Originally published at: Teen arrested after 3D-printing guns - Boing Boing
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At that age, do they have the ability to know right from wrong?
Yes. This was not a kid innocently experimenting, this was a production line. He knew exactly what he was up to.
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100% agree. This is a 14-y-o, not a 4-y-o.
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Where are his parents? I’m pretty sure I’d know if my 14 yo was illegally manufacturing handguns, and I wouldn’t be okay with it.
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“It’s scary for everyone. At that age, do they have the ability to know right from wrong? What are their intentions with these weapons? Do they have the maturity?”
The same question could be asked about cops.
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How does that follow? Repetition of an act implies persistence, not a deeper grasp of the moral implications of the act.
Robert Sapolsky’s got a pretty strong point on this; at 14, the prefrontal cortex isn’t myelinated yet. (Recent iteration, pitched at college-but-not-specialist level: Behave (book) - Wikipedia )
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…and the 40+ yr-olds who took part in an attempted coup.
ETA:
…and the 40+ yr-olds who took part in the UK riots.
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Repetition of this act implies organization and detailed planning of what is widely known to be a criminal activity with a profit motive. I knew right from wrong by age 14 and knew I’d face consequences if caught doing something wrong; my friends knew it too. The kid knew the potential moral and legal consequences of his actions.
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He ordered a Glock switch from China.
a package from China containing a Glock switch, a device that converts a handgun into a fully automatic weapon
How could a fourteen-year-old not know that was at the very least ‘problematic’ (to put it very mildly)? He would have to be very exceptional (as in very far from the average 14-year-old, neurotypically) for his defence to argue that he had no idea what he was doing was illegal.
Your link tells us nothing, directly, re this. Does partial myelination prevent awareness that actions like this may be ‘wrong’ in someone of that age and cultural background (i.e. growing up in the US with gun issues, etc. being a constant background feature of their lives)?
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Your link tells us nothing, directly, re this. Does partial myelination prevent awareness that actions like this may be ‘wrong’ in someone of that age and cultural background (i.e. growing up in the US with gun issues, etc. being a constant background feature of their lives)?
More along the lines of lack of inhibition to do something an adult would be more likely to judge as amoral. It’s an argument from neurology, so it doesn’t summarize into a sound bite well–hence my pointing at the book.
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It certainly looks like he had a production line going on but from the article it’s not clear if the police actually recovered any completed weapons:
If the kid’s family can afford a good defense lawyer I would guess that they’ll try to make the case that he somehow went right up to the edge of breaking the law without actually crossing it. But of course we don’t have all the details yet. Maybe they’ll find proof that he already sold some weapons.
It’s all madness that any of this is legal though, whether or not they can prove intent to sell.
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My question is how did he order the parts from China? Did he have a credit card? Did he use alternative payment methods? How does a 14-year-old set up Google Pay, Apple Pay, or PayPal without a CC or a bank account?
The parents had to be peripherally involved.
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FWIW my 14 year old has a visa debit card linked to his savings account where he deposits his allowance and other earnings. I don’t think that that part is especially unusual for a kid that age.
But yes, either way the parents likely had some idea of what was going on unless the kid was especially good at hiding information from them.
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Importing gun parts is illegal irrespective of the ghost guns
Not necessarily. Depends on the country and the part. Though yes, importing from China is illegal.
The operation was the result of a joint investigation between the Detroit Police Department and Homeland Security after they intercepted a package from China containing a Glock switch, a device that converts a handgun into a fully automatic weapon.
That’s super illegal.
Because kids are dumb, and considering how prevalent they are on the streets, how many millions of packages are coming from Temu etc, they probably figured one little switch would slip through the system.
It might even be from Temu or Ali Babba. They don’t give a fuck over there. About 8 years ago I was served up with ads for them on Facebook of all places. DIAS, lightning links, and other highly illegal bits of metal from some place in Asia. I figured it was a 50/50 shot it was an FBI or ATF honey pot.
printing firearms with the intent to sell them, which police believe was the case here,
Well, good luck proving that.I hope that they have evidence of that besides the fact he had a lot of printed receivers (like Discord messages for sales or something).
I’m not super well versed in 3D printing, but several of those prints don’t even look right. But from what I’ve seen of people into 3D Printing, they print a lot of stuff, often tweaking the settings to get a better print. Having a dozen unbuilt handgun lowers alone doesn’t mean you are selling them.
Even if they don’t get that to stick, he clearly violated the NFA with the Glock switch.
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Among my collection of hare-brained “hey, why don’t they…?” notions is to (hopefully heavily) regulate ammunition not the guns themselves. or said in a slightly screechy voice: let’s see you 3d print the chemicals inside a bullet. (yes i know that some folks have the ability to put together their own bullets, but tracking chemicals is an well-established ability of federal agents).
next-up: we have to get accident insurance on our cars, why (the @#$!) don’t we need to insure our home gun arsenals? a heavy yearly policy on (semi)automatic weapons might reduce their ghastly concentrations. (“No! You’d only allow rich people to buy weapons!” “No! you’d just force people to have illegal uninsured weapons!” “You own stock in insurance companies, don’t ya!?!” etc etc -sigh-)
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If he figured that
then he clearly knew there was a system he was running afoul of, as you note.
I was under the impression banks had some reticence about issuing cards to juveniles. Maybe US is different and maybe it has changed now that cards are needed for everything but I think I
recall ‘junior’ bank/savings accounts not issuing cards to under-age customers in the UK not so many years ago.
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Typically, you get your filament dialed in with smaller calibration prints (which are faster and cheaper), and then make fine adjustments if your final part has issues. And if it does, you usually toss that part; if not right away, at least after you’ve made tweaks to compare the two and see if you made the problem better or worse. Unless each of the lowers had a label and notes about specific print settings, I have trouble believing they’re all test parts. You can keep track of what settings you tweaked on a few different runs, but if you’re up to 12, you need notes. So if that’s the case, it should be pretty easy to demonstrate.
Also, that’s 1-2 kg of filament just on the handguns. $30-$60 for standard materials, potentially a lot more if you’re using something fancy. That’s a lot for a 14 year old to blow on getting things just right.
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Ok - but lack of inhibition is not the same as not knowing it was illegal.
Unmyelated brain teenage risk-taking may be mitigation, but is not a defence.
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I can’t help but wonder just how functional and safe those lowers would be.
How many rounds do you think you could fire before something broke and maybe blew up in your hand?
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Tons of factors involved, but they definitely have a shelf life. From some quick reading, it looks like PLA (the most common 3d printing material in use now) tends to fail in a way that won’t result in serious injury, it’ll just render the weapon non-functional. PETG (the second most common 3d printing material now) will probably last longer, but it’s the one that will fill your soft bits with plastic shards when it goes.
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