Unalienable rights, unintended consequences, and 3D printing guns

What spurs me to write about this topic isn’t -- thankfully -- another mass shooting. (Does that mean it's a good time to talk about gun policy? Is there ever a good time?)

Rather, I listened to an unexpectedly horrifying podcast.

I get it and feel it. I understand that it is bad. But I'm already in a place - like an activist mentality - what is going to be done with this event? How is this going to be used? How is this going to be used against me? Look. I mean, that's where I am.

Let’s decode the pronouns. “This event” is Newtown. (Yes, that Newtown.) “It” is murder. The guy quoted above is Cody Wilson, who has been a driving force behind using 3D printers to make guns and gun parts.

Podcasts regularly feature some grisly crimes and terrible people. Can’t say I was expecting it from NPR’s economics podcast “Planet Money” though. Wilson was featured in the episode, “The Gun Man”.

When he learned about the murder of children, his reaction as an “activist” was to be primarily concerned with how it impacted his dream of making most any type of gun available to anyone with access to a 3D printer.

To put it kindly, Wilson comes across as the guy you hope never talks to you at a party.

Technology has empowered him -- and others like him -- in a way that likely can't be walked back. He really can make untraceable guns from widely available technology. That knowledge really has spread around the world. Short of Station Eleven-style mass regression in technology, 3D printing capabilities are only going to improve.

Sure, we’ve had weapons capable of mass destruction for a long time. It’s just before the advent of commercial assault weapons, it took some work and usually the approval of several other people to commit the sort of carnage, say, the lone Vegas gunman did. (Or the Sutherland Springs gunman. Or any of the other 307 mass shootings in the U.S. during 2017.)

Mass availability of assault weapons has given us a society where an individual can decide to end dozens of lives in a couple of seconds. Now with 3D printing, you can expect the distribution of assault weapons to hit overdrive in the near future. Pretty much anyone who wants to take a lot of lives won't be stopped by lack of tools to do so.

Side note: An important thing about those who use assault weapons professionally -- military and, in some instances, law enforcement -- is that there's a command structure. It’s odd that in some ways, our soldiers face more restrictions firing their weapons than the “Stand Your Ground” law that kept George Zimmerman out of jail.

The problem is that in our modern world, a lax approach towards anything approaching gun control coupled with ever-evolving technology means that unintended consequences -- mass murder by a deranged individual, intimidating the exercise of free speech by those who aren't armed -- comes at the expense of the “unalienable” rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Think about John Locke’s idea of unalienable rights: he (and later, the Founders) believed in the revolutionary idea that they weren’t granted by a king or government. Rather, these rights are given to everyone simply by the virtue of being human. The purpose of government, first and foremost, is to protect those rights.

Of course, anyone who says there's an easy policy solution for any of this is conning you. It's true that most other countries don't have issues with mass shootings because of tight gun control. However, short of waiting for generational change in the Supreme Court , it isn't happening here. (Thanks DC vs. Heller.) I’m also skeptical about most proposals regulating 3D gun printing since I don't know how it's practical to meaningfully regulate a machine that runs a computer program to shape plastic.

I worry, though, that having our gun policy effectively set by people like Cody Wilson will come at a great expense. Namely, the rights we'll see scaled back are those the Second Amendment was originally intended to protect.

Our biases conspire against us

Extended breaks, like the one brought by the recent spurt of snow and ice, mess me up a little. The initial thrill wears off the first day so, then a lazy routine sets in, then I get anxious. I crave the structure and productivity of a work day while simultaneously wanting to do anything but work. It’s pretty close to the opposite of living in the moment. You can imagine requisite unsettledness that comes with it.

Hanging around the house with a two-year-old who is off his normal routine, unsurprisingly, exacerbates this. I wish his total focus on whatever is in front of him rubbed off on me, but it doesn’t work that way.

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One of the takeaways from Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert’s research is that we are awful at predicting what will make us happy. To be more precise, we pursue the short-term boost, ignore the after-effects, and neglect the long-term investments needed to achieve happiness. Eat the donut, put off the call to a long-lost friend. Fixate on buying the sports car, neglect the daily run. Stay on the couch watching superhero movies, don't write the blog entry rattling around my head. And so forth, ad infinitum.

I’ve known this for years, read a few books by Gilbert and others like him, and still find myself with a non-productivity hangover at the end of breaks. You should’ve finished this. Why didn’t you use L’s nap time more productively? You haven’t been to work and you’re still going to be behind.

Did I plan entire trip around getting a chocolate milkshake from Hugh Baby’s two days ago? Yes. Did I practice guitar each day -- something I enjoy, but hate to start? No. Did I complete (insert paperwork I’ve been needing to finish for a week)? Don’t be silly. (Yes, I know that’s an ambiguous answer. What’s your point?)

So I know all of this stuff, yet cognitive biases still get me. Not all of the time -- I’m more ambitious in the morning (...when I can drag myself out of bed…) and once I get going, I can stick with something pretty easily. I love the payoff of getting something done. But it’s really friggin’ hard getting there.

I don’t have much a grand summation. Life can be challenging and our brains sometimes conspire against us. Pretty odd piece of the human condition.

My main comfort is that most everyone reading this likely struggles with same phenomenon. Another weird feature of our brains -- solidarity in unhappiness. Funny how that works.

The Devil and Tom Cotton

Trump has an odd talent for forcing everyone who supports him to make a Faustian bargain.

Take the case of Sens. David Perdue and Tom Cotton. They lied on national television Sunday, saying that Trump didn’t say “shithole countries.” This was to counter Sen. Dick Durbin confirming that Trump said “shithole countries” in the senators’ meeting with Trump on immigration. Perdue and Cotton were, not surprisingly, obfuscating. They told White House privately that they believed they heard “shithouse” -- a distinction without difference.

Imagine the thought process one must go through to deliberately mislead a nation thanks to the difference between shithole and shithouse. You wouldn’t tolerate that nonsense from a six-year-old. Certainly, black congressmen aren't missing the point:

“The words don’t matter,” Mr. Richmond (D-La.) said. “The words just cement his sentiment that the people in those countries are less worthy, and he would like people from different countries. He chose the black countries to say he didn’t want those people and one of the whitest countries to say he did want them. I think that’s telling.” 

Asked if he saw any difference between the two words, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican in the chamber, was equally dismissive: “No,” he said.

Trump’s mendacity is well known. What is more telling at this point is what is revealed about Perdue and Cotton. To wit: they are moral weaklings. They've now shown they will lie at the slightest convenience. They will cover for the sort of racism that is far more consequential the “locker room talk” it’s written off as because lowbrow banter rarely comes with the stakes of 800,000 people having their lives turned upside down.

Trump has been cruel and racist for a long time. (I find his bit part in the case of now-exonerated Central Park Five particularly nasty and telling.) What changed is we can now confirm that Perdue and Cotton are much the same way. To paraphrase football coach Denny Green, they are who we thought they were.

They aren’t the only ones. Paul Manafort, Anthony Scaramucci, Kellyanne Conway, and Sean Hannity are just a few of the many who made ridiculous statements, lied, and, in some cases, committed crimes because of Trump. They who didn’t merely sacrifice their dignity on Trump’s behalf -- they’ve shown they never had any in the first place.

The lesson of Faust is not just that making a deal with the devil costs you your soul. It's also that the pursuit is poison in itself.

Note to Cotton, Perdue, and their ilk: the kicker of every Faustian bargain is the devil never delivers what he promised.