With 3D Printer Gun Files, National Security Interest Trumps Free Speech, Court Rules (arstechnica.com)

A federal appeals court ruled this week against Defense Distributed, the Texas organization that promotes 3D-printed guns, in a lawsuit that it brought last year against the State Department. In a 2-1 decision, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was not persuaded that Defense Distributed's right to free speech under the First Amendment outweighs national security concerns. From an ArsTechnica report: The majority concluded: 'Ordinarily, of course, the protection of constitutional rights would be the highest public interest at issue in a case. That is not necessarily true here, however, because the State Department has asserted a very strong public interest in national defense and national security. Indeed, the State Department's stated interest in preventing foreign nationals -- including all manner of enemies of this country -- from obtaining technical data on how to produce weapons and weapon parts is not merely tangentially related to national defense and national security; it lies squarely within that interest.'

Comments

Re:"Activist" judges?

[jcr]

TWO constitutional rights. The first and second amendments are both violated by this ruling.

-jcr

Re:Asinine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I do think America should register guns, permits should be issued and databases should be searchable and indexable. Currently the only thing the absence of gun registration in the US does is make it more difficult to track crime.

Yes, let's just ignore that Australia used their registration database to confiscate their firearms.

Fuck your mother.

Re:Asinine.

[blindseer]

I clicked on a bunch of your links (the youtube has suffered a takedown, btw) and almost all of those are re: assault weapons and high capacity weapons/magazines. I'm not surprised people get more upset about those when they really are overkill for any hunter worth their salt (and yes, I've hunted with bows and arrows as well as rifles... never saw the need for semi-automatics).

If you think the Second Amendment is about hunting ducks and deer then you've missed the whole point.

I tend to favor letting people own them, but I also favor registering them and having robust training and licensing. The NRA seems to want unlimited rights with no regulations, precautions or monitoring, apparently.

We just saw a court rule that a computer file can be banned because it describes how to build a single shot pistol. I'd think that might wake you up that perhaps the NRA isn't just paranoid here. They didn't rule that the files could only be available domestically, or just to people licensed and trained in firearm use, or both. They ruled the files themselves were banned from distribution.

This is quite simply a weapons ban, and the weapon is a computer file. Words are weapons here, according to them. They seem to fear foreign nationals might be able to build these single shot weapons to... do what exactly? Invade the USA? They are already smuggling in machine guns so that makes no sense. Especially when the machine guns that they smuggle into the USA were sold to them by the US government.

The governemnt don't want to disarm these foreign nationals, they are already arming them. They don't want me and you armed is all. If it wasn't about disarming Americans then they'd have said the files need to be sent to people with a US address, proper training, and registration. They didn't say that, they said the files cannot be shared.

Re:Asinine.

[BlueStrat]

Banning books...?

The US government has grown ever more authoritarian and has violated ever more Constitutional limits and civil rights over the last century and has grown ever bolder. Many here have even cheered on government violations of civil rights and limits to government power when it fits their political/ideological agendas. I've warned against this sort of thing for years and was flamed and ignored because for far too many people including many here, the ends justify the means.

With all the support they've received from the public for violating other civil rights and limits to their power for political/ideological goals, are you really shocked or surprised they would violate the 1st Amendment?

If you allow them the power to "reinterpret" one thing, they can and will use the same powers, methods, and tactics to reinterpret anything else they want.

As far as Defense Distributed's 3D printer files, just strip the files of anything tying them to anyone and upload them to torrent sites across the internet. Let them waste time & resources on playing 'whack-a-mole'.

Strat