According to NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), the complaint faults the defendants for “distributing computer code for 3D printing firearms and prohibited firearm accessories and for promoting and facilitating the unlawful manufacture of 3D printed firearms and firearm accessories in violation of Civil Code sections 3273.61 and 3273.625 and the Unfair Competition Law (Bus. and Prof. Code § 17200 et seq.).”
The suit seeks not only preliminary and permanent injunctive relief but significant civil penalties against each defendant, among other remedies.
“This lawsuit is not just about the manufacturing or possession of 3D printed firearms and accessories,” NRA-ILA wrote in a news piece on its website. “It is an effort to put dangerous and unconstitutional prior restraints on speech and enable California to extend its gun control reach beyond its own borders.”
As NRA-ILA explained, California already has a law regulating 3D-printing firearms. But this lawsuit goes far beyond that.
“Whether we agree or disagree with them, laws do, in fact, exist for illegal conduct regarding 3D printed firearms,” NRA-ILA wrote. “Building a firearm is conduct, and conduct is at least the proper domain of the law. But regulating the mere distribution of 3D models and instructions online is an act of censorship that implicates the First Amendment.”
Another pro-gun rights group, the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), sent out an alert to its members warning about the lawsuit.
“California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, has filed a controversial lawsuit against two websites that publish blueprints and computer code for 3D printing firearms and gun parts, branding them as so-called “ghost gun” distributors,” NAGR wrote in the alert. “The state’s latest legal assault on online code and home-built firearms threatens the Second Amendment, free expression, and long-standing American traditions.”
Of course, anti-gun California officials, including AG Bonta, see it differently.
“This groundbreaking lawsuit shows that our office is not bound by the old playbook,” Bonta bragged in a news release announcing the lawsuit. “Similar to these defendants, we think creatively, but our aim is to protect public safety rather than obstruct it.”
Bonta then slammed the defendants as hardened criminals trying to put guns into the hands of criminals and others who can’t have them under state laws.
“These defendants’ conduct enables unlicensed people who are too young or too dangerous to pass firearm background checks to illegally print deadly weapons without a background check and without a trace,” he said. “This lawsuit underscores just how dangerous the ghost gun industry is and how much harm its skip-the-background-check business model has done to California’s communities.”
3D printing of guns has come under fire in several states over the past few years. In a recent court action, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that New Jersey’s law
criminalizing the distribution of certain digital instructions or code that can be used to 3D-print firearms to unlicensed individuals does not violate the First or Second Amendment.
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