The New New
How Guns Became the New Free Speech
Cody Wilson, champion of the 3D-printed handgun, is facing sexual assault charges. It will likely do nothing to slow the march of his brainchild.
Cody Wilson used one word to summarize the culminating event in his years-long lawsuit against the U.S. government: “Epochal.”
This was in July, when news became public about the Department of Justice reaching a legal settlement with Defense Distributed, the Texas nonprofit Wilson founded in 2012 to help distribute 3D-printed firearms. And the response was what I expected from Wilson, a 30-year-old provocateur prone to self-mythologizing. I met him in 2014, when he was 26, after he had successfully designed, manufactured, and test-fired the Liberator, the world’s first fully 3D-printed gun. That breakthrough, and his subsequent effort to disseminate the blueprint to anyone with an internet connection, unleashed all manner of hell.
Wilson has long been a showman, equal parts ideologue and 1960s ad man, prone to philosophical meandering and asseverations about state tyranny and possessing a penchant for deliberately poking the political class. His sincerity was often questioned, but even four years removed, I knew what a victory over the federal…
