Politicians and members of the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex are still operating under the delusion that they can keep the lid on 3D printed guns and parts, despite the fact that people have been making their own firearms for hundreds of years.
Al Gore’s greatest invention has only made the information and the processes more widely available. The authoritarian prohibitionists don’t have enough fingers to plug in all the holes in the digital dike and that realization is finally dawning on them.
Anti-gun campaigners, obviously, disagree with the notion of a downloadable gun. Avery Gardiner, the co-president of the Brady Campaign, has said 3D-printed guns present a “supreme threat to our safety and security”. Speaking after a court decision in August Gardiner said: “Already, there have been a wave of dangerous actors seeking to illegally post the blueprints online”.
A mix of a libertarian attitude and the rewarding hobby aspect of designing and creating something is often what drives members of these decentralised 3D-printed gun networks to do what they do – that is, uploading schematics, sharing them, improving designs, and making 3D-printed gun work more easily accessible while remaining largely under the radar. Ivan (the Troll) claims he does this for a love of freedom and “radical” belief in the US first and second amendment: free speech and the right to bear arms.
He takes this to such a radical degree though, that he even theorises he should technically be able to have his own Tomahawk Missiles, saying that they would be safer in his hands than in those of the US Military and its allies – given the country’s track record for accidentally targeting civilians, including a wedding party in Afghanistan and a school bus in Yemen.
Referring to the mounting list of civilian killings carried about by US forces in foreign wars, Ivan sounds at times more like a radical leftist than the right wing “gun nut” many in America label him as. He claims not to have any specific ideology though, saying: “I get to be my own special snowflake.”
As of now, Ivan the Troll, Deterrence Dispensed, and the thousands many more 3D-printed gun enthusiasts connected to each other worldwide, have essentially let the cat out the bag. There is no way to stop the anonymous file sharing of 3D-printed guns online. Whether they’re just pretending to be doing this for reasons of liberty or otherwise, their message is clear: it’s already too late to stop.
– Jake Hanrahan in 3D-printed guns are back, and this time they are unstoppable
