Cody Wilson

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Cody Wilson Out, Paloma Heindorff In At Defense Distributed

September 26, 2018 by

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Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed parted ways as of Friday, September 21st, according to the new Director of Defense Distributed, Paloma Heindorff. The news came in a press conference held in Austin, Texas yesterday (September 25th).

Good morning, thank you for attending. My name is Paloma Heindorff, I’m the new director of Defense Distributed and CEO of Ghost Gunner. I spent last three years at DD working as director of development and VP of Operations.


Cody Wilson tendered his resignation on Friday evening to focus on personal legal affairs. Defense Distributed Board of Directors accepted his resignation and thus his role at the company has been concluded.

Also on the stage at the news conference were Defense Distributed’s attorneys Josh Blackman of  the South Texas College of Law Houston and Chad Flores of Houston law firm Beck Redden.

During the news conference, Heindorff continually emphasized that Wilson has no further involvement with Defense Distributed and that she would not answer any questions regarding his personal legal issues. She did say, “it was Cody Wilson’s decision to resign and Defense Distributed supported him in that.”

When she was asked by a reporter if anything in her views had changed on the case, Heindorff made a strong statement of her beliefs.

The same as we stood before. We believe in the right of people to have these files; we believe in our right to publish them. I believe very strongly in both the First and Second Amendment causes in the case. That’s where I stand. The same as where I stood a week ago.

Asked if she had spoken with Cody Wilson, she said, “Cody and I have been speaking. It is important for the transition. We still have some paperwork to do.”

Heindorff’s background is in the arts. When asked why she left New York and moved to Austin to work for Defense Distributed, she had this to say.

It’s the most effective and elegant activism I’d seen performed and I wanted to be a part of that. It’s just so beautiful, isn’t it, to exercise one’s rights like that and to do so in a way that pushes authorities to allow you to. Too often people are perturbed by threats, and I found it incredible that this company persisted.

Heindorff spoke about this in more detail at last year’s Gun Rights Policy Conference held in Dallas. You can see her comments in this video starting at about the 24:30 mark.

When asked about the case brought the attorney general of Washington State to prevent Distributed Defense from posting the files online , Josh Blackman emphasized that there was no change in the case. Later in the news conference, both he and attorney Chad Flores re-emphasized that they are DD’s attorney and that Cody Wilson has his own attorney for his issues. With regard to legal issues, all three pointed out that the approximately $400,000 raised for legal fees was for Defense Distributed and no monies were being used by Cody Wilson for her personal defense on charges of sex with a minor.

The change of leadership at Defense Distributed and Ghost Gunner has received attention across the spectrum. You have stories by the NY Times, Fox News, NPR, and the Austin Statesman. You have stories by Recoil, Ammoland, and  TTAG. The story was also covered by tech industry publications like Ars Technica and Wired.

Heck, even the Brady Campaign released a statement concerning the change in leadership. The funny thing in their statement is their acknowledgement that the “Pandora’s box had been opened, and it won’t go away with Wilson.” Then they said they would continue to fight the threat. I find it funny that they realize the signal can’t be stopped and then in the next breath say they are going to fight it. There is nothing to compare to the posturing of the gun banners when they know the fight is futile.

The whole news conference is shown in the video below. The actual news conference begins at about the 2 minute mark.

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Ben Franklin Was Correct

August 27, 2018 by 3 Comments

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Benjamin Franklin, January 1775

This is a lesson that the Attorneys General from 20 states and the District of Columbia and US District Court Judge Robert Lasnik don’t seem to understand. Today Judge Lasnik extended his temporary restraining order preventing Defense Distributed, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Conn Williamson from distributing the 3-D printing and CNC files. The original order was due to expire tomorrow but now will go until the case is settled.

The fact that these files are and have been freely available from other sources on the Internet seems to have been ignored. The website CodeIsFreeSpeech is still up and running and has all of these files.

Judge Lasnik somewhat acknowledged that this is a First Amendment case.

Lasnik said the states have submitted sufficient evidence that they are likely to suffer “irreparable harm” if the blueprints are published. The judge also said Defense Distributed’s First Amendment concerns were “dwarfed” by the states’ safety considerations.

Dwarfed? Really? The so-called safety considerations put forth totally ignore the facts surrounding the 3-D printing of the Liberator pistol. What this case is really about is the gun control lobby and their political allies realizing that 3-D printing along with low-cost CNC machines is the death knell for gun control and they don’t like it.

Stephen Gutowski at the Free Beacon has more on his ruling:

Lasnik said in his ruling he “presumes that the private defendants have a First Amendment right to disseminate the CAD files.” However, he viewed the restrictions on the right to be acceptable.

“That right is currently abridged, but it has not been abrogated,” Lasnik wrote in his ruling.

Lasnik’s wording appears to run counter to the First Amendment’s explicit protection against “abridging the freedom of speech.”

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” the First Amendment reads.

Lasnik said being forbidden from publishing gun designs on the internet didn’t mean Wilson’s free speech rights had been abrogated because Wilson was free to share the designs by other means—such as by mail or other forms of publishing.

“Regulation under the AECA means that the files cannot be uploaded to the internet, but they can be emailed, mailed, securely transmitted, or otherwise published within the United States,” Lasnik wrote. “The Court finds that the irreparable burdens on the private defendants’ First Amendment rights are dwarfed by the irreparable harms the States are likely to suffer if the existing restrictions are withdrawn and that, overall, the public interest strongly supports maintaining the status quo through the pendency of this litigation.”

Cody Wilson actually says he is elated by the decision and plans to take it to the next level. He also referred to it as “clownish” and an “intentional insult”.

“The order is a manifest injustice and literally admits to being an abridgment of the freedom of speech,”

I think it is time to see if the 9th Circuit believes more in freedom of speech or in being gun prohibitionists.

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Wow! DOJ Settles With Cody Wilson And Defense Distributed

July 10, 2018 by 5 Comments

Less than 24 hours after President Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice comes to an agreement with the Second Amendment Foundation regarding their lawsuit on behalf of Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed. I know I say that actions have consequences but this one is a “Wow!”

From Josh Blackman’s blog with some more details:

BELLEVUE, WA – The Department of Justice and Second Amendment Foundation have reached a settlement in SAF’s lawsuit on behalf of Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed over free speech issues related to 3-D files and other information that may be used to manufacture lawful firearms.

SAF and Defense Distributed had filed suit against the State Department under the Obama administration, challenging a May 2013 attempt to control public speech as an export under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), a Cold War-era law intended to control exports of military articles.

Under terms of the settlement, the government has agreed to waive its prior restraint against the plaintiffs, allowing them to freely publish the 3-D files and other information at issue. The government has also agreed to pay a significant portion of the plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees, and to return $10,000 in State Department registration dues paid by Defense Distributed as a result of the prior restraint.

Significantly, the government expressly acknowledges that non-automatic firearms up to .50-caliber – including modern semi-auto sporting rifles such as the popular AR-15 and similar firearms – are not inherently military.

“Not only is this a First Amendment victory for free speech, it also is a devastating blow to the gun prohibition lobby,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “For years, anti-gunners have contended that modern semi-automatic sport-utility rifles are so-called ‘weapons of war,’ and with this settlement, the government has acknowledged they are nothing of the sort.

“Under this settlement,” he continued, “the government will draft and pursue regulatory amendments that eliminate ITAR control over the technical information at the center of this case. They will transfer export jurisdiction to the Commerce Department, which does not impose prior restraint on public speech. That will allow Defense Distributed and SAF to publish information about 3-D technology.”

Blackman’s blog has all the major pleadings in this case. SAF and Wilson had submitted a petition for a writ of certiorari to the US Supreme Court after losing in the 5th Circuit. This writ had not been denied as it was still in the pleading and reply process. Cert was denied in January 2018.

This is a win for free speech, a win for gun rights, a loss for prior restraint, and a giant FU to the State of California and their paranoia over “ghost guns”.

WIRED Magazine goes into great detail about what Cody has been up to the last few years, the why of Defense Distributed, the gnashing of teeth by the antis, and the blurred line between the First and Second Amendment.

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“Purge Begins: Cloudflare Terminates Service To Cody Wilson’s GhostGunner Website”

August 21, 2017 by 2 Comments

If the name Cody Wilson rings a bell, it should. Cody is the person who developed a 3-D printed firearm and then put the plans on the Internet. His company, Defense Distributed, is now in a court battle with the State Department over another of his 3-D printing plans which they have, for now, forced off the Internet. I met Cody at the 2016 Gun Rights Policy Conference when the Polite Society Podcast interviewed him. Cody is what I call a hard-core libertarian. However, what Cody is not is an alt-right, white supremacist, racist, fill-in-the-blank.

According to Wikipedia, Cloudfare is a ” content delivery network, Internet security services and distributed domain name server services, sitting between the visitor and the Cloudflare user’s hosting provider, acting as a reverse proxy for websites.” They supposedly hold free speech is sacred and that includes what is posted on a website. That said, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince kicked off the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer from his service after Charlottesville on August 16th. He attributed his change of mind about free speech for all to waking up grumpy that morning.

Back to Cody Wilson. On Friday, Cloudfare abruptly terminated service to his GhostGunner.net site which sold 80% AR lowers and the machine tools to complete finishing these lowers. This began a war of words on Twitter between Cody Wilson and Matthew Prince. Cloudfare is insisting that GhostGunner.net had left on their own and that it had nothing to do with Wilson’s tongue in cheek “Hatreon” alternative to Patreon. Wilson is saying Prince is a liar.

Who is right and who is wrong I am not sure. However, it does seem awfully suspicious that service was terminated so soon after that of the Daily Stormer. I don’t know if it was retribution for Hatreon which has no “hate speech” restrictions or not.

As of this morning, GhostGunner.net and Hatreon.net are back up on the Internet. I am not tech-savvy enough to know where these sites are being hosted or who is providing all the Internet services. All I know is that Cody Wilson is a hard-core free speech activist and I’m glad to see he is back on the Internet.