DHS Memo: 3D Guns Give People Power; the Sky is Falling!

27 May, 2013 by Greg Campbell

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As readers may already know, I am a huge fan of DefCad’s 3D-printed gun, the Liberator. Sure, it’s bulky, prone to breaking and is a single-shot pistol that I sure wouldn’t grab as my primary defense weapon if I heard a methhead breaking into my house in the middle of the night.

What makes the Liberator so great is not what it is, but what it represents. To those who value freedom and the God-given, Constitutionally-protected, judicially-affirmed right to keep and bear arms, the Liberator is a turning point in the gun rights struggle.

The ability to create a gun, divorced from governmental oversight and approval, is a checkmate on the governmental oppressors who insist that monitoring and approving who may and may not have the right to own a gun is, somehow, not an infringement.

And, if nothing else, the Liberator is great because it is forcing the leftist gun-grabbers to brown their shorts over the notion that the lowly peasants have reclaimed the manufacturing process of firearms.

The Department of Homeland Security recently issued a memo that outlined the danger of people being able to create guns.

A May 21 bulletin distributed to numerous state and federal law enforcement agencies and obtained by FoxNews.com states that the guns, which can be made by downloading blueprints into cutting edge computers that mold three-dimensional items from melted plastic, “poses public safety risks” and are likely beyond the current reach of regulators. The guns threaten to render 3D gun control efforts useless if their manufacture becomes more widespread.

“Significant advances in three-dimensional (3D) printing capabilities, availability of free digital 3D printer files for firearms components, and difficulty regulating file sharing may present public safety risks from unqualified gun seekers who obtain or manufacture 3D printed guns,” warns the bulletin compiled by the Joint Regional Intelligence Center.

The bulletin refers specifically to Defense Distributed, a nonprofit company started by a University of Texas law student, which has successfully made and fired a 3D gun whose only metal parts are the bullets and a small firing pin. Some 100,000 plans for a gun called “The Liberator” were downloaded in just a few days before May 3, when a branch of the U.S. State Department told it to stop sharing the file. But the government bulletin seems to acknowledge that the genie is out of the bottle.

“Limiting access may be impossible,” concludes the three-page bulletin.

I like to believe that the official memo was circulated with the subject line: “Subject: Sky Falling.”

Yes, people can be killed by a 3D gun. Now that we can accept that fact, can we, as a society, turn our focus to the deterrence of malice and evil and the cultural malaise that has created a destabilized society instead of the tools with which people can wreak havoc?

The Liberator pistol showcases the absurdity that hunks of metal or hunks of plastic are the problem. It is not the tool that creates violence. Let’s not forget that the two biggest instruments of destruction of life in the past twenty years have been a few boxcutters and a Ryder truck filled with fertilizer and diesel.

Greg Campbell is the Chief Correspondent for The Tea Party News Network and is the lead gun rights columnist for resistancemovement.com. Follow him on Twitter:Follow @GregCampbell_18