The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Court blocks 3D gun plans
Federal injuction issued to stop posting of plan for printed weapon
“These guns are untraceable, unregistered and will be available to all.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro
WASHINGTON — In response to a request from Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen and seven other state attorneys general, a federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday blocking online uploading of blueprints for plastic homemade guns.
In a statement, Jepsen hailed the ruling as a step to prevent making “these weapons easily available to those who might seek to harm Connecticut residents or to jeopardize our national security.”
Connecticut and the other states plus the District of Columbia “look forward to continuing to aggressively make the case that these types of plans should be permanently barred from public dissemination," he said.
The ruling capped off a day of last-minute battling by Democrats to stave off a Wednesday deadline for posting the digital blueprints for a 3D-printed plastic weapon.
Earlier Tuesday, Connecticut’s Sen. Richard Blumenthal and other Democratic senators rolled out legislation to ban all undetectable and untraceable guns.
Blumenthal said dissemination of production blueprints would represent “a potential self-inflicted public safety crisis” that will increase “the arms race on American streets.”
“Forget about the TSA guarding the planes you board,” he said, suggesting that plastic firearms would be easy to sneak through airport magnetometers.
He laid blame at the doorstep of the Trump administration, which settled a lawsuit in June that opened the way for a Texasbased libertarian to publish the 3D-printer schematic on Wednesday.
President Donald Trump tweeted early Tuesday that he was “looking into” the issue and had spoken to the National Rifle Association about it.
“Doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense,” he tweeted.
Jepsen pointed a finger at the Trump administration, saying that “to allow the federal government … to make these weapons easily available … simply defies logic.”
Cody Wilson, based in Austin, has long sought to upload the schematics online as an assertion of First Amendment rights. The Obama administration blocked him in 2013, asserting such posting would violate federal law governing arms exports overseas.
Wilson went to court in 2015. The Trump administration had continued opposition to his suit, but abruptly reached a settlement in June.
Blumenthal also leveled accusations at Trump, saying at a Capitol news conference that “blood is going to be on his hands.”
“He can tweet from now until the end of his administration, but the hard reality is that he can stop needless death and injury in America.”
Blumenthal’s measure, co-sponsored by three other Senate Democrats, would outlaw any gun that cannot be either detected or traced. In 1988, Congress banned guns that do not have metal. But 3D guns can be manufactured with allplastic parts, as well as without serial numbers that could be traced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro joined in the chorus of Connecticut Democrats in opposition to the download.
“President Trump needs to act immediately to ban 3D printed guns’ blueprints from being published on the internet without any restrictions,” she said. “These guns are untraceable, unregistered and will be available to all people regardless of whether or not they can legally purchase a firearm under current law. People’s lives are on the line.”
The Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry’s main trade group, said the technology involved “does not present a public safety problem,” describing it as “high cost and low benefit.”
“Criminals have easier, cheaper sources” for procuring guns, the organization said in a fact sheet.
“We would advise the public to purchase firearms through licensed retailers as the best course to acquire safe, reliable firearms.”