Judge denies gun control groups’ attempt to block 3-D gun blueprints
TEXAS: A US judge on Friday rejected a last-ditch effort by gun control groups to block the Trump administration from allowing the public to download blueprints for 3-D printable guns, declining to intervene just days before the designs are expected to go online.
US District Judge Robert Pitman in Austin, Texas, denied the request for an order by the Brady Centre to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Giffords Law Centre to Prevent Gun Violence at a hearing, saying he would state the reasons for his decision in a written order to follow.
At the hearing, the judge said he was sympathetic to the gun control groups’ concerns but questioned their legal standing to intervene in the case.
The groups sought to intervene following a June settlement between Defence Distributed and the US government allowing the company to legally publish gun blueprints online, something its website says it plans to do by August 1.
The government ordered the blueprints taken down in 2013 and Defence Distributed founder Cody Wilson sued in 2015, claiming his First Amendment and Second Amendment rights had been violated.
The government had until recently argued the blueprints posed a national security risk. ASSAULT RIFLE, A WEAPON THAT HAS BEEN USED IN MANY US MASS SHOOTINGS, Gun control groups said there had been no explanation for the June settlement and the administration’s abrupt reversal on the issue.
Lawyers for the Brady Centre declined to comment on Pitman’s ruling after the hearing.
The groups in court filings said not halting the blueprint distribution by a Texas-based company called Defence Distributed would “cause immediate and irreparable harm to the United States national security” and that of individual US citizens.
“The stated goal of Defence Distributed is to sound the death knell for gun control,” David Cabello, a lawyer for the Brady Centre, told Pitman during the hearing.
The 3-D files include blueprints for a plastic AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle, a weapon that has been used in many US mass shootings, as well as other firearms.