Facebook is preventing content from websites that post digital blueprints for 3D-printed guns from being shared on its online platform amid a legal fight over whether one open-source organization can publish the controversial plans.
“Sharing instructions on how to print firearms using 3D printers is not allowed under our Community Standards,” a Facebook spokesperson told the Washington Examiner, after the ban was first reported by BuzzFeed News. “In line with our policies, we are removing this content from Facebook.”
Facebook’s move follows a federal court injunction temporarily preventing Defense Distributed, a Texas-based nonprofit group that first created the blueprints, from disseminating the plans online. The injunction was issued on July 31 despite the Trump administration reaching a settlement in June that legally allowed Defense Distributed to make the designs readily available to the public.
[Opinion: The fight over 3D-printed gun plans has nothing to do with the Second Amendment]
The problem is Defense Distributed had already published some blueprints on its website, while outlines for other models and their parts are still accessible on the Internet on sites like CodeIsFreeSpeech.com.
CodeIsFreeSpeech.com — a project of the Firearms Policy Coalition, Firearms Policy Foundation, the Calguns Foundation, and California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees — is among the sites that have experienced censorship issues since last week on Facebook and the company’s associated Messenger and Instagram applications as users report encountering a range of error messages.
Firearms Policy Coalition President Brandon Combs also told the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday that CodeIsFreeSpeech.com has been blocked from Amazon’s web-hosting servers. Amazon did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
The CodeIsFreeSpeech.com collective has launched a campaign against Facebook’s decision, writing in a statement that it welcomes the opportunity to defend freedom “should any tyrants wish to chill or infringe the rights of the People.”
