Judge bans posts of how to make guns on 3-D printer

PHILADELPHIA — Amid a national outcry and a spate of legal challenges, a federal judge in Washington state issued a restraining order late Tuesday that effectively blocked the Texas group that planned to publicly post files that would enable people to make 3D-printable guns.

Acting in a lawsuit joined by attorneys general in several states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Judge Robert S. Lasnik temporarily suspended the State Department decision that allowed the group, Defense Distributed, to post the files, the Washington state attorney general said. It came less than a day before the nonprofit said it would unleash “the new era of downloadable guns” via its website.

An hour earlier, Defense Distributed had agreed not to upload any new files until a court hearing next month in New Jersey, officials said, but files already posted on the nonprofit’s website were allowed to stay. The Washington decision would apply to all files, and all computers nationwide, by blocking the federal settlement that permitted Defense Distributed to disseminate the “blueprints” for the 3D-printable guns.

Coming one day before Defense Distributed intended to release a new batch of printable gun files, the New Jersey agreement was lauded by New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal as “a big victory for public safety and law enforcement safety.”

As activists and lawmakers sought to intervene earlier Tuesday, arguing that public access to the files posed a national security threat, President Donald Trump weighed in on the topic and his State Department defended its decision to end a yearslong legal battle to block Defense Distributed from sharing the files.

Wilson has framed the debate as a First Amendment issue, arguing that the right to free speech allows him to publish the code that creates the guns.

“Americans have the right to this data,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News on Sunday. “We have the right to share it.”