Cody Wilson, founder of Defense Distributed.
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
No sooner had the Department of Justice cleared the way for Texas entrepreneur Cody Wilson at Defense Distributed to publish its 3-D technology online, via a settlement of Wilson’s longstanding lawsuit over prior restraint than did the legal landscape erupt with challenges.
While Wilson and the Second Amendment Foundation filed a federal lawsuit against New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal and Los Angeles City Attorney Michael Feuer, alleging that both men are attempting prior restraint against Wilson’s First Amendment rights, other anti-gunners weighed in with their own actions.
Legal actions on both sides came following a furious weekend after a Texas federal court tossed out an attempt by gun prohibition lobbyists to stop release of the 3-D blueprints. They involved attorneys’ general in Pennsylvania and Washington state, along with New Jersey and the Los Angeles prosecutor.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin, “these state and municipal officers from across the country cannot veto Defense Distributed’s constitutionally-protected and federally-licensed speech.
“The Defendants’ threatened legal actions violate the First Amendment speech rights of Defense Distributed and its audience,” according to the complaint, “including SAF’s members; run afoul of the Dormant Commerce Clause; infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of those who would make use of the knowledge disseminated by Defense Distributed; constitute a tortious interference with Defense Distributed’s business; and are in any event, federally pre-empted by Congress’s export control laws as well as Defense Distributed’s export license, by which the State Department has explicitly authorized the speech that the Defendants are seeking to silence.”
In Washington State, anti-gun Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the Justice Department’s settlement of the Defense Distributed case. According to KING News, the local NBC affiliate, “Once released, critics worry the plans would allow anyone with a computer and a 3D printer to create an unregistered and potentially untraceable firearm.” Ferguson has filed several lawsuits against the administration since Trump took office, and this lawsuit will seek a nationwide injunction, KING reported.
A far-left Seattle-based activist group, Seattle Indivisible, is also encouraging its supporters to send form letters to Washington’s two U.S. Senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell to protest the Defense Distributed agreement and make it illegal.
The State of Pennsylvania also took action to prevent the Defense Distributed 3-D technology release. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, an emergency hearing was held in federal court in which Defense Distributed “agreed to block Pennsylvania internet users from downloading its files for making firearms with a 3D printer — for now.” That came after Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro filed a lawsuit along with Gov. Tom Wolf and the State Police, arguing that “the harm to Pennsylvanians would have been immediate and irreversible,” the newspaper reported.
And on Capitol Hill, according to the Daily Star, “dozens of” lawmakers “are demanding that the Trump administration explain” the Justice Department’s agreement with Defense Distributed. This battle appears far from being finished.
In their lawsuit against Grewal and Feuer, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin, SAF and Wilson said the two officials “have waged an ideologically-fueled program of intimidation and harassment against Defense Distributed.”
“Grewal and Feuer have threatened and intend to drag Defense Distributed before all manner of far-flung criminal and civil tribunals in an effort to silence the organization,” the complaint asserts.
At the heart of this issue is the online publication and distribution of “information and knowledge related to the production of arms…in promotion of the public interest.”
With this new round of legal actions, gun control has once again leaped into the public spotlight. SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb told reporters that this has become a serious issue for both the First and Second amendments.
While the 3-D gun controversy was erupting, SAF has its hands full with another important issue, the ongoing attempt by anti-gun politicians in several Washington state cities to erode the 35-year-old preemption law by passing so-called “safe storage” ordinances. SAF and the National Rifle Association have sued the City of Seattle, where liberal Mayor Jenny Durkan was quoted by the Seattle P-I.com that, “If they think we are intimidated, they are mistaken. I will continue to fight for our kids.”
Even Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat declared in a weekend column that the city has “gone too far and at just the wrong moment.” He said the ordinance is most likely illegal under the state preemption act, that puts all authority for gun regulation in the hands of the State Legislature.
There is also Gottlieb’s challenge of a new gun control initiative in the Evergreen State. That measure seeks to strip young adults of their right to purchase and own semi-auto modern sporting rifles, and it also appears to classify .22-caliber rimfire semi-auto sporting rifles as “assault rifles,” according to opponents.
