In a tart item at NRO today, Kevin D. Williamson points out that eleven times more people die each year from neglecting to fill their heart-disease prescriptions than in gun assaults, and makes the piquant observation that “Gun control isn’t about guns; it’s about control.”
Well, here’s something that should enliven the discussion: out there somewhere is a fellow who has made himself an AR-15 with a 3-D printer.
I don’t think most people realize just yet how mind-bogglingly revolutionary this technology is; I had no idea myself before seeing it in action at Singularity U in April. But given this universal tool, and a supply of simple raw materials, each of will soon have the power to manufacture, at negligible cost, any physical object whose material structure can be represented as digital information.
We’ve always said that the pen is mightier than the sword. Now the pen is the sword. How are you going to keep that genie in the bottle?
3 Comments
Alternatively, “How are you going to keep that sword zipped in your pants?”
Yes, rather a tangled metaphor there. Guilty as charged.
I wasn’t trying to diminish your metaphor; I was coining an off-color one.