Judge prevents release of plans to print 3D guns
A federal judge in Seattle blocked the Trump administration Monday from allowing a Texas company to post online plans for making untraceable 3D guns, agreeing with 19 states and the District of Columbia that such access to the plastic guns would pose a security risk.
The states, which include California, sued to stop an agreement that the government had reached with the company — Defense Distributed, based in Austin — saying guidelines on how to print undetectable plastic guns could be acquired by felons or terrorists.
U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik extended a temporary restraining order, and his new decision will last until the case is resolved. He said Cody Wilson, owner of Defense Distributed, wanted to post the plans online so that citizens could arm themselves without having to deal with licenses, serial numbers and registrations.
Wilson has said that “governments should live in fear of their citizenry.”
“It is the untraceable and undetectable nature of these small firearms that poses a unique danger,” Lasnik said.
The State Department had reached the settlement with the company after the agency removed the 3D gun-making plans from a list of weapons or technical data that are not allowed to be exported.
The states argued that the federal agency didn’t follow the law when it removed 3D guns from the munitions list. They said the government was supposed to notify Congress and provide a 30-day window before making a change to that list, but it did not.
A lawyer with the U.S. Justice Department had argued against the injunction, saying possessing 3D plastic guns is already against the law, and the federal government is committed to enforcing that law. But the judge said it wasn’t enough.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a progun control group that has aggressively fought the online release of the gun plans, praised the judge’s ruling “as a tremendous victory for the American public.”