SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- A federal judge in Seattle, Washington state, Tuesday struck down U.S. President Donald Trump government's action to deregulate downloadable online 3D-printed gun files.
Judge Robert Lasnik of the U.S. District Court for the Western District Of Washington in Seattle ruled that it was "arbitrary," "capricious" and "unlawful" for the Trump administration to allow "the unlimited distribution" on the internet of data files for "untraceable, undetectable" 3D-printed guns.
The office of Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Tuesday that Lasnik has granted Ferguson's motion for summary judgment, which means the case will not go to trial.
Ferguson filed a lawsuit in July 2018 in the federal court in Seattle against the Trump government over its decision to permit the downloadable 3D-printed gun files from the internet.
Lasnik said in the ruling that the U.S. State Department had concluded that the worldwide publication of computerized instructions for the manufacture of undetectable firearms threatens world peace and U.S. national security interests.
"It is baffling that the Trump administration continued to work so hard to allow domestic abusers, felons and terrorists access to untraceable, undetectable 3D-printed guns," Ferguson said.
In 2015, Defense Distributed, an organization dedicated to global distribution of downloadable 3D-printed guns, sued the federal government after the U.S. State Department forced the removal of the files from the internet.
The State Department argued that the online distribution of the files violates the country's firearm export laws, but the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
In June 2018, the Trump administration settled the case by giving the green light to unlimited public distribution on the internet of the downloadable files for 3D-printed guns.
Ferguson filed the lawsuit one month later and successfully obtained court support for blocking the downloadable files for 3D-printed guns from being circulated on the internet on July 31, 2018, the day before Defense Distributed planned to release them.
