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Cody Wilson, the man who wants Americans to 3D print their own guns

theguardian.com

21–30 of 125 posts

Re: Cody Wilson, the man who wants Americans to 3D print their own guns

#21
post #2

With the advancement of technology it's harder and harder to sympathize with the idea that firearms in the US could effectively combat governmental tyranny. Situations such as Ruby Ridge and Waco could be handled by drones now. It's hard to believe that there is a principle at play here deeper than a simple love of guns.

Yeah, you're right. See, for instance, the way that the West totally put down the Taliban in Afghanistan and pacified the entire country, which is now peaceful to this day. The Taliban were just a bunch of illiterate goat herders with AKs, so there's no way they could stand up to the America's more technologically advanced army, plus the drones. And then look at Iraq, and Syria, and all of the other insurgencies invo…

Surely the big lesson from the middle East is that guns can deliver violent chaos or despotic centralism but not peaceful stability?

Re: Cody Wilson, the man who wants Americans to 3D print their own guns

#22
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case of unbearable government tyranny, the civilians are going to have an insurgency against their own fathers, sons, and brothers?

It happened in the civil war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_against_brother And that was with the sides largely being split geographically.

The idea that the sides were split geographically has some truth, but is overstated and a result of looking at the decisions of state governments -- there were supporters of the Union cause in states that seceded (and, in fact, there were union regiments raised from every state in the Confederacy except South Carolina), and supporters of the rebel cause in states that remained in the Union. The illusion of a clean geographic split is the result of the fact that a state government's choice to secede and join the confederacy or not was starkly binary.

Re: Cody Wilson, the man who wants Americans to 3D print their own guns

#23
post #6

IMHO this whole movement is out there to point out how ridiculous some legislation is. Pretty much anyone with a brain can make a deadly weapon with time and materials. They even make guns in prisons, so of course someone could 3d print the serialized parts of a gun. In certain types of guns those 3d printed parts are only minorly structual so they don't receive that much force, you could even conceivably hand carve…

I remember when there was a rumor going around of a guy who took an old shovel and made it into an AK type firearm. Found a link with photos: http://acidcow.com/pics/40255-ak-47-made-out-of-a-shovel-49-...

Re: Cody Wilson, the man who wants Americans to 3D print their own guns

#24
post #12
post #2

With the advancement of technology it's harder and harder to sympathize with the idea that firearms in the US could effectively combat governmental tyranny. Situations such as Ruby Ridge and Waco could be handled by drones now. It's hard to believe that there is a principle at play here deeper than a simple love of guns.

That's why the 2A states "arms" and not "firearms".

Right. If you ignore some 200 years of jurisprudence, you might have a point.

Re: Cody Wilson, the man who wants Americans to 3D print their own guns

#25
post #6

IMHO this whole movement is out there to point out how ridiculous some legislation is. Pretty much anyone with a brain can make a deadly weapon with time and materials. They even make guns in prisons, so of course someone could 3d print the serialized parts of a gun. In certain types of guns those 3d printed parts are only minorly structual so they don't receive that much force, you could even conceivably hand carve…

You can make a knife from a sharpened spoon, but you can do a lot more damage, more reliably, to more people, with a real sword. For now (although not forever) you're not going to 3D print an AR-15 Lower.

> you're not going to 3D print an AR-15 Lower

this has already been done plenty of times, and i have a sneaking suspicion is far more widespread than anyone is letting on.

meanwhile, you can just buy a hundred 80% lowers off the internet for probably less than a grand, and keep them around just in case.

plenty of "normal" people stockpile this stuff. they just aren't telling anyone about it.

Re: Cody Wilson, the man who wants Americans to 3D print their own guns

#26
post #2

With the advancement of technology it's harder and harder to sympathize with the idea that firearms in the US could effectively combat governmental tyranny. Situations such as Ruby Ridge and Waco could be handled by drones now. It's hard to believe that there is a principle at play here deeper than a simple love of guns.

Eh, all of those incidents are examples of dubious "He shot first!" claims on both sides. I don't think drones are going to make the government look any better.

Re: Cody Wilson, the man who wants Americans to 3D print their own guns

#27
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well guns don't do anything on their own, people do. Organizations of people overthrow governments. I think access to violence is important for the success of such organizations as the past has shown. I think your examples of the governments sieging individuals who refused to bend to its will just demonstrate what kind of resistance fails to threaten the government. The only way to resist a tyrannical government is t…

One of the most interesting things about the gun rights community is how strenuously this exact question of "where do you draw the bright line that, once crossed, you'll rise up?" is avoided. You know how that guy took that video of himself asking anti-abortion protestors, "if abortion is murder, then shouldn't we put women who procure abortions on trial for murder?" and they all just short-circuited, like they'd nev…

Indeed. Which is why the widespread social stigmatizing and LEA spying of militia membership is so very effective, and so very worrisome. No reasonable organized resistance could ever arise in the US, as it stands - even if despotism took hold.

Re: Cody Wilson, the man who wants Americans to 3D print their own guns

#29
post #2

With the advancement of technology it's harder and harder to sympathize with the idea that firearms in the US could effectively combat governmental tyranny. Situations such as Ruby Ridge and Waco could be handled by drones now. It's hard to believe that there is a principle at play here deeper than a simple love of guns.

The existence of an armed, trained civilian population prevents the current government from going completely insane with the vast power they've thus far been allowed to take and selectively abuse.

I'd love to see the people take some of the power back without a bloody, internal war.

Re: Cody Wilson, the man who wants Americans to 3D print their own guns

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happened in the civil war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_against_brother And that was with the sides largely being split geographically.

The idea that the sides were split geographically has some truth, but is overstated and a result of looking at the decisions of state governments -- there were supporters of the Union cause in states that seceded (and, in fact, there were union regiments raised from every state in the Confederacy except South Carolina), and supporters of the rebel cause in states that remained in the Union. The illusion of a clean ge…

According to [1] and [2] about 5% of Union soldiers were from southern states. "Largely" works for a split like that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Unionist

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Army

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