No matter how much some people want to push for gun control, the era of it even remotely having a chance in hell are over. Not only are there too many guns already in circulation for any scheme to really work, technology has also had its say. Thanks to things like 3D printing, the era of tightly controlled firearms are over.

At the heart of the 3D printed firearm revolution is one name, above all: Cody Wilson.

Over at Reason, they decided to talk about Cody and just why he’s effectively killed any reasonable expectation of gun control working.

“Gun control is not dead, gun control is undead,” explains Cody Wilson, the director of Defense Distributed. “We just keep killing it but it keeps coming back.”

Wilson, a crypto-anarchist and serial “troublemaker,” helped launch the age of the digital gun when he published files showing how to make the Liberator, a 3D-printed pistol, in 2013. It set off a panic in the media and in anti-gun political circles, and the State Department demanded Defense Distributed remove the files from their website.

But five years after the Liberator debut, the technological limitations of homemade firearms have started disappearing. The materials are cheaper and better, the machines are more precise, and the software is more advanced. Groups of hobbyist gun printers started gathering in IRC chats and internet forums, and are working together to make their own gun designs. It’s a new reality that hasn’t entirely filtered into public debates over gun control.

Watch the video on Wilson’s efforts:

Wilson’s comments about zombie gun control really hit home with me, as I’m sure it will with you. After all, how many times do we have to kill bogus arguments before they finally stay dead?

Will Wilson’s efforts, and those of people like him, ultimately be the headshot on the zombie that is gun control? It’s hard to say for certain. We can dream, but as the video notes, Wilson has also had to deal with government meddling in the distribution of files needed for printing firearms, which explains the renewed focus on handguns.

I like the strategy.

Anti-gun crusaders hate what Wilson is doing. After all, bad people can use this technology to make guns and circumvent gun control laws, but that’s kind of the point. The era of being able to control what kind of firearms or how many firearms someone has is long since over. People can make their own guns, as many as they want, and the government has no say on the topic.

Which is how it’s supposed to be.

No, none of us want armed criminals, but that genie’s been out of the bottle since the first gun control measures were enacted. A disarmed criminal population is never going to happen, even without this technology.

However, it does make it incredibly difficult for politicians to keep otherwise law-abiding people from having the kind of firearms they want through meddlesome laws. Frankly, that’s what I think really bothers the politicians. It’s not about failing to control the criminals. They’re used to that one. No, the problem is that now they can’t control the rest of the population and that outright terrifies them.