Analysis: How Defense Distributed Already Upended the World
Defense Distributed
By
Philip Bump
Company claims that the idea is out there and online sharing will do the rest.
Defense Distributed's goal is to evaporate the container described by the Second Amendment, making obtaining a firearm trivial enough that even trying to place restrictions on gun manufacturing becomes useless. It may get there. But first — and not necessarily intentionally — it's leadership is in tossing 3D-printed objects into the great pool of online sharing.
If you click on the "Manifesto" menu item at the group's website, you're taken, somewhat melodramatically, to an essay from the poet John Milton entitled, "Areopagitica: Plea for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing." Preceding any semblance of a free press in England, it, in short, rejects censorship and demands the freedom of the written word. The analogy for Defense Distributed is obvious: Attempting to constrain ideas will always be futile in the long run.