So yesterday, the Feds handed down a yuge win for people who’d make firearms using 3D printers. A settlement with “radical libertarian” Cody Wilson – who first posted 3D printer files for firearms on his website “defcad.com”, was settled on First and Second Amendment grounds.
And Big Left – in this case, through technology site “Wired” – is having the predictable fit:
“This should alarm everyone,” says Po Murray, chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance, a Connecticut-focused gun control group created in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2013. “We’re passing laws in Connecticut and other states to make sure these weapons of war aren’t getting into the hands of dangerous people. They’re working in the opposite direction.”
When reporters and critics have repeatedly pointed out those potential consequences of Wilson’s work over the last five years, he has argued that he’s not seeking to arm criminals or the insane or to cause the deaths of innocents.
Let’s take a step back for a moment here.
Street criminals don’t have access to 3D printers. They don’t spend the money for the materials – which are, by the way, still pretty exotic and expensive – to do 3D printer projects. They don’t have the hobbyist’s drive to do the tinkering that inevitably follows building your own firearm, even from kit parts, much less from parts you “build” yourself using a bleeding-edge technology. They don’t spend the money on that tinkering (gunsmithing is not a cheap hobby).
The people you need to worry about are the ones who will send their friend or girlfriend or grandma to buy a gun, or steal one of the 400,000,000 that are already out there, in (generally) working order, ready to go.
This reminds me of the “Plastic Gun” controversy 30 years ago, when Glock started marketing polymer-frame guns; “they’ll go through airport security”, Big Gun Control chanted, unaware that the Glock has a barrel, bolt and springs made of enough good ol’-fashioned steel to perhaps even wake up the TSA drone operating the scanner, no matter how hung over they are.
And it reminds me – it’s impossible to have a rational debate about firearms, gun laws, gun crime or the Second Amendment with 99% of the antis – because their entire “knowledge” of the issue comes from erroneous or context-mangled “research”, word-of-mouth gleaned from the ignorant but effusive, dystopian fantasy, and agenda-driven narrative.
Proving once again that those on the far left are in the category of “don’t know enough science to realize that tensile strength and Rockwell hardness are indeed crucial characteristics of a gun barrel or firing pin.” In other words, liberals can’t do math or science.
Big Gun Control’s pants-wetting is absolutely ludicrous. Home hobbyists have been building guns at home practically since the things were invented. The Sten gun was first built by a hobbyist in his home workshop. Also look up the term Khyber Pass Copy. 3-D printing adds little to this capability. The whole undetectable gun meme are the ravings of the ignorant. Remember; Ignorance is no excuse for a law.
The media labors mightily to prevent the public from discovering the truth about guns and crime. Cops respond to a “man with a gun” call and end up shooting him? No journalist ever reports where the dead man got the gun he was waving around. I suspect it’s done that way for the same reason they don’t report the race of certain People Whose Lives Matter – doing so would contradict The Narrative.
Also, the fact the guy fought for years for the right to publish data that requires an elaborate infrastructure to make it usable, rendering the data of some theoretical value but little practical value, is one of the hallmarks of a Libertarian.
“Street criminals don’t have access to 3D printers.”
A zip gun could be made for pocket change, and that’s about as elaborate a firearm the majority miscreants would be able to accomplish on their own.
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