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?"

Comments

Already happening

[jmorris42]

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.

Re:Already happening

[CastrTroy]

The problem is, how do you enforce the patent when people are printing the devices in their basement. You can't go after someone for releasing plans they drew up themselves, as long as they aren't a copy of your originals, and even if they were, the plans are just downloadable files, and we know how well that's working out for the movie and music industries. You can't go after the people producing the items, because there are just in their basements, and you have no way of tracking who is printing off the devices for personal use. I'm not saying it's all bad, but it definitely makes things interesting for companies that produce things that can be printed out on a 3D printer at home.

Re:Already happening

[oakgrove]

I'm not saying it's all bad, but it definitely makes things interesting for companies that produce things that can be printed out on a 3D printer at home.

Even with 3D printers, large factories will still be able to produce just about anything for a fraction of what you can do it for in your house. As it is right now, the real cost for the companies will be in distribution and R&D. Outsource the R&D to China or India (or evolutionary algorithms based on some of the stuff I see in stores) and streamline your distribution with just in time principles, etc. and I don't think they'll have a whole lot to worry about. Maybe profit margins will be a little thinner but they aren't in any real danger yet. Jobs will be lost in the short term but that always happens when production is streamlined.

Re:Already happening

[BlueStrat]

They may pass laws forbidding the possession of 3D printers that aren't licensed, like unregistered handguns and fully-automatic firearms. Possessing/using an unlicensed/unauthorized 3D printer would result in a lengthy prison term and huge fines.

They can use the logic of "since an unlicensed 3D printer *could* possibly print a gun, the penalties for possession/use of an unlicensed 3D printer should match those of someone possessing/using an unregistered/illegal fully-automatic weapon during the commission of a crime" to justify making the punishments comparable.

The licensed and legal printers, in turn, would be secured through "Trusted Computing" type systems so that they must connect online to some central authority that will check the file(s) you're trying to print against a white-list database of legal/permitted designs that may be printed. If it's not on the list, you can't print it, and for for permitted-but-paywalled items, automatically deduct the charge from a bank account or CC.

This way they can monetize it and control what and how much can be printed and know who has printed what and when, while simultaneously increasing the amount of money going to criminal defense lawyers and the government and filling even more prisons with another whole class of non-violent criminal.

Sometimes it sucks to have a good imagination and understanding of government/political/human nature.

Strat

Re:Already happening

[oakgrove]

If you're making millions and millions of widgets that are simple enough to be printed on a Maker Bot, your R&D cost per unit is infinitesimal. Listen, I love the idea of making things at home but it isn't going to replace mass production even a little bit. What it will do is allow people to unleash their creativity. That's the real point so many other people are missing.

Re:Already happening

[nospam007]

"They may pass laws forbidding the possession of 3D printers that aren't licensed, like unregistered handguns and fully-automatic firearms. Possessing/using an unlicensed/unauthorized 3D printer would result in a lengthy prison term and huge fines."

The rich have done this with millstones for centuries. Peasants had to bring the corn to the Lord's mill and he sent his brute squad to find and destroy any 'illegal' millstones.

The UK has some lead time on this

[EdgePenguin]

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.

Re:The UK has some lead time on this

[Attila Dimedici]

Improvised firearms have been made by pure amateurs for years. The fact of the matter is that most people don't want a gun bad enough to take the risks involved in making their own. However, the whole problem with gun control laws is that people who want a gun for criminal purposes aren't really bothered by those risks (they want the gun to reduce the risk of an already high risk activity).

Re:The UK has some lead time on this

[vlm]

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.

Re:The UK has some lead time on this

[EdgePenguin]

You don't hear home-made firearms being used in crimes much - I'm guessing because the discipline required to make something of high enough quality that it can stand firing a bullet is not normally found in the same individual as the kind of impulsiveness normally required to commit a violent crime.

The issue here is the possibility of obtaining firearms with no requirement for discipline, training, patience, or anything else that might lower a chances person of using that firearm in anger.

Re:The UK has some lead time on this

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The UK has some lead time on this

[nschubach]

I'm pretty pro-gun, but you don't hear of them using homemade weapons because machines weapons are generally easy to get. If they were not, people would be building more pipe bombs and other easy to assemble/deploy weapons. In countries where guns are not as prevalent people resort to other tools to perform crimes. Sadly, as much as guns are portrayed as deadly, other homemade weapons can be far more deadly.

Again, no different then CNC or even a metal file.

[Kenja]

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.

Re:Why like that?

[rufty_tufty]

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?

Could shake things up

[Experiment 626]

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.

Why is this a big deal?

[h4rr4r]

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.

Re:Why like that?

[Libertarian_Geek]

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

Re:I for one am glad.

[CanHasDIY]

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.