No free speech about guns?

The State Department has taken it upon itself to regulate firearms being trafficked out of the country. Known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), these rules control the import and export of defense-related articles and services.

Stopping someone from sending weapons to an African warlord is one thing, but now the State Department believes it has the power to regulate and outlaw firearm knowledge on the Internet. They want to make you a criminal for sharing firearm knowledge online, even if it means violating your free-speech rights!

It’s important to understand where this all came from. In the 1990s, computer scientists came up with what was, at the time, unbreakable computer security software. They combined series of numbers, letters, and symbols and what they got was an unbreakable code. Instead of allowing this software to be shared with the world, the State Department classified it as “munitions” and outlawed it from being disseminated.

The State Department is taking this same principle and trying to expand it to regulate even more protected free speech! According to the latest update to the Federal Register, the State Department is aiming to “address the electronic transmission and storage of unclassified ‘technical data’ via foreign communications infrastructure.” In layman’s terms: if you talk about firearms online, and foreigners could possibly learn from it, it would be outlawed.

If an American posts a video online detailing how to clean a gun, he or she would be breaking the law. If a blogger posts an article about the pros and cons of a specific firearm, they’d be breaking the law as well.

This is free speech. If you or any other American wants to talk about firearms on the Internet, that is your God-given right. But as far as the Obama administration is concerned, this is no different than sending gun parts overseas to the Taliban!

This is a cut-and-dry case of the Obama administration going too far. The penalty for breaking these new regulations is up to a million dollars and 20-years in prison!

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