Maybe I Missed Something - Aren't Newspapers Supposed To Support The First Amendment?

When I grew up in the 60s and 70s in Greensboro, North Carolina, our local newspaper, the Greensboro Daily News, supported free speech. It had editorialized against the Speaker Ban Law which banned anyone with Communist Party connections from speaking on a state university campus. It featured great editorial writers like Jonathan Yardley and Edwin Yoder who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize later in their careers. The editor was Bill Snider who would get crosses burned in his yard for his support of civil rights.

So you can imagine my feeling when I read one of their most recent editorials arguing against free speech in the name of safety. It began:

Imagine a gun you could build in the privacy of your home in much the same way that you assembled model cars and planes as a youth.

A few clicks of a mouse and — voila! — you’re in business.

We have the know-how. We have the technology. And we should have the common sense not to use it.

You know where this is going. The unsigned editorial in the News & Record (combination of the old Daily News and Greesboro Record) was applauding the move by Attorney General Josh Stein (D-NC) to join the lawsuit in Washington State seeking to prevent Defense Distributed from publishing its files of code for 3-D printing and CNC machining.

No matter that these have been on the Internet since at least 2013 and thousands of us have copies of those files on our computers. No matter that it is 100% legal to make your own firearm so long as you are not a prohibited person and it is not a fully automatic firearm. Of course, they didn't tell you that part in the editorial. Nor did they say that it would cheaper and easier to go to Lowe's for parts and Harbor Freight for tools to make your own more substantial firearm.

As I commented on the story on their website:

When a news organization ostensibly dedicated to a free press AND to free speech editorializes against speech it doesn't like - and make no mistake computer code is speech - it sets a horrendous precendent. What speech will you next want to subject to prior restraint? Will it be conservative speech by an African-American like Mark Robinson? Or will it be something said by a pro-life teen?

Where does it stop? You don't have to like what is said and you can argue against the ideas contained in that speech. However, in our somewhat free society it should and must be allowed.

It is a bad precedent for any news organization to argue for censorship of free speech. The Greensboro Daily News and Record editorial staff ought rightly to be ashamed of themselves.

Proud To Be A "Gundamentalist"

I learned a new word today - gundamentalist. From what I can tell from the Reuters' story, it means those of us who want the NRA to fight harder and compromise less. If that is the case, then I'm a proud gundamentalist.

The Reuters story in question is about the effort to get Adam Kraut elected to the NRA Board of Directors and the efforts of those for and against Adam. You may remember that I both solicited petition signatures and endorsed Adam for the Board. As to why this story is being published months after the NRA Annual Meeting in Dallas is anybody's guess.

From the article:

Adam Kraut, a gun rights lawyer, fell about 4,000 votes short of the 71,000 needed for election, but earned 5,000 more than the previous year, a sign of the growth of the Second Amendment purists within the NRA known to many as “gundamentalists.”

With opinion polls showing U.S. public support for more gun control growing in the wake of mass shootings in recent years, the NRA is facing internal pressure from this little-known force that is demanding that the leadership concede zero ground to gun-control advocates.

Its rise has rattled the NRA leadership and threatens the association’s ability to hold on to moderate supporters and to make compromises that might help fend off tougher gun control measures, according to some of the two dozen gun-rights activists, policy experts and gun-control advocates interviewed for this story.

The article does make mention of the attack on Adam by Marion Hammer and the unofficial but really official backing of an alternative candidate for 76th director.

The article is worth reading and is generally accurate. According to a post by Adam on Facebook he was interviewed multiple times for the article. He has also started receiving hate mail from barely literate anti-gunners.

I will conclude by saying that if Adam Kraut decides to subject himself to the board election process again he has my full support.

Interesting Tidbit: The Staten Island Connection To The Defense Distributed Case

I stumbled across an interesting connection to Staten Island, NY - the forgotten borough - in the case pitting the the anti-gun attorneys general of Washington and a few other states against SAF and Defense Distributed. Both Judge Robert Lasnik who approved the temporary restraining order and attorney Josh Blackman who is representing Defense Distributed grew up in Staten Island.

Blackman is a graduate of the Staten Island Technical High School which was established in 1988. Judge Lasnik graduated from Port Richmond High and is a member of their Hall of Fall.  This 2011 profile of Lasnik in the LA Times discusses his love of Bob Dylan and how it impacted "his soul" with regard to civil rights while growing up on Staten Island.

I find this Staten Island connection interesting because my mother grew up there, my grandfather was the Tax Assessor for the Borough and County of Richmond, and my cousin Tom still lives in my grandparents' house. Moreover, a good part of summer and every Christmas from the time I was born in 1957 through about 1980 was spent on Staten Island.

I also find it intriguing that the person who had his soul impacted by the music of Bob Dylan with regard to civil rights is the one who curtails free speech. Conversely, the attorney who grew up there as it became a conservative enclave in a sea of blue is the one fighting for free speech.

Amazon Forces CodeIsFreeSpeech.com Off The Air (Its Back Up!)

From the Firearms Policy Coalition's Facebook page:

The comment from FPC:

Check out the takedown demand by Amazon Web Services about our http://codeisfreespeech.com/ initiative. We aren't party or subject to any restraining order. Are tech #oligarchs caving? Democracy dies in darkness -- when Amazon and Jeff Bezos censor speech.

This is what you get when you go to CodeIsFreeSpeech.com:

Please bear in mind that the groups behind CodeIsFreeSpeech.com were NOT prevented by court order from publishing this information and that it is available damn near anywhere you want to search on the internet. I guess when it comes down to it free speech is considered a convenience and not a right when it comes to the wants and needs of billionaire oligarchs.

UPDATE: I have an email into Brandon Combs of the Firearms Policy Coalition for more on the story.  The New York Daily News ran a story about the website saying it was put up by a "group of California gun nuts".  Jennifer Van Laar has more on the story at Redstate.com including comments that FPC et al were moving the files to different servers.

UPDATE II: CodeIsFreeSpeech.com is back online again!

From The Annals Of The Stupid Party

When it comes to protecting the Constitution and the First Amendment right of free speech, I have come to understand that the longer a politician is in Washington, DC the less that they remember their oath of office.

Every US Representative takes the following oath:

I, (state your name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

While the oath has changed since the first Congress, it has always included a line stating that the elected representative will support the Constitution.

I read yesterday that Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, had sent a letter to President Trump urging action on "3-D printed guns." The letter says in part:

As you know, the State Department recently reached an agreement with Defense Distributed that will allow the Texas-based company to publish blueprints for making 3D-printed guns on its website. This settlement requires the government to change export restrictions that have long been in place to prevent this sensitive technical data from getting into the hands of those overseas that would do us harm.

I am very concerned that the distribution of these blueprints could allow terrorists and international criminal organizations to manufacture guns that can’t be detected at current security checkpoints in airports, schools, and public buildings. These weapons will not be tagged by serial numbers, making them challenging to trace. This also could undermine U.S. laws that seek to stop the flow of weapons into war-torn countries, and other places where regimes use violence to retain power.

It is critical that our laws keep pace with technology. We can’t give terrorists or violent criminals an easier path to obtaining deadly weapons. I stand ready to help support your Administration in efforts to bolster our national security.

The hyperbole in this letter is astounding as is the stupidity. The thought that rebels and terrorists in  "war-torn countries" would want a 3-D printed "plastic gun" when they could have a functioning AK-47 or M-16 made in the Khyber Pass is ridiculous. A quick Google search on "M16 blueprints pdf" returns 377,000 hits.  As to detection, if the nudie scan machine at the airport's TSA checkpoint can detect a slip of paper in my pocket, it would be able to detect a "plastic gun".

It is at this point I should mention that Royce has decided not to run for re-election to his seat in Congress where he has served since 1993. He is also "A-rated" by the NRA.

Lame duck or not, NRA A-rated or not, Ed Royce took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic' and swore that he would bear true faith and allegiance to it. Defending the Constitution includes defending free speech and attempts at prior restraint. Royce for all intents and purposes agrees with trampling on the Constitution when it serves his political interests.

In a just world, Royce would be forced to resign. Within the Beltway, he will be applauded for his "courage" and rewarded with a fat consultancy come January 2019.

Quote Of The Day

Charles C.W. Cooke, editor of NationalReview.com and recently naturalized American citizen, had this to say about the gun control industry's flipping out about 3-D printing and self-made firearms.

Psychologically, though . . . in one fell swoop, a large number of people have realized that their aspirations for gun control are DOA. They have realized that the technology was well beyond what they had imagined. They have realized that there is nothing magical about firearms, and that there is nothing remarkable about their manufacture. They have realized, that is, that their crusade is effectively over. Thanks to the explosion of technology that is supposed to be on their side, the tide is rushing in without respect to their royal persons. And they don’t like that one bit.

He's absolutely correct. No matter what they say to the media or what they say to gullible judges or say on the floor of Congress about "plastic guns", their real fear is becoming irrelevant and that is why they are fighting this tooth and nail.

Clinton-appointed Judge Ignores Constitution And Issues TRO Against Defense Distributed (Updated)

US District Court Judge Robert Lasnik, a Clinton appointee, held an emergency hearing this afternoon in Washington State concerning a request for a Temporary Restraining Order to prevent Defense Distributed from publishing their files effective tomorrow. The TRO was sought by the Attorneys General of Washington State, Connecticut, Maryland, Oregon, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia.

From the docket entry:

MINUTE ENTRY for proceedings held before Judge Robert S. Lasnik- Dep Clerk: Kerry Simonds; Pla Counsel: Jeff Rupert, Jeff Sprung, Kristin Beneski, Todd Bowers; Def Counsel: Joel Ard, Josh Blackman, Eric Soskin, Tony Coppolino; CR: Nancy Bauer; Time of Hearing: 2:00 p.m.; Courtroom: 15106; Motion Hearing held on 7/31/2018 re 2 MOTION for Temporary Restraining Order filed by State of Washington. The Court addresses the parties. After hearing the arguments of counsel, and for reasons stated on the record, the Court GRANTS the Motion for Temporary Restraining Order and schedules a hearing for 8/10/2018 at 9:00 AM in Courtroom 15106 before Judge Robert S. Lasnik. An Order shall issue. (KERR) (Entered: 07/31/2018)

It is quite questionable whether Judge Lasnik actually had the authority to issue such an order. Moreover, it is also questionable whether the plaintiffs had any standing in this case. Of course, none of this has stopped activist judges determined to stop any and all actions decided by the Trump Administration.

As attorney and law professor Josh Blackman stated in his initial letter to the court:

For reasons we will explain in a supplemental pleading—filed seriatim to accommodate the rapid pace of this litigation—the Plaintiffs cannot succeed on the merits: the State Department’s actions are not subject to judicial review, the duty to notify Congress has not yet been triggered, and the Commodity Jurisdiction procedure simply does not apply. See Exhibit D.

Fortunately, the bedrock principles of the First Amendment make this case much easier. A finding that a constitutional right “‘is either threatened or in fact being impaired’. . . mandates a finding of irreparable injury.”7 And “[t]he loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”8 Outside of court papers, the Attorney General of Washington bluntly acknowledged the purpose of his litigation: to “make it as difficult as humanly possible to access this information.”9 That statement against interest, by itself, is enough to deny the Temporary Restraining Order in its entirety.

The Plaintiffs can challenge the proposed rule in due time when it is finalized. But they cannot mount a collateral attack in order to censor speech.

Blackman goes on to say in a subsequent letter that the District Court for the Western District of Washington lacks "subject matter jurisdiction."

This ruling illustrates even more poignantly that Brett Kavanaugh needs to be confirmed sooner than later to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy.

UPDATE: Judge Robert Lasnik did issue a seven page opinion to accompany his temporary restraining order. It can be found here. As it is, he bought the argument of Washington State et al in its entirety and ignored the free speech issues completely. The only mention of the First Amendment was with reference to the original complaint filed by Defense Distributed and SAF.

From the ruling:

Plaintiffs have also shown a likelihood of irreparable injury if the downloadable CAD files are posted tomorrow as promised. A side effect of the USML has been to make it more difficult to locate and download instructions for the manufacture of plastic firearms. If an injunction is not issued and the status quo alters at midnight tonight, the proliferation of these firearms will have many of the negative impacts on a state level that the federal government once feared on the international stage. Against this hardship is a delay in lifting regulatory restrictions to which Defense Distributed has been subject for over five years: the balance of hardships and the public interest tip sharply in plaintiffs’ favor.

Declan McCullagh writing at Reason.com notes:

Absent from Lasnik's 7-page ruling is any consideration of the First Amendment implications of censoring information about building firearms. This has been legal since before the United States was founded; Reason's special Burn After Reading issue even includes helpful instructions for constructing a handgun from legally available parts.

Crucially, also absent from the opinion is any recognition of the difficulty of censoring information once it's already been published to the web.

The files, as I call them, Freedom Files, are now widely available on the Internet if not available currently at www.defcad.com.

"You Can't Stop The Signal, Mal"

As I noted earlier this evening, Judge Robert Lasnik issued a temporary restraining order preventing Defense Distributed, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Conn Williamson from posting code files for 3-D printing and CNC machining of certain firearms. However, once the genie is out of the bottle, it's out. Or in this case, once the code "escaped" to the Internet, it's out and there is not a damn thing the gun control lobby, the gun prohibitionists, ideologue state attorney generals, or Constitution-ignoring judges can do about it.

Tonight, a new website was established by a coalition of civil and firearms rights groups has been set up and it has a number of files pertaining to 3-D printing and CNC machining on it. The site is called CodeIsFreeSpeech.com. I would encourage everyone to go to that website and download each and every file on it. You may never use the file nor even have a desire to engage in making your own firearm. Nonetheless, the more copies of each and every one of these files that out in the ether of the Internet, the less likely any attempt to stop it will be successful. Think of them as Freedom Files.

The coalition of groups behind this new website issued this release announcing the website - which by the way is up and running - and their intent behind doing so. None of these groups were parties to any of the lawsuits concerning the files of Defense Distributed.

Firearm-Related Speech, Machining Instructions, Codes Published By Civil Rights Organizations, Activists at New CodeIsFreeSpeech.com Website

SACRAMENTO, CA (July 31, 2018) — Tonight, the organizations and individuals behind CodeIsFreeSpeech.com, a new Web site for the publication and sharing of firearm-related speech, including machine code, have issued the following statement:

Our Constitution’s First Amendment secures the right of all people to engage in truthful speech, including by sharing information contained in books, paintings, and files. Indeed, freedom of speech is a bedrock principle of our United States and a cornerstone of our democratic Republic. Through CodeIsFreeSpeech.com, we intend to encourage people to consider new and different aspects of our nation’s marketplace of ideas – even if some government officials disagree with our views or dislike our content – because information is code, code is free speech, and free speech is freedom.

Should any tyrants wish to chill or infringe the rights of the People, we would welcome the opportunity to defend freedom whenever, wherever, and however necessary. Hand-waving and hyperbole are not compelling government interests and censorship is not proper tailoring under the law.

There is no doubt that Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed have inspired countless Americans to exercise their fundamental, individual rights, including through home gunsmithing. Through CodeIsFreeSpeech.com, we hope to promote the collection and dissemination of truthful, non-misleading speech, new and evolving ideas, and the advancement of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

CodeIsFreeSpeech.com is a publicly-available Web site for truthful, non-misleading speech and information that is protected under the United States Constitution. The purpose of this project is to allow people to share knowledge and empower them to exercise their fundamental, individual rights. CodeIsFreeSpeech.com is a project of Firearms Policy Coalition, Firearms Policy Foundation, The Calguns Foundation, California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees, and a number of individuals who are passionate about the Constitution and individual liberties.

Firearms Policy Coalition (www.firearmspolicy.org) is a 501(c)4 grassroots nonprofit organization. FPC’s mission is to defend the Constitution of the United States, especially the fundamental, individual Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, through advocacy, legal action, education, and outreach.

Firearms Policy Foundation (www.firearmsfoundation.org) is a 501(c)3 grassroots nonprofit organization. FPF’s mission is to defend the Constitution of the United States and the People’s rights, privileges and immunities deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition, especially the inalienable, fundamental, and individual right to keep and bear arms.

The Calguns Foundation (www.calgunsfoundation.org) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that serves its members, supporters, and the public through educational, cultural, and judicial efforts to advance Second Amendment and related civil rights.

California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees (www.calffl.org) is a 501(c)6 nonprofit organization serving its members and the public through direct and grassroots issue advocacy, regulatory input, legal efforts, and education. CAL-FFL’s membership includes firearm dealers, training professionals, shooting ranges, licensed collectors, others who participate in the firearms ecosystem.