One being that your utility fog example brings to mind the fact that defense mechanisms, whether technology-based or not, frequently don’t function as designed when attacked by a different threat. “Bullet proof” body armor (actually isn’t, for the most part) will protect the wearer in many circumstances from some firearms, but are completely useless for explosives attacks for instance (IED’s, hand grenades, ANFO …, the list is a long one). From this example, the utility fog defense would have to be capable of protecting you from a wide variety of energy-transfer attacks (and that’s what a gun actually is; a device that transfers the chemical energy released within the firing chamber to a distant object via the bullet) as well as other attack vectors (a chemical/biological agent in the atmosphere say). Maybe a better approach would be to develop a means to destroy utility fog nanobots instead – then go give your attacker a swift kick in his macro-nads while he tries to diagnose his nanobot software glitch! The point being that any “weapon”, offensive or defensive, is limited as to its possible application, but weapon weilders are much less so.

My second point is that any technology imposes a certain degree of responsibility upon its users eventually – and firearms tech more than most. That being true, it seems a pity we don’t make a more general use of that circumstance and routinely train as many people as possible to use as much technology as safely and responsibly as possibe at the earliest age they are capable of learning the lesson. Such a policy probably wouldn’t reduce the number of nutjobs that turn up in society I suppose, but it would make the rest of us much more capable of limiting the damage they inflict either directly or in mitigation after the fact.

The personal liberty to decide for one’s self comes at the direct cost of being the potential receipient of anothers decision. You can’t have the one without accepting the other, so it seems merely good sense to become as accomplished as possible at as much as possible. For me, firearms technology is simply another technical skill set to incorporate into the rest of the precision machined tools I also know something about. 3D printing is just another in a long list of tools we all need to develop familiarity with unless we are willing to cede the strategic advantage to everyone willing to put forth the effort to learn and make ourselves subservient to them instead of equal.