Anti-Gun Group To Sue Trump Administration Over 3D Printed Firearms

While they sound cool and they’re great in theory, 3D-printed guns aren’t that much of a “thing.”

I mean, sure, you can make them, but they’re not particularly practical. They’re novelties. Sure, they’re evidence that you can print a firearm, but the only all-printed firearm (except for a bit of metal to make them legal under federal law) is blocky, bulky, single-shot, and about as practical as a water-buffalo-powered lawn sprinkler.

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That doesn’t mean anti-gunners aren’t going to continue to lose their collective (and collectivist) minds over the blasted things. Now, another anti-gun group is suing the Trump administration for dropping the case against Defense Distributed.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence said Wednesday it has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for failing to produce documents covered under a Freedom of Information Act request it submitted more than five months ago.

The center was seeking paperwork related to the U.S. State Department’s decision in June to reverse course and allow 3D-printed gun blueprints to be published.

Dating back to the Obama administration, the department’s previous position had been that publication would violate its control over firearms exports.

Texas resident Cody Wilson, who sells firearms parts online, had sued over the department’s prohibition and in a settlement, the Trump administration allowed him to publish plans for 3D-printed guns.

“Citizens have the right to know why the State Department suddenly abandoned its winning position,” Brady Center attorney Joshua Scharff said in a statement. “We do not know what the State Department is hiding, but we intend to find out.”

A State Department spokesperson said via email Wednesday evening, “We would decline to comment on pending litigation.”

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Well, for one thing, it wasn’t a winning position necessarily.

At the heart of the argument was whether the files represented code–which the courts have found to qualify as free speech–or actual firearms. As we’ve seen numerous times since this debate began, it’s not as cut-and-dried as the Brady Bunch would like for us to believe.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I do like a transparent government and would prefer the Freedom of Information request been granted promptly. If it’s taking longer than those five months, so be it, but there’s another factor here that I need to mention.

Namely, nothing in those documents will change much of anything.

Seriously, the Trump administration could produce only a single document that clearly says they stopped fighting that legal case to piss off the Brady Campaign and I’d be fine with that. I’d laugh my butt off.

I don’t really care why they did it. The Trump administration did it, and they had the authority to do it, for better or worse. It was also the right call, and I don’t care why people do the right thing, by and large.

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For the Brady Bunch, though, they want to try and discredit the effort. They want to try and use any information to hurt the Trump administration.

Look, I’m not happy with the Trump administration right now, but they’re deluded if they think anything in those documents will change anything.

The genie is out of the bottle, now. Learn to deal with it, folks.

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