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20 States Take Aim At 3D Gun Company, Sue To Get Files Off the Internet (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Twenty states announced Monday that they plan to ask a federal judge in Seattle to immediately issue a temporary restraining order against Defense Distributed, a Texas-based group that has already begun making 3D-printer gun files available on its DEFCAD website after a recent legal settlement with the US State Department. "After almost 18 months I was skeptical that there was anything else that this administration would do that would truly shock me, but they have," Washington Attorney General Bill Ferguson told reporters assembled in Olympia and by phone. "Frankly, it is terrifying... We think that it is important to put a stop to this right away and make it as difficult as humanly possible to access this information." The new lawsuit, which Ferguson explained will be filed "within hours," comes just one day after Defense Distributed voluntarily agreed to block IP addresses from Pennsylvania after that state's attorney general filed a similar motion in federal court there. "Pennsylvania is still suing and we are still responding," Defense Distributed's founder, Cody Wilson, told Ars. Preemptively on Sunday, Defense Distributed sued the attorney general of New Jersey and the city attorney of Los Angeles to stop those lawsuits, largely on First Amendment grounds.

In this new 20-state initiative, the Washington attorney general argued that the State Department settlement violated the Administrative Procedure Act and also infringed upon states' Tenth Amendment right to regulate firearms within their own states. Ferguson pointed out, for example, people convicted of domestic abuse are flagged when they attempt to legally buy a gun. Allowing anyone to download and manufacture their own gun circumvents that process, he said. But Wilson told Ars it may be too late, as the files went up last Friday evening -- days before he said he would resume publishing them on August 1.

19 of 490 comments (clear)

  1. SCOTUS by Train0987 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They'll lose in the Supreme Court. This isn't just a Second Amendment issue, it's a First Amendment issue foremost.

    DD's lawyer is going to be famous after this case.

    1. Re:SCOTUS by Train0987 · · Score: 5, Informative

      You can legally buy 80% completed receivers online now and a novice can finish them with included jig. As it should be.

    2. Re: SCOTUS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What exactly about not having to register your freedoms is obscene? Should you have to register before getting a blog or email address?

    3. Re:SCOTUS by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's useless as a gun.

      But it's _great_ for making fascists lose their fucking minds.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    4. Re:SCOTUS by Oceanplexian · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, they're not. Check out the Ghost Gunner. You can buy an 80% lower receiver for an AR-15, pop it in the "printer/CNC", load up the files, and it will drill everything out to finish it. You can then go and buy all the rest of the parts (Barrel, Grip, Muzzle, Upper), which can be purchased legally, unregulated, with cash if you'd like. They sell those parts off the shelf of most sporting goods stores. Put it all together and you have a rifle that's as good or better than one from a factory.

    5. Re:SCOTUS by reboot246 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's really hilarious to hear liberal states screaming "Tenth Amendment" to the top of their lungs.

      Their usual position is that states' rights don't even exist . . . . but now THEY need them.

    6. Re: SCOTUS by cirby · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The WWII-era Nazis were mostly fond of taking guns away from people and keeping them only in the hands of the government or Party members.

      You should also remember that, in the US, "high ranking Nazi" means "some guy who has a couple of dozen people who sorta do what he says, and a few million people who oppose him."

  2. Banned books week by Hadlock · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Every september libraries have what is called "Banned Books Week"
     
    This is to highlight the problem with banning books and remind everyone that this is a terrible idea.
     
    I think we've firmly established, over and over, that banning books does not work.

    --
    moox. for a new generation.
    1. Re:Banned books week by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Do inform me when you find a book accurately detailing how to create a nuclear bomb. The FBI would also be interested.

      "Dire Dawn" by Hildegarde Hernandez? ;-p

      More seriously, a basic fission bomb isn't really all that hard to build. We did it with 1940's tech. Any halfway competent nuclear engineering student should know enough to do the design up...

      The difficulty isn't the design, it's the fissionables. Which you can't buy at the local drug store, contrary to popular rumour. Making Pu-239 requires a major engineering project. Hell, building the reactor to make the Pu-239 is something for billionaires, much less building the reprocessing facility to extract the Pu-239 (without poisoning it with other isotopes that suck up neutrons without producing excess energy)....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  3. Unstoppable by lucasnate1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am pro gun laws, and yet, my opinions cannot change reality. Just like "pirated" movies and music, there is no way to stop this from being distributed. I

    1. Re:Unstoppable by Train0987 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      notice they aren't suing to remove all the milling plans that have been available on the internet for 20 years. Mills are a lot easier to find than 3D printers.

      I'm also taken aback by the reasoning that felons and domestic abusers can download these plans. There's nothing stopping them from buying privately either, it's still a felony.

      All of this is just more anti-Trump theater by the Democrats in liberal states.

  4. "3D Gun Company" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Certainly an upgrade from my current 2D gun. Very difficult to aim accurately.

  5. This is why banning guns is not the answer by Jarwulf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As technology marches forward it will become easier and easier to manufacture weapons and a society which uses bans to solve the problem will have to crack down harder and harder upon freedom and liberty to stop people from circumventing those bans. Eventually you'll have to literally be locked down and monitored 24/7. You then have a choice, either you continue to treat people like children hoping in government and authority to protect them from big bad guns forever or accept the risks and inevitable pains and losses and teach people to learn to live with and use these tools like adults.

  6. Even if they succeed - they will fail. by MindPrison · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because "Internet", information wants to be free. Sure, you can cover everything on the surface, but the more "secret" the information is, the more popular it will become, and the more people will attempt to copy and distribute, and print it.

    Next thing will probably be outlawing 3D printers.

    --
    What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
  7. My Hippie-Dippie Opinion by TheDarkener · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It'd be awesome to try to tackle the problem of people wanting to kill each other in cold blood in the United States. You know, maybe try to foster a culture that values human life.

    Oh wait, that goes against killing people in *other* countries though. Nevermind, that'll never work.

    --
    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
  8. Re:It's not really speach by Alypius · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's prior restraint, something that the courts deeply frown upon.

  9. Re:It's not really speach by thule · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, the government has already covered manufacturing. As long as one is able to legally own a firearm, one is able to build one for PERSONAL use. The firearm they build cannot be sold or given to anyone. If someone builds a firearm to sell, then they fall into the manufacturing category and must be licensed as a manufacturer.

    But why ask permission to build a weapon? Are US citizens not free people? Why would we have to ask permission to protect ourselves? We don't live in medieval Europe, we live in the USA.

  10. Half hour with plumbing parts, no tools by raymorris · · Score: 5, Informative

    You don't even need any "metal shop" tools to make a gun. That just helps to make a better one. My nephew and I assembled one from metal plumbing parts a few days ago. It took about half an hour, with nothing but hand tools.

    Guns have been around since the 1300s, around the same time the hourglass was invented. Which shows they can be built with tools and equipment less advanced than what Columbus had on board the Santa Maria.

  11. Ok, this I take exception with by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    because it's a completely false sense of security. Fascists couldn't care less about your semi or even full auto rifles. By the time you're at the point where you're considering violence as a solution to Fascism it's much too late. They'll have seized control of the army and the food supply and the army will do what they're told like they always have so long as they've got pay and food. And you will not win against an organized army, let alone a modern one with the backing of the state.

    And don't point out the Taliban. We're letting them have that 40%. We got the important parts (the oil pipeline we wanted).

    If you want to prevent fascism you need to strip them of their favorite tool for seizing power: poverty. Seriously, look at every single fascist dictatorship and they all started with desperate poverty and an aristocracy that was abusing the working class.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/