MEDIAITE: A Libertarian Insurgency In The Press. “In a fractured media environment with an ever-shrinking universe of potential readers and viewers, media firms are seeking out dedicated audiences that they do not have to expend the energy and capital themselves to build. Among the more loyal audience of political news and opinion consumers are those with a libertarian bent – particularly because they have been so underserved for years. That is changing. Media firms appear eager to capitalize on the growing trend among voters towards individual liberty. Good for them. The question then becomes, when will the political class catch up?”

Kinda-sorta related: 3D-Printed Gun Creator Cody Wilson Lands Quarter Million Dollar Book Deal.

When Cody Wilson published the blueprint for the first fully 3D-printable gun on the web last spring, the controversy around that digital weapon led to its being downloaded 100,000 times in two days. Now Simon & Schuster is hoping the same sort of buzz can sell books.

Wilson, who leads the 3D-printed gun group Defense Distributed, signed a quarter-million dollar deal with Simon & Schuster’s Gallery imprint in December to write a non-fiction book chronicling his quest to create the first fully 3D-printable lethal weapon. Though Wilson says the book won’t be a “philosophical treatise,” he tells me he’ll use the opportunity to fully explain his ideological motivations for creating a deadly firearm anyone can download and print in the privacy of their garage. The book’s working title is Negative Liberty, Wilson says, based on a principle of freedom from external restraints in libertarian political theory.

My next Popular Mechanics column is on 3D-printed guns.