Cody Wilson, who is at the center of the recent controversy over the distribution of blueprints for printing out guns using a 3D printer, was on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace this morning and was defiant of any criticism.

When Wallace challenged his reliance of the guarantees of the First Amendment, saying that you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater, Wilson snapped back at him.

“As the hardest newsman in the game, I’d expect you to not propagate that ignorance,” said Wilson. “Fire in a crowded theater has not been good law for over forty years. That case was replaced. The standard is, even the most inflammatory speech is protected by the First Amendment unless it produces imminently unlawful action, right, or direct incitement or is likely to produce imminent harm.”

“We need to correct the people’s ignorance here, ‘fire in a crowded theater’ is a pseudo-profundity,” he continued. “The First Amendment without question protects this kind of data.”

Wallace says that the problem is that putting these plans on the internet allows people to “make guns that are untraceable, there’s no serial number.”

“It allows them to make guns that are undetectable, they’re all plastic, they could get through a metal detector,” Wallace said.

Wallace concluded saying that this also allows people who would normally be prohibited from purchasing a gun to make guns.

Wilson replied that a lot of the problem is that people don’t understand that making your own gun at home is legal and always has been so. “I’m sorry that you just found that out, but you should have made a law,” he said.

Wallace points out that it is illegal, though, to make an undetectable gun and has been for thirty years. Cody replied that you can make them with a “requisite” amount of metal in them, which his plans included. He also said, though, that “maybe even that type of law ultimately couldn’t survive Second Amendment scrutiny.”

“All Americans have the right to share data for making firearms on the internet,” said Wilson. “This is not controversial, the progressive case, the H-bomb, nuclear plans– these are all protected by the First Amendment. I’m sorry that some people are just waking up to the idea that the First Amendment protects scientific inquiry that doesn’t advantage, what, the gun control movement?”

Wallace then said “there are real world consequences here.”

“What if somebody takes your information, makes a gun, and then goes out and kill someone, potentially, God forbid, kills a member of your family. Do you bear any responsibility? Would you feel any remorse?”

“I credit your question as good faith,” Cody said to begin his answer. “But I literally believe in the Second Amendment, to the point that it’s alright, and it should be expected that there will be social costs for protecting a right like this.”

“Why is the people’s right to keep and bear arms on the Bill of Rights? Why is it even protected? Because we know that there are downsides and that there are consequences to allowing free people to own the means of self-defense,” he said. “Of course we should expect and have a mature attitude that bad things can happen.”

Watch the clip above, courtesy of Fox News.

Correction: a previous version of this post misquoted Wilson as saying it is “illegal” to make a gun at home. He said it is “legal”.

[Featured image via screengrab]

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