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A model of 3D printed rifle called the FGC-9 (which stands for F*** Gun Control) is being used by rebels fighting against the authoritarian genocidal military junta in Myanmar which regained power after a military coup deposed the democratically elected leader in 2021. If that's not enough, the government of Myanmar is not at all shy about killing civilians, from what I've heard.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/guns-are-being-3d-printed-myanmar-199401
https://observers.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20220114-3d-printed-weapons-myanmar-rebels
Apparently they've got 3D printers set up in guerilla jungle hideouts. The creator of the FGC-9 was a young German-Kurdish man named Jstark who died recently, possibly of a heart condition.
My thoughts: It's sad that some progressive organizations might be reluctant to bring positive attention to the rebels or the tools they use because it arguably hurts their cause or something.
If I was a guy like Jstark or Cody Wilson, and I was concerned about PR, I might say something truthful but strategic like "the most important thing to me is getting these files somewhere where they can't be taken down and where they can be accessed by anyone, because that's the only way for me to help rebels like these. I care about the downsides of making these guns available, but I've calculated things and it is greatly overshadowed by the upside." Or something. I didn't phrase that well.
Edit: A cleaner way to say it: "the moral benefit of 3D-printed guns to citizens living under brutal authoritarian dictatorships in places like Myanmar is so great that the harm caused to the rest of the world would need to be truly massive in order to outweigh it, and I do not believe it is so massive, if it is indeed a net harm to the wellbeing of other countries."
Isn't that already a big part of what they're selling, only stated more broadly? The moral benefit of accessible firearms is that it prevents brutal authoritarian dictatorships, everywhere and always. This is most readily observable today in Myanmar, but I continue to believe that it holds true in places where the dynamic isn't as plainly visible. Shifting the focus to places like Myanmar feels like providing ammunition to the opposition - "OK, it's necessary in those places and our government can work with that, but no American civilians needs those weapons of war".
Big if true, but is it true? Does not seem to be universally true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Yemen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country
Country or subnational area Estimate of civilian firearms per 100 persons
3 Yemen 52.8
Yemen is a failed state that has been an active war zone since 2014. Not only has saudi support included indiscriminant bombing of civilians, but the US has supported and enhanced the suffering with funding of their own. I would be very careful in drawing conclusions from Yemen because A) the situation is still playing out and B) famine and lack of civilian healthcare is far more important for civilians in Yemen than civil rights abuses.
It's incorrect to claim that civilian gun ownership always defeats authoritarianism, but Yemen really isn't the cleanest case to use for either argument. It's more cleanly a case study in how foreign involvement in local politics tends to devolve into chaos. Gun ownership in the middle east is moreso a product of international arming campaigns aimed at politically involved insurgeants as opposed to civilians defending liberties. Distilling this down to gun ownership rates tends to ignore cultural and historical realities for particular regions.
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