Russell's Blog

Last Tuesday, I started writing an article about Thing 11770 on Thingiverse, a MakerBot Industries for sharing 3D printable objects. Thing 11770 is a reinforced 3D printable lower receiver for an AR-15 assault rifle. This is the part of the gun that feeds bullets from the magazine into upper receiver, which handles the cycling of the spent round and the insertion of the new round. With the right combination of upper and lower receiver, fresh rounds are cycled into the weapon using a portion of the kinetic energy from firing the previous round. When the trigger is pulled, this process happens continuously, firing one bullet after another. That is what it means to be an "automatic" weapon. Thing 11770 is particularly interesting because, legally speaking, the lower receiver is the gun itself. It is the engine that makes the gun a gun, rather than a movie prop. And you can 3D print it. And it works.

At very the moment I was hemming and hawing over how to articulate my feelings about this development, someone used an AR-15 to murder twenty seven people, including twenty children, ages six and seven at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Now I know exactly how I feel.

I love 3D printing. I love the maker movement. I love the idea of people building home-brew versions of all sorts of devices, and inventing entirely new classes of devices. 3D printing has played, and will continue to play, an important role in that.

When I was fourteen, like many boys at that age, I thought missiles and fighter planes and tanks were pretty awesome. I read a lot of Tom Clancy books, and I indulged in my interest by dragging my family to the Wright Patterson Air Force Base Museum, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, the California Science Center’s Air & Space Museum, and the Intrepid Air, Sea & Space Museum. At Wright Patterson, I visited the F-117 Nighthawk as many times as I could. The author of Thing 11770 calls himself "Have Blue," the codename for the Nighthawk demonstrator aircraft.

When I was sixteen, I went to boarding school, where I learned vector calculus and farming. I learned how to grub potatoes out of the freezing ground in the driving rain, how to make maple syrup, how to lay in beets and squash and onions for the winter. I stood on a windy mountain top and learned how to find the orbital ephemera of a comet. I learned how to milk cows, how to care for cows when they are sick, and how to make the most delicious yogurt and mozzarella cheese you could possibly imagine. I learned how to repair a tractor engine with a mallet and a wrench. One freezing night, I found myself covered in blood and shit and urine and fear as I helped bring a new life gasping and staggering into the world.

Farming also means slaughtering and butchering. One morning, I walked into the barn. I was handed a weapon. I was asked to take a life.

I found that I could not.

Not ever.

The instant my shoulders took up the weight of the strange, snub nosed machine, it felt like the weight of the metal hung from my heart, stretching and distorting it. I wanted the weight of it to tear me apart, but I knew it was a weight I could carry, if I wanted to. I quietly handed the gun back to the farm manager, and walked out into the thawing snow, and spent the rest of the black pre-dawn puking into the mud behind the water tower.

Many people have wondered why I do not eat meat. This is why. For the rest of my life, I will feel the weight of that terrible little machine.

There are reasons to make, to have and to use guns. To defend your country, yes. To humanely put down an animal before butchering it, perhaps. For vainglory? For entertainment? No.

Tools are sacred things. We are a tool-using species; our tools are projections of our hopes and aspirations. When we are filled with joy, we pick up our tools and hammer the air into music. We need to understand and to be understood, and so we shape our voices into language. We send our tools delicately probing into the bodies of our loved ones, seeking out cancers and blood clots and infections. We invest huge amounts of effort building and maintaining tools that allow us to speak to one another across great distances. We hurl our tools across the void to other planets to satisfy our craving for knowledge. When we grieve, we take up our tools and carve the names of those we have lost into the living rock of our planet. Our tools are our souls. They are our defining characteristic. Love may be what makes us alive, but our tools are what make us human.

A gun is a tool. It is a simple tool. Any man or woman or child can use one. A gun is not much more complicated than a can opener, and not nearly as sophisticated as cordless screwdriver. Like all tools, a gun reveals something fundamental about its maker, its wielder and its abuser. This is true for all weapons.

As a strong supporter of the maker movement, of free and open source software, of open science, I want people to have as much freedom as possible to make and remake and experiment. I also believe very, very strongly in the responsibly we have to one another. I believe that we each have a responsibility not make things that hurt and kill and destroy.

I am not yet prepared to call for a law to prohibit Have Blue from posting functional 3D printable assault rifle parts on the internet. The law is a blunt instrument, and would cause a great deal of collateral damage. However, I am prepared to say that Have Blue is a fucking asshole. I am prepared to call Justin Halford, who created the original CNC model, a fucking asshole. I am prepared to say that anyone who considers themselves a "gun enthusiast" and is older than about sixteen needs to grow the fuck up. The maker community should not tolerate this behavior. Meditate on the meaning of the word antisocial for a moment. What could be more antisocial than gleefully proliferating machines whose principal function is murder?

The maker community should not tolerate these designs, or the ideas and opinions of their designers until they show evidence of behaving like adults. It's clear that the CNC Gunsmithing community has a lot of talented, clever people. It's clear from reading his blog that Have Blue is neither ignorant nor stupid.

So, I'm calling you folks out. There are twenty children dead in Connecticut. Their bodies were ripped apart by the very machines you are "democratizing." As far as I know, nobody has used your designs to kill anyone. If you continue down this path, some future version of Thing 11770 will be used to murder little children. It's just a matter of time, and probably a lot less time than you think. However, there is still time to take a stand. Do the right thing. Take down the designs. Apologize for what you've done. Find a new project. Use your talents for something good. This will not stop people from murdering children with 3D printed guns, but perhaps you can buy us some time before that day comes. You know that this is true.

If making home-brew assault rifles is really what you want to do, there is perhaps one venue where this might actually make sense. Freight your CNC machine to Istanbul, and smuggle it into Homs or Aleppo. Help the Free Syrian Army get rid of Bashar Assad. Oh wait, what’s that? You don't want to get shot? Fancy that.

It takes courage to admit you are wrong. Show us some courage.

Update : It appears that MakerBot has decided to remove Thing 11770 from Thingiverse. If you follow the link to the item, the files have been removed and a message says, "This Thing is currently under moderation for violating the Thingiverse Terms of Service. Files and images for this Thing are currently unavailable." I'm glad it's no longer up, but I am disappointed in how this was handled. I'm disappointed that MakerBot left it up for so long, but I'm also disappointed that Have Blue didn't just take it down himself.