Defense Distributed v. United States Department of State

Last updated
Defense Distributed I
Texas-western.gif
Court United States District Court for the Western District of Texas
Full case name Defense Distributed et al., v. United States Department of State et al.
DecidedJuly 30, 2018
Citation(s)1:15-cv-00372-RP (W.D. Tex.)
Case history
Subsequent action(s)dismissed with prejudice
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting Robert Pitman

Defense Distributed v. U.S. Dept. of State is a set of court cases brought by Defense Distributed challenging the federal export control of 3D gun files on the Internet.

Contents

History

The case was brought in 2015, two years after Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed were banned from sharing the files for the first 3D printed gun, Liberator, on the Internet. [1] [2] In May 2013, Wilson had been a law student at the University of Texas, and had published the Liberator plans on his organization's website when the Obama administration asserted export control of the files under the ITAR and directed Wilson and Defense Distributed to remove them from public availability.

Making First, Second, and Fifth Amendment claims, Defense Distributed was represented by attorney Alan Gura, and had local counsel and other assistance from attorneys Josh Blackman, Matthew Goldstein, and the law firm Fish & Richardson, P.C. In August 2015, the District Court for the Western District of Texas denied Defense Distributed's preliminary injunction request. [3] In September 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit similarly ruled against the motion and subsequently denied a request for rehearing en banc. [4] Defense Distributed appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court in August 2017, who declined to hear the case on January 8, 2018. [5]

On remand to the district court, and on the eve of changes to the federal export regulations, the U.S. State Department offered to settle the case, and on July 27, 2018, Defense Distributed accepted a license to publish its files along with a sum of almost $40,000. [6] [7]

Reception

When later asked to justify the settlement in a press conference, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert defended the agency's decision, [8] saying:

We were informed that we would have lost this case in court, or would have likely lost this case in court, based on First Amendment grounds … The Department of Justice suggested that the State Department and the U.S. government settle this case, and so that is what was done.

Heather Nauert, United States Department of State (July 31, 2018)

Over its life, the case drew frequent comparisons to Bernstein v. United States , a successful First Amendment challenge to the ITAR from 1996 where the Ninth Circuit held source code to be protected speech. [9]

Aftermath

The announcement of the settlement, which involved a temporary modification of the ITAR, came as a surprise to many in the gun control movement and was immediately challenged by over 20 state attorneys general in various federal venues. [10] Cases prompted as a reaction to Defense Distributed I include:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Child Online Protection Act</span> Former U.S. law to protect minors from certain material on the Internet

The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was a law in the United States of America, passed in 1998 with the declared purpose of restricting access by minors to any material defined as harmful to such minors on the Internet. The law, however, never took effect, as three separate rounds of litigation led to a permanent injunction against the law in 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Second Amendment Foundation</span> United States nonprofit organization that supports gun rights

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is a United States nonprofit organization that supports gun rights. Founded in 1974 by Alan Gottlieb and headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, SAF publishes gun rights magazines and public education materials, funds conferences, provides media contacts, and has assumed a central role in sponsoring lawsuits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bump stock</span> Gun stocks that can be used to assist in bump firing

Bump stocks or bump fire stocks are gun stocks that can be used to assist in bump firing, the act of using the recoil of a semi-automatic firearm to fire ammunition cartridges in rapid succession.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diarmuid O'Scannlain</span> American judge

Diarmuid Fionntain O'Scannlain is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His chambers are located in Portland, Oregon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Matheson Jr.</span> American judge (born 1953)

Scott Milne Matheson Jr. is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He has served on that court since 2010.

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. It ruled that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms—unconnected with service in a militia—for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense within the home, and that the District of Columbia's handgun ban and requirement that lawfully owned rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" violated this guarantee. It also stated that the right to bear arms is not unlimited and that certain restrictions on guns and gun ownership were permissible. It was the first Supreme Court case to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense or whether the right was only intended for state militias.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert S. Lasnik</span> American judge (born 1951)

Robert Stephen Lasnik is an American attorney and jurist, who serves as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.

<i>Nordyke v. King</i> US federal court case

Nordyke v. King was a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in which a ban of firearms on all public property and whether the Second Amendment should be applied to the state and local governments is to be decided. After several hearings at different levels of the federal court system, Alameda County, California promised that gun shows could be held on county property, essentially repudiating its ordinance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Defense Distributed</span> American non-profit developing digital firearm schematics

Defense Distributed is an online, open-source hardware and software organization that develops digital schematics of firearms in CAD files, or "wiki weapons", that may be downloaded from the Internet and used in 3D printing or CNC milling applications. Among the organization's goals is to develop and freely publish firearms-related design schematics that can be downloaded and reproduced by anyone with a 3D printer or milling machine, facilitating the popular production of homemade firearms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cody Wilson</span> American weapons developer

Cody Rutledge Wilson is an American gun rights activist, and crypto-anarchist. He is a founder and director of Defense Distributed, a non-profit organization that develops and publishes open source gun designs, so-called "wiki weapons", suitable for 3D printing and digital manufacture. Defense Distributed gained international notoriety in 2013 when it published plans online for the Liberator, the first widely available functioning 3D-printed pistol.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DEFCAD</span> American technology company

DEFCAD, Inc. is an American startup that has created a search engine and web portal for designers and hobbyists to find and develop 3D printable and other CAD models online.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberator (gun)</span> 3D printed firearm design

The Liberator is a 3D-printable single-shot handgun, the first such printable firearm design made widely available online. The open source firm Defense Distributed designed the gun and released the plans on the Internet on May 6, 2013. The plans were downloaded over 100,000 times in the two days before the United States Department of State demanded that Defense Distributed retract the plans.

People v. Aguilar, 2 N.E.3d 321, was an Illinois Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Aggravated Unlawful Use of a Weapon (AUUF) statute violated the right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The Court stated that this was because the statute amounted to a wholesale statutory ban on the exercise of a personal right that was specifically named in and guaranteed by the United States Constitution, as construed by the United States Supreme Court. A conviction for Unlawful Possession of a Firearm (UPF) was proper because the possession of handguns by minors was conduct that fell outside the scope of the Second Amendment's protection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">3D printed firearm</span> Firearm created using 3D printing

A 3D printed firearm is a firearm that is partially or primarily produced with a 3D printer. While plastic printed firearms are associated with improvised firearms, or the politics of gun control, digitally-produced metal firearms are more associated with commercial manufacturing or experiments in traditional firearms design.

<i>Peruta v. San Diego County</i>

Peruta v. San Diego, 824 F.3d 919, was a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit pertaining to the legality of San Diego County's restrictive policy regarding requiring documentation of "good cause" that "distinguish[es] the applicant from the mainstream and places the applicant in harm's way" before issuing a concealed carry permit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James C. Ho</span> American judge (born 1973)

James Chiun-Yue Ho is a Taiwanese-born American lawyer and jurist serving since 2018 as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He was appointed by President Donald Trump. Ho formerly served as Solicitor General of Texas from 2008 to 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Josh Blackman</span> American lawyer and law professor

Joshua Michael Blackman is an American lawyer who is employed as an associate professor of law at the South Texas College of Law where he focuses on constitutional law and the intersection of law and technology. He has authored one book and co-authored two others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Privately made firearm</span> Firearm made by a private individual

A privately made firearm is a legal term for a firearm produced by a private individual as opposed to a corporate or government entity. The term "ghost gun" is used mostly in the United States by gun control advocates, but it is being adopted by gun rights advocates and the firearm industry because of recent regulations adopted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deterrence Dispensed</span> Online group developing open-source firearm technology

Deterrence Dispensed (DetDisp) is a decentralized, online collective that promotes and distributes designs for open-source 3D printed firearms, gun parts, and handloaded cartridges. The group describes itself as aligned with the freedom of speech movement.

<i>Death Athletic</i> 2023 film by Jessica Solce about Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed

Death Athletic: A Dissident Architecture is a 2023 American documentary film written, produced, and directed by Jessica Solce about the life of 3D printed gun inventor, Cody Wilson, over a period of around 7 years, from 2015 through 2022.

References

  1. Feuer, Alan (May 6, 2015). "Cody Wilson, Who Posted Gun Instructions Online, Sues State Department". The New York Times . Archived from the original on May 9, 2015. Retrieved August 29, 2015.
  2. Greenberg, Andy (May 6, 2015). "3-D Printed Gun Lawsuit Starts the War Between Arms Control and Free Speech". Wired . Archived from the original on August 28, 2015. Retrieved August 29, 2015.
  3. Doherty, Brian (August 7, 2015). "Defense Distributed Injunction Request Denied in Suppression of Gun-Related Internet Speech Case". Wired. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
  4. "Defense Distributed, of 3D-Printed Gun Fame, Requests Rehearing on Denial of Its Injunction Against the State Department for Crushing Its Free Speech Rights". Reason.com. 2016-11-07. Archived from the original on August 25, 2017. Retrieved 2017-08-14.
  5. "Can a Court Arbitrarily Conclude That 'Security' Overrules the First Amendment?". Reason.com. 2017-08-14. Archived from the original on August 16, 2017. Retrieved 2017-08-14.
  6. Greenberg, Andy (July 10, 2018). "A Landmark Legal Shift Opens Pandora's Box for DIY Guns". Wired . Archived from the original on July 10, 2018. Retrieved July 10, 2018.
  7. Farivar, Cyrus. "Defense Distributed Settlement Agreement". www.documentcloud.org. Archived from the original on July 17, 2018. Retrieved 2018-07-17 via Ars Technica.
  8. "Courts in three states bar release of 3D-printable gun blueprints". usatoday.com. USA Today. July 31, 2018. Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  9. "3-D Printed Gun Lawsuit Starts the War Between Arms Control and Free Speech". Wired.com. May 6, 2015. Retrieved April 5, 2020.
  10. "US judge blocks release of blueprints for 3D printed guns". the Guardian. Associated Press. August 1, 2018. Archived from the original on January 26, 2019. Retrieved February 24, 2019.