Tag: 3D printing

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Common Sense First Amendment rights national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

Free Designs

3d printing, gun, gun rights, Second Amendment, First Amendment, gun control

The relationship between the First and Second Amendments is closer than commonly believed.

This is especially clear in the 3D gun printing story, the subject of yesterday’s Common Sense, “Progressive Designs.” As I finished the copy, a news story broke: U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik “muzzled Defense Distributed with a court order,” as Declan McCullagh puts it. 

And then, as McCullagh goes on, a mirror site appeared. Though Cody Wilson, the man behind Defense Distributed, immediately took his plans offline, “the Calguns Foundation, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and other civil rights groups” published plans for “AR-​15, AR-​10, Ruger 10 – 22, Beretta 92FS, and other firearms” on their sites.

This made my footnote especially relevant, for it was there that I noted that “plans like this have been available on the not-​exactly-​easy-​to-​access Dark Web for some time.” And now Cody Wilson’s precise “freely downloadable computer-​aided design (CAD) files,” though “dark” on his site, are bright elsewhere.

McCullagh admits that though it is certainly “possible that Defense Distributed may lose this legal skirmish and be prevented from returning its instructions to the DEFCAD site,” since such plans are now everywhere, and not easily stoppable, constitutionally, the “Second Amendment, it turns out, is protected by the First.”

Which is, of course, natural enough — for the Second Amendment’s protections of self-​defense has held power-​lusting politicians at bay, keeping Americans freer than citizens anywhere else. What other country has better free speech protections?

All freedoms help each other, reinforce each other.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
free trade & free markets individual achievement

Modern Tech Gives a Hand

This is a story about how technology is making things better. About 840 times better.

What’s represented by that multiple is price — the far lower price of a machine that 53-​year-​old Jose Delgado Jr. uses instead of the left hand he was born without.

For three years he had used a prosthesis costing $42,000. Its myoelectric technology detects electrical signals in muscle tissue in order to operate prosthetic fingers.Cyborg Beast

But the gadget’s capacity to grip? Rudimentary.

Now Delgado has a more capable prosthesis, the result of the latest technological breakthrough.

And it costs just 50 bucks.

3D printing has been advancing rapidly, sometimes controversially. It is now possible to produce a working metal gun with the technology.

It’s hard to see what can be controversial about Delgado’s new 3D-​printed prosthesis, though.

Is the price for real? Perhaps the $50 incorporates only immediate production costs, and that other factors involved in developing and marketing the Cyborg Beast could make it pricier. But given what’s been demonstrated, even its most expensive incarnations would have to be orders of magnitude cheaper than earlier prosthetic tech.

It also does the job better.

The Beast’s mechanical plastic fingers are much better articulated than those of its predecessor. It grips objects more firmly and precisely, manipulates them more dexterously. Delgado dramatically demonstrates the superiority in a YouTube video produced by 3D Universe.

Such products of human ingenuity are stunning. Yet soon we’ll take for granted what they now make possible for the first time. And there’s a lot more to come. We live in interesting times.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.