3-D printing

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Free Speech And Banned Books

August 11, 2018 by 1 Comment

There is a long history of banning books both here in the United States and abroad. Books that come to mind are D. H. Lawerence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, and a whole host of others. In more recent times, the Supreme Court has rejected efforts to ban books just because someone didn’t like it. See Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982)

Here is a book that you need to buy that many in the gun control industry would like to see banned. It is called The Liberator Code Book: An Exercise in Free Speech. The book is exactly what it says it is – the 3-D printing code for the Liberator pistol in book form. Think of the $15 cost of this book as a donation to the advancement of free speech.

Years ago, the US government tried to control an encryption program called Pretty Good Privacy or PGP which was freely available on the Internet for download. They started a criminal investigation of Phil Zimmerman who was its creator for exporting “munitions without a license”. Starting to sound familiar to what the government wanted to do to Cody Wilson? It should. What Zimmerman did that stymied the government’s efforts was to have the entire source code published as a book by MIT Press. The code could then be read by OCR programs and voila! While the government can and does control the export of munitions, it does not control the export of books.

Fast forward to this year. The US Department of Justice realized that they could not win a free speech case against Defense Distributed and advised the State Department to come to an agreement with Cody Wilson et al. The State Department took this wise advice, signed the settlement, and US District Court Judge Robert Pitman dismissed the case with prejudice on July 30th. Dismissing the case with prejudice means that neither party can reopen the lawsuit.

As I’ve written before, the attorneys general of 21 states are now suing in Federal court in Washington State to prohibit Defense Distributed from sharing the code. Judge Robert Lasnik granted them a temporary restraining order. However, that order only applies to the Trump Administration, Defense Distributed, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Conn Williamson. As you should know by now, a coalition of four California-based gun rights groups set up www.codeisfreespeech.com and have published the code for the Liberator and other firearms on the Internet. They have had hundreds of thousands of downloads since the site went live despite the efforts of Amazon Web Services and Facebook.

This has always been a free speech case despite what the gun control industry, the anti-civil rights state attorneys general, and the gullible media would have you believe. Printing the source code in a physical book serves to doubly reinforce that.

As Sean Sorrentino notes on Facebook, this book leaves the anti-civil rights attorneys general two arguments:

1. “Banning digital code files that can be used to manufacture and object is fundamentally different than banning a physical book that holds the same exact information.”

or

2. “We must also ban this book.”

Even anti-gun judges are not going to look too favorably upon either argument and the US Supreme Court certainly will not.

So go buy the book!

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From The Annals Of The Stupid Party

August 2, 2018 by

When it comes to protecting the Constitution and the First Amendment right of free speech, I have come to understand that the longer a politician is in Washington, DC the less that they remember their oath of office.

Every US Representative takes the following oath:

I, (state your name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

While the oath has changed since the first Congress, it has always included a line stating that the elected representative will support the Constitution.

I read yesterday that Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, had sent a letter to President Trump urging action on “3-D printed guns.” The letter says in part:

As you know, the State Department recently reached an agreement with Defense Distributed that will allow the Texas-based company to publish blueprints for making 3D-printed guns on its website. This settlement requires the government to change export restrictions that have long been in place to prevent this sensitive technical data from getting into the hands of those overseas that would do us harm.


I am very concerned that the distribution of these blueprints could allow terrorists and international criminal organizations to manufacture guns that can’t be detected at current security checkpoints in airports, schools, and public buildings. These weapons will not be tagged by serial numbers, making them challenging to trace. This also could undermine U.S. laws that seek to stop the flow of weapons into war-torn countries, and other places where regimes use violence to retain power.


It is critical that our laws keep pace with technology. We can’t give terrorists or violent criminals an easier path to obtaining deadly weapons. I stand ready to help support your Administration in efforts to bolster our national security.

The hyperbole in this letter is astounding as is the stupidity. The thought that rebels and terrorists in  “war-torn countries” would want a 3-D printed “plastic gun” when they could have a functioning AK-47 or M-16 made in the Khyber Pass is ridiculous. A quick Google search on “M16 blueprints pdf” returns 377,000 hits.  As to detection, if the nudie scan machine at the airport’s TSA checkpoint can detect a slip of paper in my pocket, it would be able to detect a “plastic gun”.

It is at this point I should mention that Royce has decided not to run for re-election to his seat in Congress where he has served since 1993. He is also “A-rated” by the NRA.

Lame duck or not, NRA A-rated or not, Ed Royce took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic’ and swore that he would bear true faith and allegiance to it. Defending the Constitution includes defending free speech and attempts at prior restraint. Royce for all intents and purposes agrees with trampling on the Constitution when it serves his political interests.

In a just world, Royce would be forced to resign. Within the Beltway, he will be applauded for his “courage” and rewarded with a fat consultancy come January 2019.

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Quote Of The Day

August 1, 2018 by 1 Comment

Charles C.W. Cooke, editor of NationalReview.com and recently naturalized American citizen, had this to say about the gun control industry’s flipping out about 3-D printing and self-made firearms.


Psychologically, though . . . in one fell swoop, a large number of people have realized that their aspirations for gun control are DOA. They have realized that the technology was well beyond what they had imagined. They have realized that there is nothing magical about firearms, and that there is nothing remarkable about their manufacture. They have realized, that is, that their crusade is effectively over. Thanks to the explosion of technology that is supposed to be on their side, the tide is rushing in without respect to their royal persons. And they don’t like that one bit.

He’s absolutely correct. No matter what they say to the media or what they say to gullible judges or say on the floor of Congress about “plastic guns”, their real fear is becoming irrelevant and that is why they are fighting this tooth and nail.