Maybe you can’t 3D print a bump fire stock, but it is possible. I work with kids, as young as 3rd grade, who are learning to find designs (for example chess pieces) online, edit them in AutoDesk and TinkerCad, and upload them to print in a 3D printer. The STL file (think of it as the 3D version of a printed out piece of paper you can scan or photocopy in a 2D printer) is available free to download from the web to your computer, then print on a 3D printer. I would certainly NOT give permission for the 3D printer in the lab to whine away for hours printing out something like this, but there are places students can send that file to that would print it for them. Several of the kids I work with already have a 3D printer at home (you can buy them for $200 – $1500).
I am challenged as a parent and an educator to deliberately, frequently, and with attention to bias, reevaluate how I address leadership, morality, and a responsibility to build a more beautiful world alongside how to teach 3D CAD Design, 3D printing, and prototyping. I am reminded often of the excerpt of a letter written by a Holocaust survivor to educators, published in Haim Ginott’s “Teacher and Child.”
“I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education.
My request is:
Help your children become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths or educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.”
I try often and early to teach students to “inspire kids” (our password for many ventures), to not simply lay bricks, but build cathedrals (part of the training to articulate their project missions), to look for the why (Simon Sinek great talk in the leadership curriculum), to “imagineer a more beautiful world” and “quest for a worthy legacy” (part of the call and response for the research fellows).
I deliberately didn’t put the links to the bump fire stock stl files into this post. If you came here looking for that, please, take time to look at some of the inspiring projects you can get involved with. Make a gift of yourself for the betterment of others.
Build a 3D printed hand for a child who needs one
3D print toys for Toys for Tots
Create a shop of (non-weaponized) speciality items on Shapeways to benefit a charity.
And check out these kids making 3D models for meaningful projects!
If you have a child being trained in firearms, please take the time to teach empathy (all three types – emotional sharing “I feel… how does this make you feel”; empathetic concern “which of these charities should we give to to help the victims”; and perspective taking “how do you think the kids of this victim are feeling.”) The stories of 58 dead from Vegas can be found at https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/las-vegas-victims/?utm_term=.9a9a4510d1a2
Please read it through with them and remember the dead. Help grow a generation who imagineers a more beautiful world.
