This spring, Donald Trump’s State Department changed course by settling Wilson’s case out of court and granting him permission to publish his plans. The settlement would have allowed the blueprints to be published online this month. But a federal judge in Washington put Wilson’s plan on hold after Democratic attorneys general in eight states (including New York and New Jersey) and Washington, D.C., brought a lawsuit claiming the State Department had acted inappropriately. On Tuesday, lawyers representing these eight states, the State Department, and Wilson met in court in Seattle, where the judge announced that he will decide by Monday whether the plans must remain offline. Beyond the specifics of the case, the courts are again grappling with a recurrent question: When does U.S. national security trump the free-speech rights of U.S. citizens? Most agree that the First and Second Amendments give Americans the right to download plans for 3-D-printed guns off the internet. What the judge must decide is whether those freedoms should be abridged by the ability of foreign terrorists to download those same plans — and then use the guns to attack the United States.

When Wilson’s blueprints first appeared online five years ago, they were downloaded more than 100,000 times in two days. But it was the Spanish, not the Americans, responsible for the most downloads in those opening days. Other countries with citizens eager to explore the new technology included Brazil, Germany, and the United Kingdom—countries with much tighter gun laws than America. “Such guns can fire a bullet and they can probably kill,” a European Union law-enforcement official said that year. “It is a very unwelcome development.” The State Department soon got involved, ordering the files taken down for violating American arms-export rules.

Typical guns are made of metal, and they’re difficult to assemble and tough to hide, especially since federal law requires that they can be traced through serial numbers and detected at metal detectors. Wilson wants to make getting a gun much easier. With a 3-D printer and high-quality plastic (and several thousand dollars, and some tech know-how), anyone could create a gun at home if they downloaded Wilson’s plans. The actual object doesn’t look like much—a hybrid of a plastic water gun, the kind kids play with, and a real pistol.

The Liberator, as Wilson named the gun, is fragile; since it’s made of plastic, it could fall apart after a shot is fired if users don’t put it together correctly. But it also has the potential to evade metal detectors, and the fact that it could be manufactured at home means people who are otherwise forbidden from buying guns could have access to it. So when the plans were first posted, gun-safety advocates were alarmed. The guns “evade our detection systems and are a direct threat to our national security,” said Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida.