Hold Your Fire Before Freaking Out Over 3-D Printed Guns
In an otherwise excellent post on the overblown reaction to 3D-printed guns, Rob Pegoraro writes this:
I don’t know what real-world problem advocates of home-printed munitions are trying to solve. Do these people all think they’re John Connor? Sorry, but a) the Constitution doesn’t grant you a right to armed rebellion, and b) the military has tanks, aircraft carriers, fighter planes, drones and quite a few nukes, so good luck with one anyway.
Let’s put aside for a moment the contested question of whether one purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that citizens could resist a tyrannical government. Even if the Constitution doesn’t give one “a right to armed rebellion,” that’s neither here nor there. The whole point of 3D-printed guns is that you won’t have to rely on the Supreme Court for permission to resist the government. These advocates want to ensure for themselves that option. So it seems to me it’s pretty clear that’s the “real-world problem” these folks are trying to solve.
Then there is the practical objection: What good is a 3D printed gun if the government has nukes? First, there are different levels of government to consider. The more immediate object of resistance for many folks is not the federal military, but simply the police. Radley Balko has spent years documenting why this might be the case. Second, even if we were talking about rebellion against the federal government, it’s unlikely a response will rely on nukes or jets or aircraft carriers. As for drones, commercial availability is on the verge of exploding just like 3D printing. It will only be a matter of time before some citizens attach guns to their tacocopters.
