Washington
\nDozens of US legislators are demanding that the Trump administration explain a recent agreement to allow the free distribution of plans for using 3D printers to make plastic handguns that will be easy to hide and almost impossible to control.<\/p>\n
After a lengthy legal battle, the government reached agreement last month with Cody Wilson, a militant gun rights advocate from Texas. He successfully argued that the US Constitution\u2019s Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to private gun ownership, should extend to a person\u2019s right to make guns at home uncontrolled by authorities, since they will bear no serial number.<\/p>\n
Dozens of Democrats in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate have decried the settlement and are demanding an explanation from the President Donald Trump\u2019s administration, which has been extremely supportive of gun-owners\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n
The agreement between the State Department, which controls the exportation of American arms, and Wilson\u2019s Defense Distributed group was reached on June 29.<\/p>\n
But it remained secret until last week, after groups advocating for stronger gun controls demanded its publication. The consent agreement \u201cpermits any United States person, to include DD\u2019s customers and SAF\u2019s members, to access, discuss, reproduce or otherwise benefit from the technical data that is the subject of the action.\u201d The SAF is the Second Amendment Foundation, which supported Wilson\u2019s suit and has called the settlement a \u201cdevastating blow to the gun prohibition lobby.\u201d Wilson is due to receive $40,000 in damages and interest.<\/p>\n
The DD website invites anyone interested to download the program to make so-called \u201cghost guns\u201d starting August 1, when \u201cthe age of the downloadable gun formally begins.\u201d That means anyone with a 3D printer which costs around USD 2,000 and can be programmed to build objects of almost any shape will be able starting next week to make plastic-bodied guns at home for just a few hundred dollars each.<\/p>\n
Security experts fear that the guns may be able to evade detection by the metal detectors used in many public buildings and airports. But gun enthusiasts say that without some metal parts, the guns will be unreliable and might even explode in a user\u2019s face.<\/p>\n
The settlement offers no justification for the decision in Wilson\u2019s favor. Similar software programs have become available in other countries, notably Britain, China and Japan.<\/p>\n
But five US senators, all Democrats, have denounced the agreement as \u201cstunning\u201d and \u201cpuzzling,\u201d and have demanded, in an open letter, that the government provide a written explanation of its thinking.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe settlement will allow these tutorials to be posted online for unlimited distribution to anyone including felons and terrorists both here in the United States and abroad,\u201d the senators wrote.<\/p>\n
Forty-two Democratic members of the House of Representatives shared their own concerns, writing that the administration\u2019s decision would only worsen the \u201cepidemic of armed violence\u201d in the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington Dozens of US legislators are demanding that the Trump administration explain a recent agreement to allow the free distribution of plans for using 3D printers to make plastic handguns that will be easy to hide and almost impossible to control. After a lengthy legal battle, the government reached agreement last month with Cody Wilson, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37630,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37631,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37629\/revisions\/37631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}