4/20/2023 0 Comments Constitutional scrutiny![]() ![]() After three years of litigation, the case settled, so whether the code is considered protected speech remains open for debate. Most interestingly, the complaint advanced a First Amendment claim, arguing that the digital blueprints-the computer code itself-constituted protected speech and that the Department’s order was an impermissible prior restraint on that speech, meaning that the government was attempting to restrict DD’s expression before it could take place-i.e., before the organization could even post its blueprints online. Two years later, on May 6, 2015, DD sued the State Department to keep the Liberator blueprints online. By this point, the blueprints had already been downloaded over 100,000 times. Department of State ordered DD to take the blueprints down, citing potential violations of arms export controls. Almost immediately, lawmakers expressed fears of untraceable, undetectable firearms produced en masse at home and renewed calls for more stringent regulations on 3D-printed firearms. After successfully testing the Liberator, DD immediately released the blueprints on the Internet. This modern design was spearheaded by Wilson and Defense Distributed (DD), a Texas-based nonprofit that Wilson founded in 2012 in part to facilitate universal access to firearm 3D printing capabilities. ![]() The small, single-shot pistol was dubbed the “Liberator,” named after the weapon manufactured by the US military and intended for use by resistance forces in occupied Europe during World War II. “Fuckin’ A!” they exclaimed not quite the Bhagavad Gita verse recalled by Robert Oppenheimer after the Trinity nuclear test, but the euphoria was no less palpable. Then, a sharp crack reverberated across the prairieland as engineers led by then-25-year-old Cody Wilson successfully test-fired the world’s first entirely 3D-printed gun for the very first time. In May 2013, at a remote firing range deep in central Texas, there was silence. ![]()
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