New Book Alert

Most of you know of Cody Wilson, the guy who created the Liberator in 2013, the world's first open source gun.  The Liberator and other work in the field has been covered here often.  Defense Distributed, Cody's company, released the Ghost Gunner, a totally open source small CNC machine introduced with the idea of producing open source hardware and software guns.  Like it or not, conventional machining (subtractive manufacturing) with a small metal-cutting mill has an enormous advantage in the materials it can use versus 3D printing (additive manufacturing). The first home-class 3D printer that can print metals like the big boys can will be a global game changer.  Right now, there aren't even any moderate strength alloys available coming out of 3D printers that are priced for the "home user" segment.

I wanted to pass on that Cody has a new book out, "Come and Take It: The Gun Printer's Guide to Thinking Free".  There might have been announcements or a coordinated book buy, but I missed all that.  I caught Cody on Dana Loesch's show on the Blaze, and bought the book Tuesday.  I've only cracked the cover and read the preface, which is on the Amazon page.  An excerpt from that:

...At one of these twilight salons sat Chris Hancock, an old classmate of mine, his tangled black hair brushed from his face. He had brought a friend.

“You remember WikiLeaks!” I insisted to them both. “Do you recall the insurance files?”

“WikiLeaks sends everything they’ve got out to the public in advance. It’s all published and torrented but protected from reading by some long password, right?” Chris answered.

“Exactly,” I said, losing the word on my breath. “And in the event the states move in for some final shutdown, only then do they release the password. The copies were already distributed. The damage sits waiting to be done. Maybe the files had been seeded for months, maybe years. You can’t pull them all down. The threat is credible because everyone has a computer. Every computer is always already on the Internet.”

“Peer-to-peer technology gives you leverage, sure. So, what are you saying?”

“What I’m saying is you can leak more than emails and cables. There are new machines—networked, material printers. They use complex and evolving materials. Into this budding universe of digital production . . . you leak a gun.”

I liked to watch the realization come to people in stages. It had been no different with Chris. Except on this night he made a conceptual leap.

“A Wiki Weapon,” he mused, looking down at the square candle on our table.

And I admit I was a little stunned by the words. Alarmed, even, that the clever coinage was a sign I still didn’t understand the significance of the proposition after these months. They made me jealous too.

Chris’s friend looked at both of us then, his face flushed with the chill of true and unwelcome surprise. And I whispered it:

“We are the heartworms of history.”

The eminent science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Although 3D printing may seem like magic, it came from very practical beginnings. 

The book goes through the trials Cody has been put through by our anti-freedom government.  The Feds, with their infinite checkbook, have run Cody and Defense Distributed through as much hardship as they could generate, costing him over a million dollars.  The book appears to be an attempt to defray some of those costs.  It details the lengthy battles, invoking ITAR laws to tie their hands behind their backs, and trying to stop them in every way.  I bought the hardback version on the chance that it might be revoked some day and rounding up every copy will be harder than revoking an e-book.  Plus the hard copy has redacted text blacked out, as ordered by the Fed.gov.  It adds a certain ... je ne sais quoi ... odor of tyranny to emphasize their actions.