A federal judge hit the pause button Monday on the release of digital blueprints for the manufacturing of 3D-printed guns.
In his injunction, Judge Robert S. Lasnik said New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood and the eight other attorneys general who sued the State Department had legitimate reasons to be cautious about widening access to printable plastic guns.
Underwood said the move to block the distribution of the gun blueprints would save lives.
“We filed suit because of the legitimate fear that adding these undetectable and untraceable guns to the arsenal of available weaponry will only increase the threat of gun violence against our communities,” Underwood said in a statement.
A representative from the State Department deferred comment to the Department of Justice, which declined to comment.
Underwood and the other attorneys general filed the suit on July 30, a month after the federal government settled a lawsuit with a company that planned to distribute the 3D gun files. The company then announced it would begin to share that data publicly.
The AG suit contends that the State Department violated the Administrative Procedure Act, because it did not get concurrence from the Department of Justice or give Congress notice. The suit also argued that the agency violated the Tenth Amendment by infringing on states’ rights to regulate firearms.
