You know as well as I do there’s no boundaries when it comes to information in the United States vs information around the globe.
And there are limits to freedom of speech in the US. We have limits we put in place all the time regarding who is allowed to say what and when. We have protections against harm caused by the expression of speech.
It’s the entire chain that matters. Previously, gun designs have been widely available. There are plenty of books with exploded diagrams of specific models of guns. But you couldn’t easily transform that knowledge into a working model of that weapon. The 3D gun files are different only in that there are now tools to execute those plans. This is the same issue as forged currency. I’d didn’t matter if you could send someone a file with a $20 bill on it until it became possible to print them with sufficient fidelity to matter, and thus high quality printers have been “voluntarily” crippled with watermark detection software.
2D printers are pretty ubiquitous. And yet they have this protection. The government could try to require 3D printers to have a protection against printing proscribed files. I do think it would be largely futile, but that doesn’t mean the government won’t or can’t do it.
They can require it but it’s fairly easy to rewrite the firmware to override this especially since the a portion of 3d printer models and their associated software/firmware are FOSS. It’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle when someone can rewrite the entire process of a 3d printer. It’s literally impossible to go back now. The better solution is that for commercial printers that they be on the hook for any/all products made with their printers rather than cook up byzantine laws which will be very hard to enforce for any bureaucracy while it harms legitimate uses all in the name of unquantified risks. I’m not saying I’m fan of these kinds of things like plastic guns or zip guns but the fact is no one can ever prevent their manufacture so why impede legitimate/lawful uses of a technology because of a one off case? Just make it an aggravating condition/penalty to an existing law in their use/possession instead?
The plastic printed guns don’t really matter that much- they are really just glorified zip guns. What will matter significantly more is when additive metal manufacturing (or additive and subtraction hybrids) becomes cheaper and real, production-level guns pop out the other end. Those machines are the ones the government could, and possibly should, target.
Do we not already have these laws for illegal possession of firearms, laws requiring background checks, laws against robbery and assault with a weapon, murder? How well are they working as a deterrent?
Again…one of these will end up on a plane. Whether or not something horrible happens, it will have massive repercussions around the world and then everyone who has to be at the airport 3 hours in advance and unpack all their bags at security and be patted down will say…why didn’t anyone do anything???
Freedom of speech.
What’s funny is that the one thing Americans truly hate, is being inconvenienced. So the law they pass should probably just be to add new travel restrictions in advance.
Hard to target that. For example, Mexican government hasn’t been able to stop the flow of unmarked receivers for assault rifles because metal milling, CNC, and stamping machines are basically everywhere. And there’s more legitimate uses for these technologies than making gun parts that lack serial numbers. If the government were ever so dumb to regulate these and related machinery then you would see a cratering of small manufacturers across the country. Like half of my own temp jobs were with such companies in my college years back in Kansas. The only way this would happen is if such technology threatened bigger manufacturers and luckily they don’t, so things stay the course while people have panic attacks over zip guns yet again.
I really hate the whole security theater over commercial flight because it just confuses people with bull puckey. All I can say is that you’re probably right that some idiot will bring one on board and we’ll see all plastic things confiscated just like what happened with shoes after the shoebomber. LOL
No they won’t. Or rather if they do it won’t be any more likely than a regular fire arm making it. The term “ghost gun” and the words “plastic” make it sound like they are undetectable. Just like how Trump thinks you can’t see our stealth planes. Both assumptions are in error. I just saw a clip from a lawmaker claiming these exact things.
The “plastic” gun they have plans for, the Liberator, still has some metal parts. Most notably you need something for the firing pin. But even if someone found something hard to work for a firing pin that wasn’t metal, the BULLETS will show up. BULLETS are dense lead and copper, shells are brass. It also only has one shot from a dinky .380acp. The worst case scenario is you puncture a window resulting in loss of pressure or you shoot one person in the head. You would cause more damage to people if you had one of those sharpened plastic knives and stabbed the two people sitting next to you.
There was a similar “panic” when Glock and other makers started making “plastic” hand guns in the 70s. Indeed I think that lead to the law making it illegal to make “undetectable firearms”. But even though the Glock has a plastic grip, the slide, barrel, etc were all metal.
Every other gun design more advanced than a zip gun where you can print plastic parts for, the rest of the gun is metal, like the barrel, bolt, receiver, etc.
Do you have a source on that? I haven’t heard that the cartels were making their own. I just assumed they were buying them because they have more money than God. I had heard about the IRA making their own back in the day.
Given the resources they put into their private radio network, including kidnapping radio engineers, the cartels could also put that kind of scary entrepreneurship into making their own AK factory. The weapon was created to be easy to manufacture, using mostly stamped metal parts. But guns are so ubiquitous around the world they probably haven’t had to bother.
OH I am not saying they COULDN’T make it. They make freaking submarines!
But with an international smuggling network in place, and AKs being one of if not THE most prolific gun in the world, they may not NEED to.
If the above person has some sources on them making their own, I would be very interested in it.
Plastics and other composite materials are steadily improving in strength. Metal parts can be stored in other places and made to look like other things. Printable guns can be made to resemble other common materials that can then be assembled later. It isn’t a question of how, but when.
Not all bullets contain lead, and not all projectiles have to be traditional bullets.
Right, but the point here is there is no legislation with printable guns, no requirements. How do you legislate something that can be freely constructed in a basement from plans that might be untraceable or unenforceable.
I agree, this genie is out of the bottle. This guy or someone else will do this. At some point it will have a desired effect of either making a free speech/second amendment argument, but ultimately it will likely end with someone getting hurt and/or a massive disruption of other civil liberties, a la freedom to move. You’ll lose other rights to preserve the right to make a point.
You absolutely can. Descriptions of how to do illegal things (make machineguns, bombs, illegal drugs, etc.) are, and this has been extensively litigated, free expression covered by the first amendment, and this is as it should be. (Imagine if just discussing things that were illegal was illegal. If you can’t see how this would immediately go horribly wrong thn there’s really no hope for you.) Actually doing what those instructions describe is extremely illegal.
If we don’t have freedom of speech, we already live in a society where we have no recourse against the police state, so talking about the safety of our societies is irrelevant.
Sure there are, if you live in a totalitarian state like China. If you live somewhere where your statement is true, that’s because its to some extent not a totalitarian state, and has some modicum of free speech. In that case, you get some bad effects with the good, and if you’re not willing to tolerate that, you don’t actually support free speech.
Short answer: If free flow of information from the US a bad enough problem, make a great firewall to keep it out. Otherwise, deal with it. We don’t have any obligation to restrict our freedom of expression to comply with someone else’s standards.
They all contain metal. Again anything beyond a zip gun will need metal parts to properly operate. The “undetectable ceramic gun” is not a real thing, despite what the other wise good documentary Die Hard II told us. Maybe someday there will be tech that allows this, but it will come from some DARPA project or what ever the Russian/Chinese equivalent is. Common terrorists aren’t going to be on the cutting edge of technology so they can hijack and airplane.
You could make making your own gun illegal, or require a serial number to be assigned and sent to the ATF. But really, I don’t see this affecting crime in the least. It is easier and cheaper to just buy a gun on the black or grey market or through a straw purchase.
But prohibition doesn’t usually work. Making booze illegal didn’t stop booze making on an industrial scale. Making drugs illegal didn’t stop weed and LSD and meth and shrooms being made/grown locally.
All of this really is hand wringing “what ifs?”. You know what is more dangerous than a 3D printed zip gun? You cell phone or lap top and a metal pen. Go to the bathroom and puncture one of the lithium ion cells and you get a neat little chemical fire that is hard to put out. This is even likely to happen ACCIDENTALLY at some point. I am super creative and can come up with a lot of ways to hurt people - while possible - are either unlikely or rarely if ever happen. I don’t think we should devolve into fear and legislate around that. That is how we end up with civil liberty stripping legislation.
Maybe I’m not being clear enough. Making a gun is legal and protected by the law from govt interference. Making a $20 bill is illegal and will land you in jail. This is why equipment to make money is controlled and equipment to make a gun is not.
The first question you need to ask is should we attempt to legislate this issue and the next question to ask is does our government have the right to create such legislation.
That’s actually something that I’d say is still in flux. We’ve seen the nuances play out in the 80% receiver CNC business, where who pushed a button became a serious legal consideration. I don’t consider the whole issue of home gun making settled law, even though there are many cases where it is currently legal.
You are conflating two different issues. The 80% receiver question is “what constitutes a gun?”. If we decide that the 80% is enough to constitute a gun, then that means you cannot sell it without a firearm dealers permit and the associated burdens that come with gun sales. It has nothing to do with whether or not it is legal to do yourself. It is completely legal to CNC an entire gun or just 80% if you want and that is not in question. Only the sale or transfer of such an item is in question. 3D printed guns would also be illegal to sell without a permit.
Then people will sell 75% receivers.
That’s actually an interesting thought. Could you have a shop with a CNC mill and files to make a receiver, and then just sell someone a block of metal, and tool time on your mill, and have them push the button, all without an FFL? And then sell them the barrel and all the other parts that aren’t regulated, of course, and let them assemble it in your shop, with your guidance, but without you touching it.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one to put this to the test, but I’m surprised someone hasn’t done it already.
Someone did put it to the test, and their implementation failed the “I think I can get away with this very close skirting of the law” hypothesis. For some reason I don’t feel like Googling “techshop for CNCing 80% receivers” 
But you can find the case if you search on line. He might have succeeded if he’d been a bit stricter in his practices.
