On Monday, with little fanfare and
less comment — primarily because none was needed — Defense Distributed unveiled a
3D-printed lower receiver for an AR-15 that stood up to hundreds of
rounds of fire. Succinctly, the
video on Youtube was accompanied by the statement, “Does not
fail from firing stresses. 600+ rounds.” Just as important, and the
purpose of all this effort, the group made plans for the
receiver available for download by all and sundry at DefCad.
Defense Distributed’s video and 3D printer plans are a clever and
powerful blow to politicians’ efforts to restrict Americans’
abilities to own the means of self-defense. They may also be a
glimpse of a future in which human liberty is largely dependent on
an ability to limit the reach of the state through technological
innovation and grassroots defiance.

It wasn’t long ago that Defense Distributed was
getting some ribbing for the quality of its subversive efforts
when its first attempt at a receiver fell apart after six shots.
Then, the group unveiled a
high-capacity rifle magazine that could be manufactured in a
home workshop on a
3D printer. They named it “Cuomo” after New York’s
control-freaky governor. Not so much ribbing.

Now, within months of the initial experiments we have a rifle
lower receiver — the legal “gun” part of an AR-15, so far as the
government is concerned — that can handle hundreds of rounds and
keep going. As Defense Distributed responded to New York Democratic
Rep. Steve Israel’s announced intention to develop some sort of
magical legal blockade to the home manufacture of firearms and
magazines, “Good
luck.“

I’m not a believer that we’re tumbling into some sort of
dystopian future of totalitarian control. Well, not in the short
term, anyway. I’m ecstatic that we’ve moved in a few, short years
from “just say no” to fully legal marijuana in two states and
national poll numbers that would support the same policy across the
country.

Likewise, expanding recognition of same-sex marriage has given
gays and lesbians access to the legal benefits that have been tied
to that institution. It also makes them feel more like full
citizens rather than a despised minority.

These are excellent developments for personal freedom.

But I can’t help but notice that legal marijuana and gay
marriage may challenge government officials’ prejudices, but they
pose no threat to the power of the state. Firearms ownership does.
So does privacy. Yesterday’s
Supreme Court decision in Clapper v. Amnesty
International made clear the legal contortions through which
the state is willing to go to maintain and extend its ability to
spy on us, snooping into our politics, our personal lives and our
finances.

In the future privacy, like self-defense rights, will likely
depend on our ability to ignore and subvert the state with
technological protections including encrypted communications and
alternative currencies. Communications services like
Silent Circle (and its inevitable competitors) and anonymous or
nearly anonymous currencies like
Bitcoin may preserve the privacy that the state would like to
deny us.

Defense Distributed is an inherently political effort, focusing
as it does on the AR-15 rifle that is the focus of government
officials’ two-minutes hate. No clearer raised middle finger to
government could there be in the current gun control debate. But
we’re going to need more such flipped birds in the years to come —
more liberty-preserving innovations that say, “you pass the laws
that you want, and we’ll render them impotent before the ink is
dry.”