The Morning Briefing: 3-D Gun Madness and Much, Much More

Good Wednesday morning.

Here is what’s on the president’s agenda today:

The president meets with the secretary of Housing and Urban Development
President Trump meets with inner city pastors
The president meets with Republican members of the Senate

IMPORTANT: War dead remains returned by North Korea headed to Hawaii

This morning, there was a formal repatriation ceremony in South Korea before the remains were loaded on a plane headed for Hawaii. The loading process is taking place now (as of 4:30 a.m. ET).

North Korean army officials who returned the remains expressed concern about bones being mixed up, said Boyd. He told CNN after the press conference it’s likely there will be more than 55 individuals in the 55 boxes being sent to Hawaii.

The remains were handed over by the Korean People’s Army (KPA) in the North Korean city of Wonsan before being transported to South Korea on Friday, the anniversary of the armistice that paused hostilities in the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953.

Enough about Jim Acosta, let’s talk about Jim Acosta

Or we could eat Jim Acosta. Acosta, who just got done complaining about being told to GTFO of the Oval Office when he was shrieking questions at the president, has some fresh new material for his butt hurt tour on the prime time spin shows.

As Acosta — a sharp questioner of the president and a frequent target of his ire — reported live from the event, a crowd of rally attendees surrounding him chanted “CNN sucks” and shouted, “traitor,” and “you’re a liar.”

Several reporters on the ground documented the incident.

And now, Acosta is worried that the anti-media rhetoric will result in violence.

Just a sample of the sad scene we faced at the Trump rally in Tampa. I’m very worried that the hostility whipped up by Trump and some in conservative media will result in somebody getting hurt. We should not treat our fellow Americans this way. The press is not the enemy. pic.twitter.com/IhSRw5Ui3R

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 1, 2018

Yeah, I’ll say, Jim. I WILL say. You know who knows about political violence? Rep. Steve Scalise and his congressional buddies, who were shot up by a Rachel Maddow fan looking to kill some Republicans. If you can dish it out, you can take it. So if you’re worried about political violence, keep your side of the street clean, because it is FILTHY dirty.

Facebook removes suspected RUSSIAN pages for election interference

Facebook removed some pages from the platform (or should I say from its media outlet because if they are curating their content, they aren’t really just a platform or a tool anymore) when it was determined the pages might be of RUSSIAN origin.

Publicly, Facebook is saying it does not know for sure who was behind the network, but is saying it has “found evidence of some connections between these accounts” and accounts that had been run by Russian trolls in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. The company also said it had reported the network to law enforcement and to Congress.

According to Facebook, there were more than 290,000 followers of these RUSSIAN-suspected pages.

The removed pages had more than 290,000 followers, the company said. The most followed Facebook pages were “Aztlan Warriors,” “Black Elevation,” “Mindful Being,” and “Resisters.”

Those don’t sound Trumpy to me because they aren’t. They are lefty pages or new age-y.

3-D gun madness

A judge has stepped in and blocked the publishing of plans to print a 3-D gun. The anti-Second Amendment zealots were screaming that the Trump administration was officially allowing people to make untraceable “ghost” guns. Not so. The plans to print 3-D guns have always been out there on the internet. Go look for yourself. The original issue has to do with the First Amendment and whether the government can stop someone from publishing a document because of what someone else might do with the information. In 2013, the Obama State Department blocked Defense Distributed from uploading their 3-D gun-printing plans on the internet because the plans might enable overseas terrorists to make weapons. Defense Distributed sued the government on a 1A violation. The Trump State Department settled the lawsuit, allowing the plans to be published.

Steven Gutowski, a respected gun dude, fired back on Twitter.

This report has a number of inaccuracies. Much of the framing in this clip is just plain wrong. Wilson hasn't posted blueprints for how to make an AR-15 completely out of printed parts since that's not possible. The gun designs available on his site aren't undetectable. https://t.co/VivVVDigA5

— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) July 31, 2018

Considering all of the blueprints on Wilson's site are readily available to be legally downloaded at dozens of other websites and have been for literally years, the language in this tweet is overly broad and inaccurate. https://t.co/LlrFkovfvJ

— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) July 31, 2018

This piece claims the designs posted to Wilson's site are "invisible to metal detectors" which is simply not true and any gun that would be undetectable would be illegal under the aptly named Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988. https://t.co/iQWDL1q6mi

— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) July 31, 2018

Here’s a good summary of the fact and fiction surrounding this ridiculous hysteria.

“Downloadable guns are a real thing because of the Trump administration.”
False. 3D-printed guns were legal regardless of the outcome of the case, and plans for 3D-printed guns were widely available online.

“Individuals will now be able to log on to a website, and if they have access to a 3D printer, print fully functional and totally undetectable firearms.”
Misleading. The word “now” is deceptive. Individuals were able to do this before the Trump administration’s settlement, and they would have been able to do so even if the Trump administration kept litigating the case. Moreover, it’s important to note that possessing “totally undetectable” firearms violates federal law.

“All of this is because the Trump administration quietly settled a lawsuit with Cody Wilson, a 3D-gun creator who had sued the federal government for being forced to take down his downloadable 3D guns back in 2013.”
False. As the Fifth Circuit clearly stated, manufacture and possession of a plastic pistol or plastic lower receiver (subject to the Undetectable Firearms Act) “is legal for United States citizens and will remain legal for United States citizens regardless of the outcome of this case.”