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Judge Blocks Release of Blueprints For 3D-Printed Guns (nbcnews.com)
U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday to stop the release of blueprints to make untraceable and undetectable 3D-printed plastic guns, saying they could end up in the wrong hands. Defense Distributed reached a settlement with the federal government in late June allowing them to freely publish the 3D files. NBC News reports: "There is a possibility of irreparable harm because of the way these guns can be made," he said. Congressional Democrats have urged President Donald Trump to reverse the decision to let Defense Distributed publish the plans. Trump said Tuesday that he's "looking into" the idea, saying making 3D plastic guns available to the public "doesn't seem to make much sense!" Eight Democratic attorneys general had filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to block the federal government's settlement with Defense Distributed. They also sought the restraining order, arguing the 3D guns would be a safety risk. Earlier today, Senate Democrats introduced two bills addressing 3D-printed guns. The first bill would make it illegal to publish 3D-printed gun blueprints. The second bill would require weapons to include at least one metal component with a serial number to make them traceable. Downloads of the 3D-printed gun blueprints have been suspended until Cody Wilson [the owner of Defense Distributed] reviews Lasnik's order. It is unclear how many times the blueprints were downloaded, but some news outlets say the online manuals have been downloaded thousands of times and posted elsewhere online.
Hasn't this stuff been on Bittorrent for years? That's like trying to put a genie back in a bottle. If you don't want to see it, don't search for it on a Bittorrent search engine named after a harbor for rogue sailors. Also, it's not as if diagrams of firearms aren't in every encyclopedia and "How Things Work" book. Might need to ban libraries and machine tools too. I don't personally care for guns, but this order is a bit of a silly joke.
Can machine-age law be applied fairly to rapidly developing technology? Is [printing a gun] the same as [manufacturing] it? Is he being strung out in a Kafkaesque nightmare as a warning to others? Some [government] officials concede that it's too late to keep [it] from spreading and say that intimidating distributors is the only way they can hope to deter code makers.
Those words were written in US News and World Report more than 23 years ago about the investigation into Phil Zimmerman for having given away PGP. Here is the real text (with the original words I changed in bold):
Can machine-age law be applied fairly to rapidly developing technology? Is putting software on a computer the same as exporting it? Is he being strung out in a Kafkaesque nightmare as a warning to others? Some intelligence officials concede that it's too late to keep cryptography from spreading and say that intimidating distributors is the only way they can hope to deter code makers.
I only had to change 8 words to make it a nearly perfect fit for the situation today.
I know it is fashionable to hate guns here, but the reality is that lots of bad people have guns and have a complete disregard for the law. So, ridiculous laws (we have plenty, just look at Washington DC and California) only serve to ensure that law abiding citizens cannot get guns. It is the same as it was for cryptography. Criminals were getting it and using anyway, only people who respect the law were actually harmed by the law.
As far as guns go, there are plenty of people who legitimately fear for their lives because of abusive relationships, living in bad neighborhoods, and countless other reasons. They need to be able to protect themselves because the police so often cannot or will not. There are lots of problems to fix, but more laws will not do the job when we so often fail to enforce the laws that we have now.
At what point does Congress clean house? What law exactly was violated?
Replace "guns" with whatever you choose in the statement "There is a possibility of irreparable harm because of the way these guns can be made" and it ends up being true, such as alcohol, cars...you name it.
A federal court has issued a prior restraint on speech (it’s attempting to block the spread of information; it is not blocking the lawful home manufacture of firearms) that is already thoroughly and completely moot. The files are out. They’re all over the internet. They’ve been copied and reproduced. The judge’s order can’t change that fact.
Moreover, Defense Distributed and the Second Amendment Foundation are hardly the only sources for online files or blueprints that enable a home manufacturer with a 3D printer to make a gun. I’m honestly unclear what the court is trying to accomplish here, aside from targeting the Trump administration and/or targeting a disfavored private company.
https://www.nationalreview.com...
NB: Any gun that would be undetectable by a metal detector would be illegal under the aptly named Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988.
If the blueprints are already easy to create and readily available why doesn't everyone 3D print guns yet, this order protects that from happening.
And what, exactly, is being protected here?
There is really no justification for this court order, on several levels.
It's a violation of the 1st and 2nd amendments on its face. It's also unenforceable, and it ignores the abundant precedent of gun-making instructions and kits that have been on sale since forever. It also ignores the results of the previous attempts to ban information: the export laws against cryptography.
It also goes against existing federal law that says it's legal to make firearms for personal use.
Even if you think it's a new type of situation not covered by the 1st and 2nd amendments, it's a violation of the 10th amendment which says that rights not covered are held by the states and/or the people.
It's clear that as soon as people accept that the government can ban information in this one "very important" issue, they'll be ratcheting it up for the next "only slightly less" important issue, and the whole thing will lead to a labyrinthine set of rules and laws banning various selected topics using different metrics.
The only reason this is happening in the first place is because the anti-2nd amendment crowd see it as a new and unexplored way to try to curtail our rights.
This is really a stupid move, and the only result will be that someone has to burn money, time, and effort proving what is plainly obvious.
> sounds quite reasonable. Surely a metal barrel or firing pin would fare better than a plastic one, right?
That's already existing federal law. It's called the Undetectable Firearms Act. Passing the same law again is theater for the uninformed.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
(p)
(1) It shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture, import, sell, ship, deliver, possess, transfer, or receive any firearm
(A) that, after removal of grips, stocks, and magazines, is not as detectable as the Security Exemplar, by walk-through metal detectors calibrated and operated to detect the Security Exemplar; or
(B) any major component of which, when subjected to inspection by the types of x-ray machines commonly used at airports, does not generate an image that accurately depicts the shape of the component.
> can't guess how the Republicans will feel about it. On the one hand "omg gubernment's tryin a take mah gunz"
I vote Republican (#nevertrump). Perhaps now that you see the "one metal part" thing has already been law for several years, you might be able to better guess how I feel about it. Most gun laws proposed by the left are jokes, silly theater pandering for those in their base who know nothing about guns, because they are scared of them. The "assault weapons" ban is a good example. Guess what an "assault weapon" is, how it's defined under the law? An assault weapon is legally defined as a rifle that looks scary. Seriously, it's based on mostly cosmetic features of the firearm. So I laugh and shake my head.
There is a trick the politician is trying to play with this bill, though. He says it requires "one metal part - because metal detectors". But we know that's ALREADY law, so we know he's full of shit there. Let's look more closely at the bill. Ah, "one metal part with a registered serial number". This shyster is trying to pass a national gun registration law, while pretending that it has something to do with metal detectors, but we caught him on his bullshit. We know one metal part is already required, he's just trying to create national gun registration while lying about it.
As a general rule, I oppose lying bastards passing laws doing one thing while pretending they are doing something different. If you can't even tell us honestly what you're proposing, my assumption is that I shouldn't support your bullshit lies. Also, history has shown us over and over again, in many countries, that registration is always followed by confiscation. The only reason the government ever wants a list of who all has guns is so they can later come and take them. That pattern has played out too many times to fall for it AGAIN.
Democracy is literally, Majority Rule, or the idea of power vested in the people to at least directly or indirectly through a system of representation.
There is no such thing as "indirect" democracy. There is representative democracy, which is what nearly every "democratic" country has, and there is regular democracy, where the plebiscite votes on everything directly.
Democracy is great, if you have around 100 people. Getting 300,000,000 people to rationally debate nuanced and complicated issues of law - I'll take our crappy representative democracy any day.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Precedent exists that if useful in a lawful manner it shouldn’t be prohibited. I can use the design files and a 3D printer creating metal components to craft the firearm in metal.
The judge is ruling the government incompetent after the state department took years to reach this ruling. The judge cannot legislate from the bench. This ruling overrides the law in force and as determined at length.
The ruling violates the long standing legal precedent of the lawful construction of firearms by individuals. One can make a pistol, rifle, revolver, etc. legally for ones own use. Legislating a tool that facilitates the action of making ones one firearm seems a blatant violation of those rights.
The plastic firearms are already deemed a novelty. They don’t reliable fire even one shot. Yet there exist other methods to achieve the same results. I can form the same firearm design from bulk plastic. And it will be stronger. I can more easily create metal firearms more cheaply that are more reliable. $20 and a trip to a hardware store and I can craft a slam fire shotgun that requires less skill to fabricate.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution clearly says, “...shall not be infringed.” Not it’s a good idea not to, not maybe don’t infringe, not it’s ok to infringe in these circumstance. It says plainly “shall not be infringed.” So the government will have to show an overwhelming reason to infringe.
The case of PGP encryption mirrors the same legal process in it’s ITAR case. The government lost. They will lose this fight too.
The ruling amounts to prior restraint.
Activist judges are defiling our checks and balances by creating law from the bench. Impeachment of the judge is the remedy in all cases.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Well-regulated at the time simply meant functioning normally, not the current administrative-state definition in use today. In other words, people were expected to be proficient with their guns.