State Department Censors Internet, Orders Firm To Remove Gun Designs

This issue cuts not only into the right to bear arms, but right to the core of the freedom of speech and our ability to access information.

Defense Distributed, the firm that had designed plastic guns which could be manufactured with a 3D printer, has announced that their "Liberator" project has gone dark. Cody Wilson, the leader of the company said that he immediately complied with the order to take down the files when he received a letter from the State Department ordering him to do so. 

You can read more details of the story in this article by: The Guardian

Make no mistake folks, this is government censorship of the internet, and opens up a whole lot of questions about just how far the government can go to make it illegal for you to gain access to information. This is also a blow to our right to bear arms as well.

Even if the manufacture of these guns falls under regulations that might make it illegal in a certain country, or even a U.S. state, this should not give the government the power to arbitrarily control your access to information. Another example might be marijuana. Illegal in most states and under Federal regulation, yet it is perfectly legal, as it should be, to look up how to grow marijuana as well as all sorts of other information on the banned plant. Pornography as well. Certain genres of that sort of material may be illegal in one jurisdiction but not another. Should this discrepancy be allowed to be used as the basis by which all internet sex is censored by the Federal government?

We might even make a more mundane comparison. Here in my home state of NY it is illegal for me drive on the roads with a "Cherry Bomb" exhaust system on my automobile. Yet it is perfectly legal for the store to sell them, I can certainly look at one on the internet, and I can even install it on a car as long as I don't drive it on public roadways. This is a similar case with a police light. I can buy one, I can even mount one on my car, I just can't use it in traffic. Or pepper spray. Different jurisdictions have different regulations on the sale, possession, and use of non-lethal weapons like this, but we can still see them on the internet.

But because of anti-gun sentiment, this overstepping by the government will be tolerated, even supported by many people unfortunately. Moreover, this move seems clearly aimed at compliance with the push by the UN to regulate guns globally, and to intrude in the domestic affairs of the United States.

UN Passes Historic Arms Trade Treaty To Media Silence

In short, it is this author's belief that you should be able to view and download blueprints of how to manufacture a gun. This does not necessarily extend to a right to actually manufacture the gun, to possess the gun, or to carry the gun. The debates on each of those regulations are another matter. At issue here is your right to information. It should be no more illegal for Defense Distributed to share their blueprints, than it should be for me to draw you a diagram of a Malatov cocktail.

Also read this article regarind internet censorship by the government and corporations:

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