Slashdot Mirror
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?"
This fight is already happening. What do ya think the whole war over software patents boils down to? Is it a patentable machine or a copyrightable expression in code? Well soon it will be everything is downloadable and where is the line? That is the heart of this argument in a nutshell.
Democrat delenda est
As guns are far more strictly controlled over here, and as such you can't obtain the parts that you can't home make, this doesn't really apply to the UK or other countries that don't have everybody armed to the teeth.
...but its only a matter of time really. I actually like gun control laws, but I can't see any way they can be enforced, long term, in light of this kind of technology - without banning the technology outright, which would be like banning home computers in the 1970s. Obviously, the people who have a stake in selling people stuff they may be able to manufacture themselves in the near future are going to love this. Moral panics are always useful for promoting a ruthless, rent seeking economic agenda, as the debate over digital rights has shown.
For a few hundred dollars I can make a CNC mill and craft a gun out of a block of metal. Frankly, I can do much the same with a metal file. Same goes for patent infringement. Add in a 3D scanner and I can duplicate just about anything. There is nothing intrinsically special about 3D printers VS other methods of manufacturing. Its just an evolution of mass production.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Reason is libertarian.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
You misspelled "libertarian". There is a significant difference.
Dog is my co-pilot.
You've got me thinking, could we somehow apply market forces to laws. Only the fittest survive.
I've heard it suggested that there should be a maximum number of laws allowed (and if you want to pass a new one you have to repeal old ones).
How can you have law when it is not possible for even a specialist in the subject to know all the laws and how to apply them correctly. Does not the fact that a lawyer can be a specialist in one area but yet still not know if a law applies to someone not ring that something is fundamentally wrong with the system?
The fact that I am subject to laws that I cannot reasonably be expected to know about sickens me. I can be legitimately expected to be doing illegal things through no fault of my own.
How does that not remove respect for the law?
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Gun control is to the second amendment what censorship is to the first. These are authoritarian push-backs against the Bill of Rights giving people "too much" freedom. The Internet has shown what happens to such restrictive efforts once an enabling technology is introduced to the masses.
You can make a lower in steel on a mill right now. You could make one from wood, heck even cheap plywood.
This is not a highly stressed part, nor one that needs to be machined to very high tolerances.
It will be news when they can 3d print a barrel.
Well, only if you print it loaded
Wrong, the ATF didn't send any weapons to Mexico. What they did was try to track a few of the hundreds of thousands of guns purchased every year by individuals with suspicious purchasing patterns. They couldn't track all of them, and some of them in fact ended up being smuggled to mexico or were otherwise used in crimes. That is the "scandal." There would be no scandal if they hadn't bothered trying to track the guns in the first place. It's hard to imagine what an individual who is not a dealer might be doing purchasing hundreds of guns per year, yet that is perfectly legal (just as the NRA likes it) until/unless you later commit a crime with them. Now that the interdiction has become a political football, the flow of guns to Mexico continues as before with, at best, low-level individual purchasers being caught.
Short of a radioactive material and toxins, something sitting around does no harm. It is only when something is used that it can do harm. This revolution in manufacturing shows how untenable the approach of "banning" something is. We have to dispense with the idea that prevention of possession is a crime or even possible, and focus solely on damaging uses. In this way we have all the rights and all the responsibility to exercise freedom.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Actually, it's illegal for civilians to own automatic weapons made after May 1986. For the remaining automatic weapons (pre may '86); any purchase (dealer to civilian or civilian to civilian) requires a lengthy background check, fingerprint cards, a $200 excise tax and a 3 to 9 month processing delay as the forms are processed through the BATF and background checks are performed by the FBI.
The price range of automatic weapons ranges from $3000 for an automatic MAC 10 to $15000 for an M16.
In contrast, the combination of glass bottles and gasoline requires no such background check, is much more affordable and creates much more widespread and indiscriminate destruction. My point is that the term and concept of "gun-crime" is as illogical as "spoon-calories", or "penis-rape", or "crow-bar burglary". Further gun regulations imposed on the non-criminally minded Americans would be an iron-door-paper-house security scenario. It would provide an old stage for acting out additional plays of security theater that would rival the TSA.
If you're curious about existing gun regulations and the burden, ask an American gun-shop owner about all of the bureaucracy that they have to struggle with. It's easy to assume that the media's narrative is accurate. It's not. You've seen it with technical stories. I don't believe that it's due to a nefarious agenda other than profit through sensationalism and the cost of getting details correct. They often blur the lines between semi-auto and full-auto. If a rifle is black and has a pistol grip and removable magazine, then it gets called a "military style" or "military assault" rifle even though the military wouldn't consider it to be an assault rifle.
Next, our 2nd amendment is written in a very particular way as part of its checks and balances. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Because our government's authority comes expressly and voluntarily from the people, there must be a mechanism with which to resist should the government (federal or state), militia, or other citizens attempt to take more authority than was given to them through law. It's very apparent that it wasn't written for hunting, or sport. Penn and Teller have a very good youtube video on the subject. Now, the argument would be: "But if the US became a tyrannical government, what are the civilians with semi auto rifles going to do against a modern army with UAVs, Tanks, Helicopters, Aircraft carriers, etc?" 2 things:> 1st: We have a civilian volunteer army. Think through the implications of that statement. 2nd: Can you think of this situation in history? A massive, highly technical military force against a poor equipped indigenous guerrilla force. We've played both sides throughout American history and have many examples where the local indigenous forces either kicked butt, or made the fight so costly that it ended. The first one started in 1776 and the guerrilla force was us. A more modern example would be Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam. The large, technical force didn't fare so well.
With regards to the story. The genie is out of the bottle. Multiple genies are out and have been for some time. No one can put them back in. Guns are in this country and as the Japanese said during WWII about the problems with invading mainland America: "There would be a gun behind every blade of grass." A semi-auto (and likely a full auto) gun can be manufactured surprisingly easy.
What you don't see on the news regularly that is skewing the perspective is how many legally owned concealed carry weapons are around. I was taught to shoot from a very early age. I carry my Glock 26 wherever I go (where legally allowed). Yet, it doesn't make for very sexy news. Therefore, you don't hear about it. You don't hear about it, therefore your whole base of experience is from it going wrong. There are many examples (on a fairly regular basis) of a concealed
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Printing a plastic widget which holds the metal bits of a gun together is slightly different from printing a gun. Not that it would be hugely impressive to print an entire gun anyway given the thing would probably be destroyed or rendered unusable within a few shots. Doesn't help much either if you can't print the ammunition.
Your feelings about these things are not borne out by facts. Thirty years ago concealed carry was illegal in most of the US. One by one states started to enable concealed carry, most setting up 'shall issue' systems that would give licenses to anybody without a criminal record without question. Despite the gun control lobby whinging in every state about how this would cause 'shootouts in the streets!' it never happened. Now the US allows concealed carry in more than 80% of states, and in EVERY state with shall issue concealed carry, violent crime has either stayed the same or gone down since the law went into effect.
Turns out, people aren't the impulsive idiots you take them to be. There are more people carrying guns regularly in the US than ever before, and violent crime has been on a fairly steady down slope for the better part of the last half century. Reality just doesn't agree with the paranoid intuition of gun control advocates.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
As the cost of home production decreases it will force limits on corporate profits. The oil people know this and keep the cost of gasoline low enough that electrics and alternate fuels aren't competitive. Manufacturers will have to do the same thing.
I really think you're barking up the wrong tree with the "cost of production" angle - I highly doubt the cost of acquisition is the major delimiting factor preventing the majority of people from adopting the practice of 3D printing at home.
Want evidence? One word: Linux.
If the failure of Linux to be adopted by the masses has taught us anything, it's that a price tag of free does not compensate for ease-of-use and staying within one's comfort zone.
Personally, I can't imagine most people will take an interest in 3D printing until it's as simple as giving a voice command to the Replicator. Sad, but that's the world we live in.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese