A federal judge in Austin has rebuffed 3D-printed gun company Defense Distributed's lawsuit that would have allowed the firm to send instructions for building untraceable firearms to people in several states.

Stating that his courtroom was not the appropriate place to hash out the Second Amendment dispute, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman issued a ruling Wednesday that tossed out the lawsuit. The judge invited the company's lawyers to pursue action elsewhere.

The ruling is the latest setback for Defense Distributed, whose operations were stifled in July when a federal judge in Washington state sided with attorneys general from nine states and Washington, D.C., and voided an agreement the company had reached three days earlier with the U.S. State Department to publish the files. That ruling meant the company's officials had to remove the instructions from their website.

Two months later, Defense Distributed CEO Cody Wilson resigned after being accused by Austin police of paying for sex with a teenage girl he met online. A grand jury in January indicted Wilson on charges of sexual assault, indecency with a child by contact and indecency with a child by exposure. The case is pending in Travis County state District Court.

Paloma Heindorff, who replaced Wilson as the company's director, did not respond to an email for comment on Pitman's decision. Chad Flores, a lawyer for Defense Distributed, declined to comment.

Hoping to revive the company's operations at a January court setting, attorneys for Defense Distributed argued in Pitman's court that the case should be tried in Austin because that's where the company received a letter from the New Jersey attorney general's office ordering it to obey a new state law that prohibits it from posting instructions for building the guns.

But Pitman disagreed, announcing in a 15-page ruling that the letter and other communications "has no relation to Texas, was not expressly aimed at Texas, and does not avail itself of any Texas laws or benefits."

"The only relationship any of the defendants' actions have with the State of Texas is the 'mere fortuity' that Defense Distributed resides there," it says.

The ruling was a victory for additional defendants in the lawsuit: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo; former Delaware Attorney General Matthew Denn; Pennsylvania's Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Gov. Thomas Wolf; and Los Angeles City Attorney Michael Feuer. Ruling that Defense Distributed failed to show the judge had personal jurisdiction in the case, Pitman granted motions from those defendants to dismiss the lawsuit.