The idea of gun control is, at least as described to the American public, that you can keep guns out of the hands of bad people by putting rules in place that also makes it harder for the average citizen to have a firearm.

It’s funny, because while many proponents laugh at “trickle-down economics,” they really do seem to buy into trickle-down gun control.

But the idea behind it is what it is, and I see what they’re trying to say. If we can’t get guns, then bad people can’t steal them from us to sell them on the black market.

Yet that idea is nonsense on a lot of levels. The problem there is that some people won’t listen to why it’s an issue.

So, Cody Wilson came into the picture to make it all irrelevant.

In 2013, Cody Wilson printed the Liberator. The Liberator was the first 3D-printed firearm. His goal was simple. It was to make all gun control obsolete.

Wilson hoped that the gun world would embrace 3D printing and other methods of getting around gun control. Wilson’s dream came to fruition. Talented gun designers used computer-aided drawing (CAD) software to design and print firearms at home on 3D printers that cost as low as $100. At the same time, companies like Polymer80 sprung up to sell kits that let home users finish a piece of plastic into an unserialized firearm frame.

The revolution caused the Biden administration to order the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to make new rules to prevent the dissemination of these kits that he and other anti-gun zealots demonized as “ghost guns.” The ATF rolled out a new rule that would make it a crime to sell a frame blank with a jig, but the market adapted. This adaptation once again forced the ATF’s hand. Two days after Christmas in 2022, the ATF would give anti-gun groups a belated gift. It would unilaterally declare frame blanks firearms. Giffords, Brady, and Everytown celebrated the closing of the so-called “ghost gun loophole” and the banning of “tools of criminals.”

Their victory would be short-lived as the injunctions from Federal courts in Texas started rolling in. First, it was 80% Arms, then Wilson’s Defense Distributed, and finally, Polymer80, meaning the original kits were back on the market. Although most of the industry was now back to selling the original product, liberal states started banning the sale of unfinished firearm frames and receivers.

Defense Distributed would take these states head-on by releasing a 0% AR-15 lower receiver for the company’s Ghost Gunner, a desktop CNC machine. The 0% lower was a hit with the gun-building community. All the user had to do was mill out the middle section of the lower and attach it to a top piece and a lower portion. Even if a state were to ban 80% AR-15 lowers, it would be impossible to ban a block of aluminum, although states like California have tried to ban the Ghost Gunner itself.

I’m not a huge tech guy. I like what it can do for us, of course, and I tend to adopt it sooner or later. I’m just not an early adopter. I want stuff to be proven, first.

What Wilson basically did was take technology that was already proving itself and put together a way to make gun control irrelevant.

Now, no matter what people want to do, there’s a machine that will do it.

As noted, California has tried to ban the Ghost Gunner, but even if they were successful, they wouldn’t be successful. It’s a desktop CNC machine. There are going to be other CNC machines out there and someone will find a way to obtain one of those and still build their own guns.

“But they’re untraceable!”

Guys, guns aren’t as traceable as you’d like to believe. I mean, they can be traced, but pretty much only to the original buyer. If it was stolen or sold by them, oftentimes the trail comes up cold. Tracing isn’t the end all, be all of law enforcement.

With Wilson’s work–and the efforts of a lot of other people afterward–it’s time for gun control advocates to just accept defeat. They’re never going to disarm us, much less the bad guys. We can and will have ways to make guns on our own. Plenty of them, in fact.

It’s now time to start looking at other ways to reduce so-called gun deaths. It won’t be as sexy as gun control but it will actually work for a change.