letter to the editor
Dear editor,
I am writing in response to Shawn Fredericks’ opinion piece, “Ghost guns: The moral imbalance of technological progress,” about Cody Wilson, founder of Defense Distributed, and “ghost guns.”
Cody Wilson won in court because the legal case against Wilson’s distribution of 3D-printed firearm designs was poor. Attributing his victory on Trump, who said that legalizing 3D-printed firearms “doesn’t seem to make much sense,” is questionable. The fact is that sharing code is no different than engaging in any other form of speech, and is therefore protected by our first amendment rights.
With that said, if you want to envision a reality where “anyone, no matter their mental fitness or morality, has access to a firearm,” to quote Pirates of the Caribbean, “you’re in one.” It is not illegal for neo-Nazis to purchase or build firearms. Any odious person can walk into a gun store and purchase a firearm provided they pass a federal background check. Those of low moral fiber and poor mental fitness can easily build a functioning shotgun with two pipes and some hardware from The Home Depot. Those who want more capable firepower can purchase an “80 percent” lower receiver online and with minimal machining have a firearm as deadly as anything on the civilian market today, no background check necessary. In the 1990’s, P.A. Luty was arrested in the U.K. for possessing a functioning homemade submachine gun (the design of which exists in his book, readily and legally available on the internet as a PDF) that he made with hardware store materials and could be machined with a hacksaw. The brave new world you describe exists right now, yet by all accounts crime and violence in the U.S. are generally on the decline (Pew Research, 2018).
If you are afraid of people having easy access to firearms because of racism, sexism and classism, I ask you to consider the 20th century. How many unarmed were killed in the name of racism in the Holocaust? How many unarmed were killed in the name of classism in the Holodomor or Cultural Revolution? Putting the horrors perpetrated by authoritarian governments aside, racism, sexism and classism on the societal level are also curbed by access to firearms, not worsened. Mr. Fredericks’ own opinion piece titled, “The Second Amendment: A white man’s civil right,” could easily have been retitled “The racist history of gun control” and made an extremely convincing case without many changes in the actual text. It is also dubious to assert that access to firearms promotes sexism when no technology has put women and men at more equal physical footing than the firearm. Finally, with regards to classism, Karl Marx himself said, “[u]nder no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.”
Mr. Fredericks’ framing of Cody Wilson’s code distribution is misleadingly framed as dangerously revolutionary, when in reality access to firearms and the preservation of civil liberties have been intertwined for hundreds of years. The 20th century proved that governments cannot be trusted with a monopoly on firearms access. Cody Wilson’s exercise of free speech is exactly that, and should be protected.
Nathan Hart is a graduate student studying nuclear engineering.