Feds Remove 3D-Printer Gun Design From Internet

But not really.

The revolutionary concept of 3-D printed firearms has been building momentum for months now. Online observers, innovators, investors and the generally curious celebrated as the first completely 3-D printed handgun became a reality. Since the blueprint for “The Liberator” hit the web, the file was downloaded more than 100,000 times in a few days.

Today, the government shut it down.

And in this case "shut it down" means they maybe made the file slightly harder to find. Because if you're looking for it, you'd certainly never think of looking on Pirate Bay or somewhere like that.

This move by the government was pretty predictable, as was the fact that it would induce more people to hunt down and download the plans than would otherwise have done so, what with the Streisand Effect and all.

But if you've been paying attention to Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed's founder, at all, this whole project has never been about guns anyway. It's about something more fundamental than that.

According to Wilson, the organization’s ideal goal is to test constitutional rights. “This is the conversation I want,” he says. “Is this a workable regulatory regime? Can there be defense trade control in the era of the Internet and 3D printing? I think this isn’t a project about firearms, it’s a project about political equality.”

This core problem with the left's predictable BAN ALL THE THINGS! response to events like Newtown is that it's wildly unrealistic as a solution to the problem they purport to address. I know this may come as a shock to regular readers of the HQ, but it would seem that the left is much more interested in using these events to justify their long march towards top-down, authoritarian control than it is in any of the particulars.

Guns have been around for centuries now, and the basic technology isn't going away. The 3D-printed gun isn't even all that revolutionary (it shares the name and basic idea of the FP-45 Liberator that we planned to flood Axis-occupied Europe with during World War II) and zip guns and other crude firearms are no big trick to make.

If you follow the left's anti-gun fetish to it's ultimate goal, a complete gun ban, then two groups wind up with guns: the government and criminals. In such a regime, it'd be awfully hard for anyone who values civil liberties to tell the difference between the two.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a file to share.

posted by Andy at 11:30 AM

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