US lawmakers up in arms over deal allowing free plans for 3D guns
WASHINGTON, DC: Dozens of US legislators are demanding that the Trump administration explain a recent agreement to allow the free distribution of plans for using 3D printers to make plastic handguns that will be easy to hide and almost impossible to control.
After a lengthy legal battle, the government reached agreement last month with Cody Wilson, a militant gun rights advocate from Texas. He successfully argued that the US Constitution’s Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to private gun ownership, should extend to a person’s right to make guns at home — uncontrolled by authorities, since they will bear no serial number.
Dozens of Democrats in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate have decried the settlement and are demanding an explanation from the President Donald Trump’s administration, which has been extremely supportive of gun owners’ rights.
The agreement between the State Department, which controls the exportation of American arms, and Wilson’s Defence Distributed (DD) group was reached on June 29.
But it remained secret until last week, after groups advocating for stronger gun controls demanded its publication.
The consent agreement “permits any United States person, to include DD’s customers and SAF’s members, to access, discuss, reproduce or otherwise benefit from the technical data that is the subject of the action”.
The SAF is the Second Amendment Foundation, which supported Wilson’s suit and has called the settlement a “blow to the gun prohibition lobby”.
Wilson is due to receive US$40,000 (RM162,500) in damages and interest.
The DD website invites anyone interested to download the programme to make so-called “ghost guns” starting Wednesday, when “the age of the downloadable gun formally begins”.
That means anyone with a 3D printer — which costs around US$2,000 and can be programmed to build objects of almost any shape — will be able starting next week to make plastic-bodied guns at home for just a few hundred dollars each.