A leading gun-rights organization is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a New Jersey law that criminalizes publishing 3D-printer files for firearms, a case that could redefine how the First Amendment applies to digital speech.
The Second Amendment Foundation filed a petition for certiorari on August 11, 2026, in Defense Distributed v. Davenport, challenging a 2018 New Jersey statute that makes it a crime to distribute computer-aided design files or other digital code that can instruct a 3D printer to produce a firearm, receiver, magazine, or firearm component. The petition names New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport as the respondent. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported that Davenport's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At its core, SAF's argument is straightforward: computer code is speech, and New Jersey cannot criminalize publishing it. William Sack, SAF's Senior Director of Litigation, framed the issue in blunt terms.
"You can also publish a book on how to build a gun, right? And that's not even in question, right? So you can post, you can publish a book, here's how to build a gun with diagrams and instructions and a build sheet, no one's questioning that."
Sack told the DCNF that SAF's position does not change when the medium shifts from ink to pixels.
"Our perspective is that does not change at all if what you're publishing is computer files."
That distinction, between a printed instruction manual and a digital one, is what the Supreme Court is now being asked to resolve.
The cert petition does not treat New Jersey's 2018 statute as a neutral, generally applicable regulation. SAF argues the state enacted the law to shut down one specific organization: Defense Distributed, the company that created 3D-printing files allowing individuals with 3D printers to manufacture firearms at home for personal use.
The petition points to the statute's signing ceremony as evidence. SAF quoted the event directly in its filing:
"New Jersey enacted the statute to stop Defense Distributed in particular. At the signing ceremony, the Governor [Phil Murphy] linked the law to the Attorney General's earlier action against Defense Distributed, and the Attorney General identified Cody Wilson and his supporters, said they were 'still trying to release these codes online,' announced stronger tools 'to stop them,' and warned, 'we will come after you.'"
That language, a governor and attorney general standing at a podium, naming a specific private citizen and his supporters, and promising to "come after" them, is not the hallmark of dispassionate regulation. It reads like a government targeting disfavored speech. SAF is betting the Supreme Court will see it the same way.
The former attorney general referenced in the petition is Gurbir Grewal, who threatened legal action against Defense Distributed before the statute was even signed into law. That threat prompted SAF to back a lawsuit asking federal courts to determine whether software code qualifies as protected speech under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court's recent activity on Second Amendment cases has given gun-rights litigators reason to believe the justices may be willing to take up new questions at the intersection of firearms law and constitutional rights.
The legal path to the Supreme Court has been unusually tangled. The case originated in a Texas federal district court, where Defense Distributed first filed suit. But the case was later transferred to New Jersey, landing in the Third Circuit's jurisdiction. A three-judge panel from the Third Circuit upheld New Jersey's ban.
Then the Fifth Circuit, covering Texas, overturned the lower court ruling and directed the case to be returned. The Third Circuit refused.
Sack described the resulting standoff between the two circuits in plain terms:
"The Fifth Circuit and the Third Circuit kind of got into a spat. The case bounced back and forth between them, and then essentially a dispute arose between them as to who rightfully had the case, and so we have filed a cert petition on both really the core First Amendment question, but also this other question because it raised an important and important kind of federal courts question as to whether, essentially what our position is that the Third Circuit kind of snatched this thing back against the Fifth Circuit's will."
So the cert petition raises two questions for the justices. First, the substantive First Amendment issue: can a state criminalize the publication of digital code? Second, a procedural federal-courts question about which circuit properly controls the case when two appellate courts disagree. Either question alone could justify the Supreme Court's attention. Together, they present a case the justices will have difficulty ignoring.
Gun-rights organizations have repeatedly petitioned the Supreme Court in recent years to address what they view as lower courts' resistance to enforcing constitutional protections for firearms-related rights. SAF's new petition fits that pattern, and adds a First Amendment dimension that broadens the case's significance beyond the gun debate alone.
The law at issue, codified in New Jersey's criminal code under Title 2C, Section 2C:39-9, does not merely regulate the manufacture of firearms. It criminalizes the distribution of "digital instructions in the form of computer-aided design files or other code or instructions stored and displayed in electronic format as a digital model that may be used to program a three-dimensional printer to manufacture or produce a firearm, firearm receiver, magazine, or firearm component."
That language sweeps broadly. It covers not just finished blueprints but "other code or instructions", a category that could, in theory, encompass a wide range of digital files and technical information. SAF's argument is that this amounts to a prior restraint on speech, the kind of government censorship the First Amendment was written to prevent.
New Jersey passed the statute in November 2018, during a period when multiple states were moving aggressively to impose new firearms restrictions. The timing matters because it followed Grewal's direct threats against Defense Distributed, lending weight to SAF's claim that the law was written with a specific target in mind rather than crafted as neutral policy.
The distinction SAF draws is worth sitting with. Nobody disputes that a person can publish a book containing detailed diagrams and step-by-step instructions for building a firearm. That speech is protected. SAF's position is that converting those same instructions into a digital file format does not strip them of constitutional protection. The information is identical. Only the medium changed.
If New Jersey's logic holds, that the government can criminalize the distribution of information once it takes digital form, the implications reach far beyond firearms. Software code underpins everything from encryption tools to medical devices to agricultural technology. A ruling that code is not speech would hand state legislatures a powerful new tool to suppress disfavored information by regulating its format rather than its content.
Courts have grappled with the boundaries of firearms regulations in a variety of contexts, and the outcomes have increasingly favored individual rights. Whether the Supreme Court extends that trend into the digital-speech arena will depend on whether four justices vote to grant certiorari.
SAF posted the news of its petition on X, formerly Twitter, on the day it was filed. The organization's official account, @2AFDN, wrote: "SAF is once again knocking on the Supreme Court's front door, this time about 3D printer files related to guns. Today we filed our petition for cert in Defense Distributed v Davenport, SAF's First Amendment challenge to New Jersey's ban on publishing 3d printer files for..." The post was truncated and included an attached image.
SAF also published the full petition on its website. The filing lays out both the First Amendment challenge and the inter-circuit jurisdictional dispute in detail.
The Supreme Court has not yet acted on the petition. No timeline for a conference or response has been reported. Attorney General Davenport's office has not commented publicly.
When a state government names a private citizen at a bill-signing ceremony and promises to "come after" him, the First Amendment question answers itself. The only remaining question is whether the Supreme Court is ready to say so.
