Attorneys general from 20 states celebrated[1] on Monday when a district court judge in Seattle extended an injunction against the sharing of 3-D printed gun blueprints[2] online. But their victory lap was short-lived. On Tuesday afternoon, Cody Wilson, founder of the open-source gun-printing advocacy group Defense Distributed[3], announced he would begin selling the blueprints directly to people who want them.
Wilson said that while the preliminary injunction forbade him to share the files online for free, it expressly allowed him to sell them. At a news conference Tuesday[4], Wilson periodically stopped talking to check his phone when a new sale came through.
This technicality, legal experts say, really does allow Wilson to sell his blueprints. The legally tricky part is verifying that his customers are all US citizens; if not, he'll be in violation of US export law.
But the distinction between selling the blueprints and uploading them online for free underscores the problems with the current legal battle against DIY guns. The current injunction came after a last-ditch effort[5] to ban the plans, but was never the optimal way to prevent 3-D printed gun proliferation. To do that will require legislation, state or federal, expressly forbidding the downloading and sharing of DIY blueprints, as well as the actual printing of plastic guns.
The Limits of Lawsuits
The government’s case against Defense Distributed centers on export law, and a deal Wilson struck with the State Department back in July[6]. Until July, DIY gun blueprints were considered a “deemed export” by the Department of Defense, which meant that uploading them online was the same as exporting them internationally. Wilson had argued that defining online data as an arms export violated free speech.