By now, you’ve probably heard about the Liberator pistol being produced by Defense Distributed. It was designed and executed on a 3D printer, it’s made of plastic, and it works to some extent. The best part is that the company made the schematics and instructions public.
Yep. An open-source gun.
The Department of State took notice, and in a fit of bureaucratic clue deficit, they’ve attempted to remove it from the internet. The blurb they’ve put up on the site reads, “until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.”
Yeah. Um…no. Nobody tell them that’s not possible, okay? As I write this, the file has been mirrored all over the place. By trying to clamp down on it, the government has ensured that it is being more widely disseminated than it ever would have been if they’d just left it alone. Let’s just savor the irony for a moment. Continued...