Seems Cody Wilson has fled to Taiwan. Hey bud, thanks for opening up this whole can of worms and leaving the gun community holding the bag. I appreciate it. I’d say careful who you hitch your wagon to, but often when people warn of that they are working on an understanding that you can help that. Sometimes someone hitches his wagon to you, and I think that was the case here. Then your only choices are to stop pulling, or keep pulling and try to make the best of a bad situation. In politics, if you do the former, you lose. The latter is usually what ends up happening.
Apparently the girl is 16-years old, and if the investigating detective is to be believed, she looks younger than she is. They say they have video of the two at the hotel, which corroborates the victim’s story.
There are two things about Cody Wilson I have believed: first that he’s a narcissistic egomaniac who thinks the rules that apply to ordinary mortals don’t apply to him, and two that he’s a brilliant showman and provocateur. Sadly, all this fits within my understanding of him, so I’m not liable to believe this was a setup. I think events have caught up with him. There is no escaping this issue. It will come up again, hopefully with a different plaintiff. Maybe DD can hang on without Wilson, but I’m doubtful of that. My impression is that if Wilson remains on the lam, or even if he doesn’t and goes to jail, it will greatly complicate the lawsuit to defend 3D printing and sharing of technical documentation, CAD drawings, and plans. While SAF is also on the lawsuit, DD is at the center of the controversy. SAF’s standing is based on: “SAF members reside in the Defendants’ jurisdictions and seek to receive the computer files that Defense Distributed seeks to publish on the internet via its website.”
Maybe DD can hang on without Wilson, but I’m doubtful of that.
It doesn’t help that he mixed up the business in this mess since he used the DD-registered car to go pick her up. The videos involving the car and receipts attached to his use of the valet service for it are part of the evidence. It’s not unreasonable to make the argument that use of the vehicle was a highly relevant part of the crime (picking up girls with no other transportation to take them to a place to illegally engage in sexual conduct for pay).
I haven’t stayed up-to-date on civil asset forfeiture in Texas, but it seems this could easily remove at least one decently-sized asset from DD’s books.
Well, he did identify as a crypto anarchist .
“I’d say careful who you hitch your wagon to, but often when people warn of that they are working on an understanding that you can help that. Sometimes someone hitches his wagon to you, and I think that was the case here.”
I’m sorry if I keep beating hell out of this theme, but, the trick is to always be at least a little bit suspicious of someone having a greater agenda when they try hitching their wagon to you.
Sometimes, as in this case, it can’t be easily avoided. But (still beating hell out of old themes) most of the time, I’ve observed people in the RKBA movement giving their hearts and souls to anyone who would spend fifteen minutes learning the most simplistic pro-gun rhetoric.
That has improved slightly, in that at one time all a candidate would have to say was “I really enjoyed shooting my .22 with my dad when I was a kid” and he/she would win the vast majority of gun owners hearts. But if most of us have learned to be suspicious of that, there remains a huge body of gun owners who will fall in love over “get tough on crime, not guns” or “why don’t we enforce existing laws first?”
But back to my opening theme: Watch for that “greater agenda.” Take a few minutes to see what someone has given their heart and soul to in the past, and who their friends have been. That doesn’t mean, look for closet lefties. It means look for evidence they ever ranked guns as their primary issue, before they came seeking to embrace you, and have you embrace them back.
This comment is on point.
Ad also a self-demonstrating example.
If memory serves much of the skeptical response to National Observer comes from the same place.
Course NO is someone sting on the net and not someone holding their hand out asking for money to “help the cause”
“Watch for that ‘greater agenda.'”
Around 1994 – 1995, faced with the election of proven gun-grabber congressman Tom Ridge as governor of Pennsylvania, a group of us attempted to form a blanket “organization of organizations†in the state, called “The Keystone Firearms Coalition.†The assumption that it would even be possible to do that was dripping with naïveté, but I’ll try to stick to the subject of “people with a greater agenda.â€
We instigators elected as our chairman someone who had shown up at one of our conceptualizing meetings, who had shown himself to be super at running a meeting and herding tomcats. He spoke well of gun rights (i.e., he knew some rap) and, that he had shown up for a gun rights meeting, was good enough for us.
Under his tenure he never did a thing that I can recall that organized us toward defending gun rights. He made a good effort persuading us to support independent candidate Peg Luksik for governor. Otherwise he spent most of his time lobbying those of us who were de facto opinion leaders in the organization to “expand our horizons†and to embrace “other issues.†We could be “bigger than gun rights.†We declined that, as our gun rights were being very threatened at the time.
One evening at dinner after a statewide meeting, our chairman’s wife let slip “if he ever brought a gun into our house I’d kill him.†There was stunned silence at the table. Very shortly they disappeared prematurely, and he was never seen nor heard from again, in our circles. His cover had been blown.
We had known he was a member of the Christian Coalition when he first came to us, but we thought nothing of it. We knew candidate Peg Luksik, who he had pressed on us, had only one real issue, and that was her opposition to abortion. We thought it was only a “natural affinity†at the time, and “stealth†wasn’t in our lexicon yet. We never appreciated how subversive a concealed or misrepresented competing agenda could be. The “organization” limped along for some months, then ceased to exist.
Did he flee to Taiwan? What I read sounded like he was already in Taiwan when this broke (and that he regularly spent lots of time there).
Law enforcement has said that a friend of the girl tipped him off that the girl was working with the cops against him before he went. (I don’t know if it was before tickets were purchased.)
“While SAF is also on the lawsuit, DD is at the center of the controversy.”
If the files are placed in the public domain, couldn’t *anybody* publish them on the internet and defend their legal right to do so?
Yes. There are other places mirroring this content online. So once they get sued or given takedowns then they can mount a legal defense.
Just putting them online won’t get you standing. They’d have to sue you or tell you to take them down, as Jack mentioned. I think you can also use reasonable fear of prosecution, but I’m not sure how that works given the Administration’s change in ITAR, and the fact that the injunction was specific to DD.
Well, I guess I better start carding my hookers.
They say they have video of the two at the hotel, which corroborates the victim’s story.
I’m not sure I agree with the language there.
By which I mean, “16 year old who lies about her age to join an escort site, goes and has sex with someone while [AFAIK] still lying about her age, and then pockets the money and later feels bad about it” …
Does not read as “victim” to me; at worst she somehow victimized herself by making bad decisions.
The girl connected with him through a “sugar daddy” site, which tells the participants to attest that they’re 18+. She already lied there.
I’ve known dozens of girls who were in their 20’s and looked 15-16. Did she tell him she was underage when they met? Did she lie?
As has been said by another commentor here and elsewhere, was this a complete setup by the cops, who lie cobstantly and told her to
It’s funny how you’re so quick to bow to the will of the state and believe their story, but won’t defend a person who’s trying to find 101 ways to work around the state and provide people with more methods to provide for their own defense.
Keep bowing and scraping before your masters. Maybe they’ll loosen the chains a little.
Wow. Aren’t you the cliche.
There’s a really interesting question of timing here. At least partially because Taiwan doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US (because they “can’t sign treaties,” admittedly – it probably wouldn’t stop them from deporting on their own hook, but it’s not a given the way it would be with some other countries).
Announcing the warrant while Wilson is out of jurisdiction gives him time to prep a defense before turning himself in at a time and place of his choosing; that time is lengthened by him being overseas in a Non-X location.
OTOH, if he’s fleeing AHEAD of warrant service, that’s another thing entirely.
Malicious compliance by the texas cops, basic incompetence, panicked flight or what?
There’s all sorts of rumors flying around, and I don’t expect the dust will settle any time soon.
This just pisses me off. We have a great case here to advance First and Second Amendment rights, and he goes and screws it up by diddling a 16 year old.
Hopefully the case can keep going, though if the company goes under, the lawsuits might turn moot. But maybe somebody else can pick up their assets, or maybe the anti-gunners will go after codeisfreespeech.com.
I’m not saying the charges are true or false, but “underage girls” or “Child pornography on his hard drive” seem to come up at the damnedest times.
In this circumstance where he’s an anarchist type, it’s not at all hard to believe that he didn’t bat at eye at reaching out to a woman willing to engage in prostitution. He probably doesn’t believe that paying for sex should be illegal. (It’s fine for people to think it, but that doesn’t make it legal. It’s still a crime.) The thing that sucks for him is that he happened to pick one who was underage and willing to brag about the encounter to her counselor. Neither one of these things in particularly surprising individually, he’s just the unfortunate guy who picked the wrong girl.
Of course, nothing about the situation screamed discretion on his part, either. According to the reports, he openly bragged about who he was and why he thought himself “a big deal.” It would, at best, seem unwise to tell a girl you know is willing to break the law (offering sex for money) the full details of your life. If he’s telling that to a girl who enjoys shocking her counselor, then it’s easy situation to report and for the police to know immediately where to start searching for evidence. They both made it easy, and his decisions once he arrived in Taiwan (see the current post) make it easy for prosecutors to keep him locked up.