Shortly after Defense Distributed and the company’s owner, Cody Wilson, got the green light to continue publishing “designs and other technical files” for 3D printed guns, lawsuits are already pouring in to stop it. Earlier this week, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit “against the Trump Administration to stop the publication of plans for 3D-printer guns on the Internet.”
Shortly after Defense Distributed and the company’s owner, Cody Wilson, got the green light to continue publishing “designs and other technical files” for 3D printed guns, lawsuits are already pouring in to stop it. Earlier this week, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit “against the Trump Administration to stop the publication of plans for 3D-printer guns on the Internet.”
The suit itself was filed in Seattle, though it has garnered support throughout “Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Maryland, New York and the District of Columbia.” According to the suit, the decision to allow the publication of plans for 3D-printed guns “violates the 10th Amendment to the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act.” By filing the lawsuit, Ferguson hopes to get a “temporary restraining order against the company [Defense Distributed] which said it will publish the plans on Wednesday.”
Shortly after filing his suit, Ferguson released the following news release:
“I have a question for the Trump Administration: Why are you allowing dangerous criminals easy access to weapons? These downloadable guns are unregistered and very difficult to detect, even with metal detectors, and will be available to anyone regardless of age, mental health or criminal history. If the Trump Administration won’t keep us safe, we will.”
Additionally, Ferguson and other gun-safety advocates argue that having blueprints for 3D-printed guns available online will give terrorists and other criminals access “to weapons that don’t have serial numbers, can’t be traced and don’t require background checks.” Nick Suplina agrees. Suplina is the managing director for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety and said, “There is a market for these guns and it’s not just among enthusiasts and hobbyists…There’s a real desire and profit mode in the criminal underworld as well.”
On the other side of the aisle, gun industry experts argue that the 3D-printed guns are “simply a modern-day equivalent of what already is legal and readily available: the ability to assemble your own firearm using traditional materials and methods at home without serial numbers.” They also argue that access to 3D-printed firearm blueprints “won’t be a draw for criminals since the printers needed to make one are wildly expensive and the firearms themselves aren’t very durable.”
When discussing the impending publication of 3D-printed gun blueprints and the concerns of gun-safety advocates, Larry Keane, the executive director of the National Shooting Sports Foundation said:
“It costs thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to acquire a printer and the files and the know how to do this. They don’t work worth a damn. Criminals can obviously go out and steal guns or even manufacture quote-unquote real guns, not 3D printed. If you’re a gang banger in L.A., are you going to go out and spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy a printer to print a gun that doesn’t work very well or are you just going to steal one?”
Sources:
3D-printed guns targeted in lawsuit filed by Washington attorney general
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