Dispute over 3D-printed guns raises many legal issues

Wilson determined that 3D-printed firearms are akin to more traditional firearms that aren’t subject to State Department regulations.

Wilson resumed sharing his blueprints for the gun the day the settlement went into effect last week.

Q. Why does Wilson want the authority to post the designs on his website?

A. Wilson calls it a First Amendment issue. He believes the First Amendment gives him a constitutional right to disseminate the code to make a gun with a 3D printer.

“This is a very, very, very easy First Amendment question that I think people might be hesitant to accept because it involves guns and people don’t like guns,” said his lawyer, Josh Blackman.

And Wilson has a strong legal claim that distribution of the information is different than actually making an allplastic firearm.

While it is a violation of the federal Undetectable Firearms Act to make, sell or possess a firearm that can’t be detected by magnetometers or metal detectors, what Wilson is doing is simply providing the information on how to make such a firearm.

“What Defense Distributed was doing was not making and then shipping the weapons overseas,” said Chuck James, a former federal prosecutor who is now a private lawyer with the Washington, D.C.-area firm of Williams Mullen. “They were making the data available on the Web where it would be available to someone overseas.”

Q. What kind of gun designs are available on the website? A. Defense Distributed shows a variety of designs. The code for a 3D printed gun is for what he calls the Liberator, which gets its name from a pistol American forces used during World War II.