A Texas nonprofit defense firm’s plan to publish technical designs for firearms online so anyone can use them to manufacture fully operational "downloadable" guns using 3-D printers is drawing fire from New Jersey and several national gun-control groups.
Austin-based Defense Distributed would violate New Jersey law by allowing anyone to print guns regardless of age, criminal status or history of mental illness, the state’s Attorney General, Gurbir Grewal, said in a letter Thursday calling on the company to stop its activities. The plan would also allow guns to be printed without serial numbers, making them untraceable, he said.
"The files you plan to publish offer individuals, including criminals, codes that they can use to create untraceable firearms -- and even to make assault weapons that are illegal in my state," Grewal said in the letter posted online. "These computer codes are a threat to public safety."
Defense Distributed sued the U.S. State Department in 2015 after former President Barack Obama’s administration challenged the company’s plans. On Wednesday, attorneys for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and other groups asked a federal judge in Austin to let them intervene in the case to contest a recent settlement that would allow the company’s plans to go forward.
Until recently, President Donald Trump’s administration appeared to back his predecessor’s stance in the case. In April, the government urged dismissal of the lawsuit and highlighted the "potentially devastating" implications of gun designs being published and getting into the hands of terrorists, according to the Brady Center.
But weeks later, government attorneys “offered a settlement agreement to the plaintiffs which gave the plaintiffs everything they asked for, and more," the Brady Center argued.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.