{"id":4687,"date":"2016-10-07T12:33:14","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T16:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=4687"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:52:59","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:52:59","slug":"the-right-to-share-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/the-right-to-share-arms\/","title":{"rendered":"The Right to Share Arms?"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the heavy-hitting protections of the First Amendment, the freedom of speech, and the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, it would seem that 3D printed firearms and the sharing of associated blueprints would be doubly protected. However, the \u201cLiberator\u201d handgun (shown in the video above) may be protected by neither, in the name of national security. While this journal has previously called for regulation in the area of 3D printed firearms<\/a><\/span> and addressed the State Department\u2019s letter demanding the Liberator\u2019s creator, Defense Distributed, to remove the blueprints from their website<\/a><\/span>, a legal battle has evolved in Defense Distributed v. U.S. Department of State.
\nThe State Department based their letter of demand<\/a><\/span> on the premise that publicly sharing the blueprints, known as Computer Assisted Drafting (\u201cCAD\u201d) files, used to print the Liberator violated the Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations\u2014essentially accusing him of illegally exporting firearms\u2014and the story left off as Defense Distributed understandably complied. In May of 2015\u2014and after two years of censorship at the hands of the U.S. government\u2014Defense Distributed brought suit<\/a><\/span> and sought a preliminary injunction to block the State Department\u2019s removal demand.
\nTo obtain a preliminary injunction, an applicant must show (1) a substantial likelihood that he will prevail on the merits of the case, (2) a substantial threat that he will suffer irreparable injury if the injunction is not granted, (3) that his threatened injury outweighs the threatened harm to the party whom he seeks to enjoin, and (4) that granting the preliminary injunction will not disserve the public interest. The District Court found that the public interest in national security outweighed Defense Distributed\u2019s interest in protecting their constitutional rights and denied to grant a preliminary injunction<\/a><\/span>. Defense Distributed timely appealed to the Fifth Circuit.
\nOn September 20, 2016, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the District Court\u2019s denial of a preliminary injunction<\/a><\/span>, 2-1. The majority reiterated the \u201cvery strong public interest in national defense and national security,\u201d and explained:
\n[T]he State Department\u2019s stated interest in preventing foreign nationals\u2014including all manner of enemies of this country\u2014from obtaining technical data on how to produce weapons and weapon parts is not merely tangentially related to national defense and national security; it lies squarely within that interest.
\nWhich is entertaining since 1) the information regarding the engineering and design of nuclear weapons<\/a><\/span> isn\u2019t hard to find, and 2) the Liberator CAD files, only briefly posted on Defense Distributed\u2019s website, are already and will remain online, freely available to anyone, essentially forever.<\/a><\/span>
\nIt is important to note that the majority opinion<\/a><\/span> never reached a discussion on the merits of the case. The substantially lengthier dissent finds the majority\u2019s inaction \u201chighly regrettable\u201d that \u201cleave[s] in place a preliminary injunction that degrades First Amendment protection and implicitly sanctions the State Department tenuous and aggressive invasion of citizens\u2019 rights\u201d that will ultimately \u201cchill the free exchange of ideas about whatever\u2026 technical data the government chooses\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether \u201c[t]omorrow\u2019s targets may be drones, cybersecurity, or robotic devices\u201d remains to be seen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 
\nAs pointed out by the majority opinion, this case raises a number of novel legal questions including: Can 3D printing CAD files constitute protected free speech? What level of scrutiny is applicable to this statutory and regulatory scheme? Can posting files on the Internet constitute an \u201cexport?\u201d While these questions will hopefully be examined earnestly on remand, the censorship of Defense Distributed\u2019s files continues. In the Fifth Circuit, there is no right to share <\/em>arms\u2014at least for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the heavy-hitting protections of the First Amendment, the freedom of speech, and the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, it would seem that 3D printed firearms and the sharing of associated blueprints would be doubly protected. However, the \u201cLiberator\u201d handgun (shown in the video above) may be protected by neither, in the name …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4692,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7164,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687\/revisions\/7164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}