For the second time in recent memory, the Second Amendment Foundation has scored a coup…for the First Amendment.
Huh?
This week, SAF announced that the Justice Department has reached a settlement in a lawsuit the foundation filed a few years ago on behalf of Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed “over free speech issues related to 3-D files and other information that may be used to manufacture lawful firearms.” While many in the blogosphere are looking at this settlement as an advance for the Second Amendment because of an issue related to semiautomatic rifles, the bigger picture is one that is bound to make many in the media cringe.
A group whose main focus is on the right to keep and bear arms – and therefore can be characterized as a bunch of “gun nuts” – has gotten the government to back off in an effort that stepped on the First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press, and stepped hard.
A little background: Defense Distributed had published information on 3-D printing and was immediately smacked by the Obama State Department in what has been described as an “attempt to control public speech as an export under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), a Cold War-era law intended to control exports of military articles.”
According to a SAF news release, “Under terms of the settlement, the government has agreed to waive its prior restraint against the plaintiffs, allowing them to freely publish the 3-D files and other information at issue. The government has also agreed to pay a significant portion of the plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees, and to return $10,000 in State Department registration dues paid by Defense Distributed as a result of the prior restraint.”
In journalism, the term “prior restraint” is toxic. It is tantamount to an “enhanced background check” before a citizen can legally exercise his or her right to keep and bear arms.
SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb called this “a First Amendment victory for free speech” while also noting that, because the government “expressly acknowledges that non-automatic firearms up to .50-caliber – including modern semi-auto sporting rifles such as the popular AR-15 and similar firearms – are not inherently military,” it is also a “devastating blow to the gun prohibition lobby.”
It may also be a bit of an embarrassment to the “mainstream media,” which may be loath to acknowledge that the First Amendment just got a boost thanks to a Second Amendment group that some consider to be annoying.
In journalism, the term “prior restraint” is toxic. It is tantamount to an “enhanced background check” before a citizen can legally exercise his or her right to keep and bear arms.
It’s not the first time SAF has won a First Amendment case. Last year, after many months of court wrangling, a SAF lawsuit against the City of Seattle resulted in a victory. The city had steadfastly declined to release revenue information on its controversial “gun violence tax” even after a Public Records Act request had been made by the senior editor of TheGunMag.com, a publication owned by the foundation, formerly known as Gun Week.
The PRA request was squarely based on the First Amendment in that the public has a right to know how much revenue the city had realized, and as an arm of the press, TheGunMag.com had a right to publish the information.
As the magazine’s coverage revealed, the city had taken in far less than the projected $300,000 to $500,000 annually, coming in at just over $103,000 for the year 2016. In 2017, the take was even less, just over $93,000.
SAF’s Gottlieb is sometimes amused by the fact that his group sticks up for other rights as well as the Second Amendment. Around the SAF office at Bellevue’s Liberty Park, the Bill of Rights is considered an “all or nothing” proposition, a “ten course meal” rather than a buffet from which people can pick and choose the rights they like and toss the rest.
That’s something that gun control proponents in and out of the media haven’t seemed to figure out.
