms/faq/firearms-technology.html#commercial-parts-assembly
as long as it's for personal, non-commercial use & single shot?
At the time, it was OK to publish source code in a printed book... but stored online as a computer document and exported, it was an ITAR violation. So, one encryption company (think ViaCrypt) printed out the source code of PGP and made a book out of it, which was freely and legally exported. Then it was scanned in and OCR-ed for the source code.
This is one reason why that law eventually just got pulled, and export limited to the few countries on the blacklist.
Information that could make civilians more dangerous to police or military should not be available to civilians at all, obviously.
On the contrary, it's precisely the opposite: civilians must have access to such information, to keep the police and military in check. As far as the US goes, this is discussed extensively in the Federalist Papers, in particular by James Madison #46 and Alexander Hamilton in #29. Both explicitly state the assumption that the citizenry at large will outgun any Federal standing army. To quote the latter, "...if circumstances should at any time oblige the Government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the People, while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights, and those of their fellow-citizens." The rationale for the Constitution, and therefore for the very existence of the Federal government of the United States, is predicated on this imbalance of power in favor of the citizenry.
And mind you, Madison and Hamilton were speaking for the pro-big (relatively speaking) government faction. Their argument, stripped of the flowery language, was: "Don't worry, it's safe to let the central government field an army. If the politicians try to misuse it, the citizens will just shoot them."
Furthermore, the very idea of any power or information being available to government agents but not to the citizenry is contrary to the core philosophy of the US system. Per the Declaration of Independence, governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." That is, whatever powers government has are delegated to it by the citizens. The government's powers are a subset of the powers of the citizenry, by definition, because for the government to have the power to do X, the citizens must first have the power to do X in order to be able to delegate it.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
Without the Second, the First cannot remain for long.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That's the exact same sentiment that caused us to become Americans.
It wasn't taxes or government representation that started the fighting during the American Revolution; it was access to firearms. The British government decided to send soldiers to confiscate the arms and powder at the Lexington powder magazine (the room where the town's citizens and militia stored their excess gunpowder for safety.) and the local militia stood up and said no.
By the end of the war, America's love for modern military rifles and modern sporting rifles had won the day. Our adoption of rifled barrels over the British Army's smoothbore muskets gave us the advantage of being able to fire more accurately and at greater distances.
Some 239 years later "gun control" has become an issue that simply didn't exist during those years. And just last week we saw a great example of why intentionally destroying gun culture is a dangerous thing. Unlike other shootings inspired by cartoons deemed insulting to terrorists, the one in Garland Texas was stopped within seconds by a man who was outnumbered and outgunned. Within 15 seconds of the first shots ringing out, both terrorists were shot dead in spite of wearing body armor, carrying semi-automatic AKM rifles, and facing down one man armed with a handgun. This didn't happen by accident, and that officer didn't get the handgun skills he showed that day at the police academy. He got those skills in competitions and through civilian marksmanship practice. The officers in France and Denmark were similarly outgunned, and didn't slow those terrorists one bit.
So you keep your gun-bans and warm fuzzy feelings about safety and we'll keep our actually being safe.
Mental health treatment is beyond atrocious in the US. Most gun homicides involve people that are largely in a state of non-treatment of various mental illnesses.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...