Meet Cody Wilson, creator of the 3D-printed gun

The notion that Cody Wilson actually created something uniquely dangerous is frankly absurd. Any lone nut in a town with a hardware store can make a much more effective and reliable firearm. That's not just some nonsense about what a trained person with a machine shop can hypothetically do... you can look up videos on youtube of tons of people making reliable shotguns with a 2x4", a metal pipe, and a few plumbing fixtures. Fuck-all training or expertise required, a child could do it. A computer illiterate child could do it, which is more than can be said of printed guns.

What Cody Wilson actually did (and what he set out to do) is get people talking. He did that exceptionally well. For some reason a printed gun drives home the "anybody can make a gun" message much more effectively than a 20 minute trip to the hardware store. His major accomplishment is recognizing that (well, getting the thing to work was impressive, but I think that is very secondary).

"The problem with Wilson's argument is that's it's an argument, one that you might formulate in the sixth-form debating society. And on the other side, there would be a dead person."

If all you have to do the limit a right is show someone was hurt because of it, no right is safe.

Does the author think free speech hasn't gotten people killed? Ask the thousands who die after protests and rhetoric becomes revolution.

Extending this thinking means any form of government surveillance that saves a life is justified.

"The attorney general who has been so good about pushing this ban on my guns is accused of covering up the running of actual military grade assault rifles into Mexico. I'm sure he'd say, 'Well, white man's burden. We've got to make the world safe for democracy.' But they are killing millions of people."

It's pretty disconcerting that his answer to whether it's a moral issue to make widely available plans for a 3D gun is essentially "well, there are a lot of worse people out there".

How has this story not died yet? The critical point for reducing gun violence is obviously downstream of manufacturing the gun. Further, motivated people with modest training can manufacture far more dangerous weapons with other technologies.

Perhaps this article could be taken seriously if it didn't refer to a large percentage of Americans as "nuts" and didn't write off all British people as idiots: "In Britain, where we hope our robbers carry nothing more than a big stick."