Congress should ban making of guns on 3-D printers
In the debate over whether posting data for the 3-D printing of untraceable and hard-to-detect plastic firearms is about First and Second Amendment rights, perhaps Congress should put some skin in the game for those who would risk lives with such arguments.
“If I allow you to download an AR-15, the full plans for an AR-15, I don’t believe that I provide you with anything other than the general knowledge of what an AR-15 is,” said Cody Wilson, founder of Defense Unlimited, a Texas nonprofit that is fighting for the right to publish such plans online. “I am no different from a publisher of information.”
Beyond the First Amendment argument above, Wilson also makes one for gun rights.
“I believe that I am championing the Second Amendment in the 21st century,” he said. “Unquestionably, it’s good for the future; unquestionably. I think access to the firearm is a fundamental human dignity, a fundamental human right.”
He’s been fighting for five years.
The State Department under President Barack Obama argued starting in 2013 that publishing plans for a firearm online would violate a federal law against the illegal export of guns. The Trump administration reversed course. In a June 29 settlement with Wilson, the State Department agreed to pay $40,000 in legal fees and opened the door to Defense Unlimited posting its firearms blueprints online.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro reached an agreement with Wilson to make his plans unavailable to people in our state, and ours was among eight states that sued the Trump administration over its decision. In response, a federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order that barred plans for do-it-yourself firearms from being made available online nationwide.
A group of senators, including Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey Jr., a Scranton Democrat, filed legislation to outlaw the posting of such plans. Another measure would bar the manufacture and sale of untraceable weapons.
President Donald Trump seemed unnerved by the technology, tweeting Tuesday that “I am looking into 3-D Plastic Guns being sold to the public. Already spoke to NRA, doesn’t seem to make much sense!”
The National Rifle Association essentially said the harms any proposal would aim to prevent are already illegal under federal law.
“Regardless of what a person may be able to publish on the internet, undetectable plastic guns have been illegal for 30 years,” Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said in a written statement. And that is true, according to a report in The Washington Post.
The trouble with this answer is that it deals with only one side of the homemade guns dilemma raised by Wilson’s downloadable plans: the harder-to-regulate, terrorist-friendly use of online gun blueprints.
Given the novelty of 3-D gun-making technology, Congress needs to pass legislation addressing the dissemination and use of such blueprints. But federal lawmakers should do more. They also should make anyone who participates in the spread and promotion of such plans liable under federal law for monetary damages in lawsuits filed by the victims of any shootings of innocents that result from their download and use. Then, at least, Wilson would be risking something other than other Americans’ lives in his bid to be a champion of the First and Second Amendments.
Reading Eagle