Can’t Stop The Signal, Mal.
No, this post is not about the freshly-announced Firefly animated series. Rather, it’s about two other things.
The first is the recent attempt by the Commonwealth of Virginia to ban pretty much every firearm made after 1915. It won’t past muster in a post-Bruen world, of course, but it makes them feel like they’re doing something to fight crime by making it harder for those who don’t commit the crimes to protect themselves (yeah, I don’t get that either) and will ” help get the weapons of war off our streets.”
About that last point: I have said, here and elsewhere, that firearms innovate at the speed of the Industrial Revolution, while the rest of the world is innovating at the speed of Moore’s Law. The reason for this gap is because a gun is an inherently mechanical device: The firing pin hits the primer, the gunpowder charge goes kablooey and the projectile goes downrange. Everything about this (including reloading the next round) is a chemical/mechanical process that is pretty much immune to any possible changes from better electronics. Red dot sights and 3D printing/improved CNC machining during the build process are about the only ways the computer revolution has affected the world of firearms. Other than that, the method of operation for guns was set in stone in the early 20th century and little has changed since then.
However, let’s assume for a moment that we are entering a Gun Culture 3.0 world, where the individual right of armed self-defense begins to be applied to a group of people inside of a nation state (failed or otherwise). Now all of a sudden, we must go beyond the need to defend ourselves and our loved ones and defend the ability of ourselves and those around us to live peaceably. Homemade mortars were a thing during The Troubles, and the war in the Ukraine has shown us that cheap commercial drones equipped with improvised explosives can cause a world of hurt to an opposing force. Therefore, it stands to reason that any attempt to create the gringo equivalent of a Mexican autodefensa should include some kind of anti-drone defensive system.
Well, now it can, thanks to an open-source 3-D phased array radar system with a 15 mile range and a $96 man-portable air defense missile. Are either of these sophisticated cutting-edge systems that will survive on the front lines of today’s battlefields? No. Do they give a measure of protection where none has existed before? Yes.
To borrow a line from the beginning days of the internet, personal defense technology treats censorship as damage and routes around it.