Judges Issues Temporary Halt to Distributing Plans to Make 3-D Guns

A judge issued a temporary restraining order against the distribution of materials to make guns using 3-D printers.

A group of states sued the Trump administration Monday in federal court in Seattle to block its legal settlement allowing a small Texas non-profit company to publish instructions on the internet for making downloadable guns with 3-D printers.

“In a major victory for common sense and public safety, a federal judge just granted our request for a nationwide temporary restraining order,” New York Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood said Tuesday in a statement after the judge’s ruling.

The government violated federal law by arbitrarily excluding the firearm designs from U.S. export controls that have barred Austin-based Defense Distributed from publishing them, the coalition of Democratic attorneys general from eight states and the District of Columbia said in their complaint.

The states asked the court for an emergency restraining order to temporarily bar Defense Distributed from publishing the files as planned starting Aug. 1, a date hailed by the nonprofit’s website as the beginning of the “age of the downloadable gun.”