...and a few more parts yield precision warfare. A single individual with a recipe, a 3D printer and $96 just shattered the monopoly on high-tech violence.

A video, along with the plans, has recently surfaced showcasing “Project Canard,” an open-source, 3D-printed guided rocket system that recalculates its trajectory mid-air using a $5 sensor and some piano wire. The creator, operating under the GitHub handle novatic14, has essentially handed the keys to advanced surface-to-air defense to anyone with an internet connection and a spool of plastic filament.

George Mason, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, once profoundly questioned, "I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials." And what weapons those officials possess must be available to the whole people.

...

"If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath
I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. “Poor young chap,”
I’d say — “I used to know his father well;
Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.”
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I’d toddle safely home and die — in bed."

“Base Details” by the British World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon