Jessica Solce has just released one of the best documentaries of the year. Death Athletic follows the twists and turns in the life of Cody Wilson, ghost-gun pioneer, over the last seven years. Cody hit the headlines in the early 2010s when he released the first ever blueprints for a 3D-printed gun, the Liberator. He did this not because he wanted to make money or become famous — or infamous — but because he truly believed in the principles behind the American founding, not least of all the Second Amendment. Solce has managed to get closer and dig deeper into Wilson’s philosophy and motivations than anybody else, which is a real testament to her skill as a filmmaker and her qualities as a person.
In this latest episode, I sat down with Jessica for an hour to talk about the film and much much more.
Death Athletic is available to buy or rent on Amazon, Google and Apple TV. It can also be bought direct from the filmmaker herself at deathathletic.com. Payment can be made in crypto.
We reviewed the film a few weeks ago on MAN’S WORLD. Here are the opening paragraphs of that review, to set the scene:
If you can’t shake the feeling that life in the 2020s isn’t quite right, that all residual traces of excitement and expectation have disappeared, leaving only the resignation that nothing ever happens, you’re almost certainly not alone in that feeling. COVID changed everyone’s lives for the worse. All of us on the right know that and watched it happen in real time, and while the regime is now trying to memory-hole the worst insanities of the era with “COVID amnesty,” the COVID era itself seems to have done an excellent job memory-holing everything that came before. The 2010s were a decade of seemingly infinite possibility, when new technologies emerged or reached their full potential, making it into the hands of a fresh generation of rebels, reactionaries, revolutionaries, hackers, and, of course, criminals.
Edward Snowden and Julian Assange spent the 2010s in exile and in hiding in London’s Ecuadorian embassy. Ross Ulbricht spent most of the decade in prison, while John McAfee spent it on the run. Kim Dot Com had his private island raided, and Jim Watkins, owner and operator of perhaps the most notorious website of all time, 4Chan, was forced to testify behind closed doors in front of the Department of Homeland Security about his beleaguered website, which was deplatformed and taken offline multiple times. Cody Wilson spent five years battling in court for the right to publish the code for what became known as “ghost guns,” untraceable, homemade firearms available to anyone with a 3D printer. No sooner had he emerged victorious from court, he found himself embroiled in another, different kind of, legal battle, which pushed him out of the company, Defense Distributed, that he founded in 2012.
All of these men were considered criminals by the state and villains at least by the media. While most also became folk heroes, they remain to this day unredeemed in any official capacity. Some remain in prison or on the run. John McAfee is dead, probably murdered.
Cody Wilson is the one exception here, because he actually won his case in court, didn’t lose his business during the fight, and is not only alive to this day, but an active member of several online subcultures and a burgeoning art scene that’s still finding its legs.
Read the rest of the review here. The review will also feature in the last MAN’S WORLD Digest, which will be released on January 15, before the first fully published magazine releases in April.
IN THE RAW 10: Jessica Solce