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Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing), Gun Control, and Patent Law
retroworks writes "J.D. Tuccille of the conservative think tank Reason Foundation discusses last week's news about the first working 3D-printed gun. According to the original article, the partly plastic '.22-caliber pistol, formed from a 3D-printed AR-15 (M16) lower receiver, and a normal, commercial upper' fired 200 rounds without any sign of wear and tear. Tuccille takes the discovery in the direction of politically topical gun control. '...the development makes it clear that a wide range of bans, restrictions and prohibitions are becoming increasingly unenforcable.' But in my mind, this example of additive-manufacturing technology raises even more questions about patent law enforcement. Will 3D printing be to the Anti-gray-market-alliance what online porn became to neighborhood blue laws?"
Doing it with a machine shop requires time, skill, and more importantly a machine shop.
As a guy with a machine shop, rest assured it doesn't require much of the above.
If you want minimum weight, maximum reliability, all kinds of nifty features including safeties and such, OR if you want to make a precise exact working replica of a historical piece accurate to the tiniest detail, then it takes huge time, skill, and tools.
But if you're just trying to make what amounts to a short range inaccurate "zip gun" or little more than a shotgun, its trivial, you don't need a "shop". An imaginative plumber can figure something out without a "shop" or gunsmithing skills.
The AR-15 aspect is important to those who know anything about the law or gunsmithing (I know just enough about both to be dangerous). There is no single part of a gun that screams "gun" so the legal types selected the receiver, which in most guns is a great decision, HOWEVER the AR-15 lower receiver is a not terribly difficult part to make.
Making a AR-15 lower is pretty easy (well, compared to making a upper, or a barrel). Making a lower is, legally, making a gun. The hard parts to make are everything that bolts onto a lower. Therefore its really easy to "make a AR-15".
I'm just a hack of a machinist but if I wanted I could easily make a lower on my CNC mill. There is no way in hell, no way, not gonna happen that I could make a barrel from scratch, thats basically impossible for a guy at home. Making a bolt, bolt carrier or chamber would be right around the absolute peak of my skill on my best day in the shop ever.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
You don't because you, along with the rest of Slashdot, live in and pay exclusive attention to, first world countries. This 3D printed gun thing has set off a spate of gun control articles with the attendant hand wringing and claims that people will now be enabled to perpetrate all sorts of violence.
Meanwhile hundreds of people will be killed this week throughout the middle east and most of Africa with guns that were made in a tent by someone with no formal training in machining, who probably can't read or write, and has never seen even a conventional printer let alone a 3D one. He'll make a dozen AK 47s today and tomorrow and so on until someone kills him or he has to pack up and flee or some similar thing. This has been going on like this for dozens of years. When I was stationed in Africa the bulk of AKs we recovered after fights were made in part or often in whole, in country in the manner described above. An important factor in the design of the AK was that it could be made that way.
But continue on fretting someone printing an AR lower.