"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."
Hope this isn't a dupe, but WOW just WOW. Wonder how it will affect the Healey crap.
Sorry:
Link to press release.
Wow, that last line sounds like a nice precedent. I don't know how any of that works but wow.
Is this settlement awesome? Absolutely. It means that gun control is in fact dying as now the plans to build any small arm will not only be freely available on the Internet, they will soon become ubiquitous.
That said, we need to be realistic here. There is no precedent set here. This was not a SCOTUS decision. It was a settlement. Nothing more. Will the government look stupid in the future if they decide to change policy, yes, but they still have the power to change policy.
Further, the DOJ is NOT in any way "Pro-gun." Trump has NOT drained the swamp contrary to republicans beliefs. In fact the DOJ is solidly antigun.
From Alan Gura:
"This administration maintained the Obama DOJ's cert petition in
Binderup (denied 7-2), and has consistently opposed all other as-applied Second Amendment challenges, including
Kanter (they won, Kanter appealed),
Hatfield (they lost and just appealed),
Medina (they won and Medina, repped by me on appeal, appealed, argument 9/11), and
Reyes(being litigated now...)," Gura says in an email today. "They have also continued defending the appeal in
Mance[regarding gun purchases across state lines]—they had over a year to change their mind, see the light, and admit that the district court was right, but they stuck to their appeal which unfortunately they won, and are defending against the currently-pending en banc petition. There are other cases they defend, some of course less meritorious,
but any notion that Trump is pro-gun and having DOJ roll over would be fantasy."
The more likely factor behind the settlement, Gura believes, is that the government "realized that not a single 5th Circuit judge offered that they were
likely to succeed on the merits. To the contrary, the centerpiece of their victory was that they could somehow avoid the merits. When they could avoid the merits no longer, suddenly the national security threat faded away."
The Goverment Will Allow Cody Wilson's Defense Distributed to Distribute Gun-Making Software