3D printed guns just cleared a major legal hurdle

Have you been outside in the last 10 years? We’re just about there.

Good news! Aggravated grandmas, dumbfuck vigilates, hillbilly hoodlums, and ballbusting bros are the minority. VASTLY SO.

They’re just louder.

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The answer to guns is never MOAR GUNS. It’s less.

But what of liberty? Liberty already does not functionally exist in the good ol US of A. Not for a substantial amount of people. America may have abolished chattel slavery, but state slavery functionally exists.

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Excuse me while I dismiss your black and white thinking and encourage you to have a snickers.

They’re a little busy today. Setting up their legal defense fund.

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Guns should be safe, rare and legal. /s

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Gawd. It’s not enough to have clickbait articles, now we have clickbait court cases. I guess people thought the gun control “conversation” in America… didn’t have enough white noise… or something?

3D printing doesn’t require a new legal paradigm. It turns schematics into physical objects, just like all manufacturing ever, which is well-trodden ground. If you want to make guns (or unmarked lower receivers or whatever) illegal, then you make having them illegal.

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That’s the thing.

They’re not phasers.

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I’d say yes, but I do not believe that we could agree on the neutrality of any agency that already collects such data.

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the neutral agency we already pay for… the one that researches public health - the CDC - is prohibited from doing so.

Should that change? Is that a reasonable policy? Don’t Ask?

Instead we get a pile of ‘studies’ that don’t correlate. Some with high bias. Most rarely referenced even as we ask others to reference their source for us to discount.

We should science this. Leave it to science, peers, and numbers.

Then again, some people think other people can’t possibly NOT have a bias. Ever wonder why THEY think that about everyone else but not themselves?

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THIS.

I am a machinist and grew up with guns though I dont have any. Hate the NRA, they are only people crazier than Trump.

Being an actual machinist- I can make a gun. So I know about this law and you are correct. Except the gun can be willed to someone upon your death, and the same for the person who recieves it. It can never be sold, if I understand right.

I am not conflicted over this decision. Anyone stupid enough to fire a plastic gun deserves the result of the lost limb. Anyone smart enough to machine a working gun is someone who is smart enough to buy one illegally if they wanted to be nefarious.

My guess is balistics on a hand made gun would be instantly tracable due to unique tooling marks. Easier to nab you than bought gun.

Just my 2 cents.

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Global Warming needs more federally funded research? but Gun Violence needs no federally funded research?

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The GOP responds to both with:

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Guns, check!
Money, check!
Lawyers, uhum…

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What if I told you the firearms industry already sells 80% blanks, tools, and special jigs for people to make their own guns?

The way most of them figure, they are all for it. Because the vast majority after cobbling together an AR-15 lower or 1911 frame will spend hundreds if not thousands to complete it into a usable firearm. That and the fact that the average person isn’t going to invest in a $1700 in a machine to make a couple 1911 frames on the down low when you can buy a new one already made for $200. It is even more ridiculous on the AR15 end, because you can buy fully milled and anodized receivers for $35.

Like a lot of other industries, the firearm or receiver is the entry point - all the other accessories and doodads and ammo is where the profits are.

This will always be a niche hobby for people who like to make things - or people uber paranoid about government tracking (like the people with encryption on the computers so the CIA can’t find their porn, cat photos, and Kirk/Spock fanfic).

Regardless on what your answer is to that question, making the sharing of 3D digital files of weapons parts illegal is preposterous (or even old fashion machinist blueprints - schematics?).

That Liberator example was for a low powered .380 round and was more of a proof of concept (named after the made but not used pocket pistol the Allies planned to drop into occupied France) The other project the guy had was for AR lowers out of plastic but the upper part is still metal. (Didn’t work very well, too much force for the part that attaches to the recoil tube.) And the new machine isn’t a 3D printer, but a specialized milling machine.

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And you should never hurt or bully or threaten or steal or any of the things people routinely did to the weak, powerless and unarmed.

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Uh huh. The FBI is forbidden by law from manufacturing evidence in investigations. The CIA is forbidden by law from spying on US citizens. The US government is forbidden by law (and the Constitution) from killing citizens without due process of law. The mere illegality and prohibition of a thing is obviously no obstruction to it being done.

I’ll grant that the CDC is more trustworthy than most other agencies. Mostly because disease does not care one whit about a politician’s or bureaucrat’s desires, and the CDC has a need to be as accurate as possible.

That is a question that everyone should be asking themselves, don’t you think? That, and “Is the organization that I believe to be free from bias actually free from bias?”

Anything to do with firearms in this country has become so political that there is no guarantee that any agency can perform a study without an underlying bias. The CDC is no exception in this regard.

One reason to grab data from sources that have different objectives is precisely because they have different objectives. They are less likely to attempt to manipulate data not directly relevant to the objective of the study. They are also subject to differing biases in the collection of the underlying data.

In an ideal world, there would be no collection bias or manipulation of data to generate desired results. We do not live in an ideal world.

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Interesting. I guess they don’t care when they are selling the bullets, magazines etc. It’s a bit like Sony and the CD burners. On the one hand a these damn pirates are steling our (artists?) Music. On the other hand, blank media sales are doing great!

I’m always wary of scare rhetoric, and wonder who stand to gain from it.

3D printing , decentralized production in general could really shake up the entire world. “Ghost guns” or the potential of making them seems like just the type of witch hunt the powers that may be would drum up to slow or fight it.

Yes, I am also aware of what hes been up to, know about the machine.

The thing is what makes these things work safely is very careful tolerance on the barrel and the ammunition and if it loads more than a single shot, parts of the loading and chambering mechanism.

You can actually buy a book from machinist Press On Machining a single shot falling block rifle. It walks you through the steps to actually machine one. The info is out there folks. Its not hard to find.

The thing is it still requires intelligence to make these even if you’re printing plastic copy of a liberator you have to understand enough technical issues to make this happen that no not every grandmother and thug on the street is going to go this route. Smart bad people are probably just going to buy Black Market already made guns.

Unless you are an international assassin that likes to leave a trademark like Scaramanga in the Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, you are probably not going to go to the effort to make a custom one-off firearm that is immediately traceable to you if you want to commit a crime. It’s just incredibly stupid to do that, as well as impractical folks.

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This is less about guns, and more about digital speech, in terms of societal impact. It is simple enough to produce reliable machine guns using normal tools. For someone with machining skills, it is a triviality. I have a shelf of books with very specific technical details on a variety of historic gun designs. Enough information is there to accurately reproduce the subject guns. That knowledge has always been unrestricted. Using the knowledge to break the law is different.
It remains a felony for a prohibited person to possess a firearm. But when an item is desired by someone with the means to pay, they will find a way.

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This won’t be an issue for me until Walgreen’s pharmacy starts selling 3d printers. Them things cost more than guns now.

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