Last weekend Cody Wilson and his team of gun access advocates at
Defense Distributed broke ground with the introduction of the first ever
3D printed gun capable of firing a live round.
Immediately after the
organization developed proof of concept by firing a .380 caliber round
through their new CAD designed and plastic printed Liberator handgun, they released the blueprints for the gun to the general public via their DefCad.org web site.
Over 50,000 users immediately flocked to the site to get a free copy of the plans, which anyone with a 3D printer could then use to print their own handgun.
Gun control proponents went into overdrive against the new
technology. By Monday, Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who claimed
the developments were “stomach churning” and “must be stopped,” was
already in the process of drafting legislation that would ban access to
the new technology. Gun control proponents within the Obama
administration immediate started looking for a way to shut it down.
Today, they found a way. The government, through the enforcement
division of US Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance, has demanded
that Defense Distributed remove access to all plans for The Liberator
project claiming that it may violate the Arms Export Control Act by
releasing technical data without prior authorization from the
Directorate of Defense Trade.
What this means is that Defense Distributed has allegedly disclosed the gun’s plans illegally.
But here’s the kicker.
They didn’t violate the law by disclosing the blueprints to American
citizens. Rather, they are being forced to remove America’s access to
the plans because the technical data made available on their wiki web
site was accessible by foreign states or individuals, an action which
apparently requires authorization from the United States government. (more)
Please share this.
No comments:
Post a Comment