“If they could build a system that could prevent people from downloading that pistol, it would be far more dangerous and the effects would be far more terrible than that little pistol. Power wants to know everything, surveil everything, absorb everything. This impulse should be checked.” – Cody Wilson in Meet Cody Wilson, the Austin man behind the fight over 3D-printed guns [via mystatesman.com]
Power wants to know everything, surveil everything, absorb everything.
Geee…sort of like INGSOC and Big Brother in 1984….naw it was just a fictional novel…can’t happen here….
Hmmm it’s almost as if there were intelligent people in our past writing fictional books to warn us about giving the government too much power and that our founding fathers could see such an event happening in our future and wrote a document specifically barring the government from taking too much power and becoming like the governments mentioned in those fictional books written centuries after their deaths.
Some people have derided Wilson’s Liberator as nothing more than a dangerous, stupid toy which nobody of sound mind would bother to make. Others have been trying to ban it, in the name of “safety” or some other concept that’s better expressed as a path, rather than an end state.
I’m coming to see it as a litmus test. It doesn’t matter how well, or if, the pistol works. What does matter is the the idea behind it, and as such it’s helping to bring out into the open peoples’ and parties’ views on the rights of the individual vs. the demands of the state. I think that, more than anything else, is why the topic is blowing up now. While the State Department settlement helped to bring it into focus, it’s part-and-parcel with the debate that’s been running in America for a while now, but which is finally starting to come out into the open.
Yep. The Liberator 3D-printed pistol is more like a Rorschach test than a gun.
Here’s the challenge, TTAG: Do three days worth of articles without a 3D printer being the subject.
Most of us like real, practical firearms. Just try it. You might like it.
Seriously this comment is uncalled for. There are lots of articles every day written from TTAG. They are giving this situation the coverage it needs.
Here is the challenge mainstream media: publish articles 3 days in a row where you tell the truth about the 3D gun issue.
1. This is really a 1st Amendment problem
2. These firearms are not a crime problem.
3. Even if they were a “problem” we have the natural right to keep and bear them which necessarily includes the right to make them.
P.S. It seems odd that those whose very existence depends on the 1st Amendment aren’t calling to license and ban personal computers, web pages and the internet (at least not this week). I mean anybody could put up a web page and claim to be a journalist!
Real, practical firearms won’t matter if we don’t have the freedom to keep and bear them.
True dat…I don’t give a rat’s azz about printed guns but I care about the onerous laws coming where I live-ILLinois.
I was actually quite in agreement with “No one of consequence” above in that one’s views on the legality of this is not a bad litmus test for political thought. Does prohibition work? No.
Should free Americans be free to manufacture firearms in any way we please? Yes, absolutely.
Even full-auto without special permission? Yes on that, also.
Scrolling through these articles, however, (and having read most of them) is an entire series about non-functional items. That kind of makes the whole subject a moot point at this time, doesnt it?
Hooray for the idea and technology. May it improve quickly.
Just an obsevation on recent editorial choices. Lets not bite our own heads off, OK?
Firearm policy and culture is a part of the TTAG “Theater of Operations”.
Gun right will be won or lost by our interactions with those ‘on the fence’ we know in our day-to-day lives. Those are the ones who need to be convinced on the need for a strong 2A. Articles like these provide relevant ‘ammunition’ in these debates.
If they weren’t in the news, they wouldn’t be seen much ’round here.
Since they are, here we are…
No. TTAG, keep up the good work. 3d printing rights is probably the biggest thing going on in the gun community right now. Sure they are impractical but it’s more the freedom aspect of them that I care about.
TTAG reports on the politics of guns. While homemade firearms are not my forte, this issue goes deep into the 1st and 2nd amendment. We need to fight to keep these clear, or our children will be living in a Stalin like regime.
This is true !!
There are many technologies under intense development that have the potential to be combined and make Cody Wilson’s predictive concern come true in terrible ways. Some of these, such as Artificial Intelligence, seem to have no long term plan for control beyond “We’re building this because we can.”. There are/will always be “bad actors” who can/undoubtedly will turn the convergence of these technologies loose upon the rest of us. The control of 3D printed weapons for Humans to make and use isn’t even peanuts compared to what looms on the horizon.
Many years ago George Lucas was interviewed by WIRED Magazine and predicted that two guys with PC’s would soon be able to remake the epic film “Gone with the Wind” in their garage. That has come true and is easily done today. Most of the morons running the Governments in today’s World haven’t got the knowledge base, foresight or raw intellect to foresee what two guys with computers in a garage will be able to do in the near future. Or worse yet, the perspicacity to be healthily suspicious of the well-intended offerings of technology development created “because we can.”.
I believe it’s to late. The “Powers that Be” are on the point of having personal privacy controlled. We the People have given those that option with our infatuation with gadgets. Eventually AI and robotics will supplant the working class world wide and the one per centers will have no need for the working class or cannon fodder to feed they’re wars.
The true test will be when, not if, a criminal murders a police officer and takes his weapon using a Liberator pistol. Only then will we know how we as a society will treat this issue moving forward. I imagine many of you know that this weapon is named after a cheap, mass produced, smoothbore .45 that was designed to be airdropped into Axis occupied territories during WWII, at which point resistance fighters could use them to ambush soldiers and take a real weapon. Once concept becomes reality, we’ll know.
“The true test will be when, not if, a criminal murders a police officer and takes his weapon using a Liberator pistol.”
Why bother with that effort? A well thrown rock is sufficient to that task:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/massachusetts-police-officer-was-shot-10-times-his-own-gun-n891846
“After striking an SUV, Lopes allegedly ditched his BMW sedan and ran toward a nearby neighborhood.
Chesna, who’d been dispatched to the scene, then saw Lopes hurling a rock through the window of a house, the documents allege.
A neighbor told police that after Chesna got out of his car, Lopes struck him in the head with a rock, causing the officer to drop his gun, according to the court documents.
Lopes “picked up the firearm, stood over Off. Chesna, and fired approximately 5 rounds in the area of Off. Chesna’s head and approximately 5 rounds in the area of Off. Chesna’s torso and legs,” according to the documents.
Chesna was pronounced dead at a hospital.”
TTAG keep up the good fight !! Life liberty , our 2nd amendment rights under the constitution of the 🇺🇸 anything that affects these right’s , should concern each and every one of us. POTG
The real danger to the left is that this is too much freedom for them to handle.
The real danger to the public is when the government thinks it has to be seen as doing something to solve a largely non-existent problem. Governments in general are afraid of things it is perceived they can’t control. It is why they are fearful of new technology they barely understand.
Meanwhile there is a far greater risk of illegal firearms entering the country from China and The Philippines.
A man’s home is his castle this is something that socialist Progressive hate and they cannot stand. It
Privacy is something that they have always hated.
Sex between consenting adults. Abortion behind closed doors. Those are the only things that the Socialist Progressive really believe deserve privacy.
the government should be happy that the printed firearms plans are out there. it is better than planed-parenthood, but the idiot that it takes out isn’t a baby. we “short-fused” grenades in viet-nam and let them be stolen by charley,it works the same way ,it is called idiot-control….
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