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Digging Into the Legal Status of 3-D Printed Guns
jfruh writes "Defense Distributed, a U.S. nonprofit that aims to make plans for guns available owners of 3-D printers, recently received a federal firearms license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. That license doesn't cover semi-automatic weapons and machine guns, though — and there are questions about whether the legislation that defines that license really apply to the act of giving someone 3-D printing patterns. Experts on all sides of the issue seemed to agree that no clarification of the law would happen until a high-profile crime involving a 3-D printed weapon was committed."
You can either use plumbing pipe or buy one online.
Obviously the use of plumping pipe has accuracy repercussions but it can be a functional firearm if that is all you are going for.
Barrels are not controlled by any law I know of.
There was a time in this country when if a thing was not illegal, then it was legal. It's amazing, I know, but it is true.
That is no longer the case. And we are all the worse for it.
We can start by ceasing to make guns illegal, repealing the prohibition on marijuana, and removing of some of the more onerous parts of the various ADAs and EPAs.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Obviously, we need to regulate machining tools because those might make a gun. And we must regulate robotic Metal Presses, because those might make machining tools, which might make guns. We need to regulate mining iron ore, because iron ore is used to make gun parts, machining tools and Robotics. And we must regulate Big Trucks, because they might carry dirt used in mining iron ore ....
At some point, laws don't stop people. And making more laws doesn't help.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
In the US, the lower receiver is considered the firearm for most legal purposes (it is the part that has the serial number and requires a background check if bought new or from a dealer), whereas barrels (part of the upper receiver, or just "upper"), at this time, do not, and can be, for example, bought through the mail or at a store with no infringing background or ID check. One can buy a barrel of barrels and then print lowers (and magazines if standard capacity magazines become banned) for them without getting any sort of permission from the state, and assemble a firearm. (For nitpickers, you do of course need more than just an upper and lower, but those other parts, such as the trigger assembly, can also be ordered without state interference.)
Run through my personal translator:
"instead of deciding how things should be, objectively, we want to wait until there are a few corpses we can parade around to make an emotional appeal to garner support to further reduce the rights of the law-abiding. Hopefully these corpses will be children, because they appeal to people's genetically programmed emotional reactions."
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Legally, it shouldn't matter. Practically, 3D printing has big implications for gun right/gun control.
The whole idea of gun control is based on a premise that making guns is hard, requiring precision equipment and expertise. Through the end of the 20th century, it required either a specially-tooled factory, an expert craftsman, or both. (Some guns like the AK series are easier to make than others.) So the approach to gun control was to regulate the factories and the sale of what the factories produce.
As you say, home manufacture is legal. It's not worth regulating: the expertise was rare, and the scale of production was low, and there were not any high-profile cases of homemade guns being used in heinous crimes.
3D printing changes the world so that making a gun no longer requires specialized equipment nor specialized skills. So from the gun-control point of view, there is a real risk of guns being made in secret, in a decentralized way that is hard to detect, and being trafficked outside the existing system of licensed dealers and background checks. So the old framework of gun-control laws won't work. A would-be criminal who can easily make his own gun neatly evades the whole system.
There big question is, what will replace the old legal model? There are many possible things the legislature could try, from giving up on gun control (unlikely) to trying to regulate the plans for gun parts (impractical, as we know from file sharing) to trying to clamp down on the printers themselves (scary).
This is how the tech used to make the gun parts matters.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
With gun issues at the forefront of today's political discussion, how is this not a topic that needs immediate attention?
"Gun issues" are only at the front of any discussion because specific interest groups and politicians who pander to them are using a crazy person's already illegal acts to try to cement significant new reductions in liberty and increases in Nanny State invasiveness. Those broader goals are always at the top of that demographic's agenda, and they use whichever current events are handy in that mission. This is a topic [home made objects] that doesn't need immediate attention because it doesn't need ANY attention. It never did. It has nothing to do with what crazy, broken people do with objects they buy or make.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Because this allows any Average Joe at home to print the action of a gun, the legally controlled part, all on his own with no skill or expensive machinery and then obtain the other parts as easily as buying some used videogames, and assemble a working weapon. Legally it's no different from making a gun in a home metal shop but practically, it greatly lowers the barriers of entry to making a home-built firearm that has never been on any records of any kind. It also allows high-capacity mags to be made at home more easily, if that matters.
I'd think it was really cool if this weren't a weapon we were talking about, especially one that can kill at long range and high frequency.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Obviously method X of easily making object Y by pressing a button is exactly the same as method Z of making object Y which takes skill and expensive machinery, so if method Z is at all possible without a license, then we shouldn't bother trying to license method X at all.
Yes, perfect logic, if you lack any common sense at all.
Obviously, we need to regulate machining tools because those might make a gun. And we must regulate robotic Metal Presses, because those might make machining tools, which might make guns. We need to regulate mining iron ore, because iron ore is used to make gun parts, machining tools and Robotics. And we must regulate Big Trucks, because they might carry dirt used in mining iron ore ....
At some point, laws don't stop people. And making more laws doesn't help.
Slippery Slope fallacy much? We make laws to define legality, not to ensure that nothing illegal ever happens. If making something a law was an immediate solution we would have not crime ever. If it is illegal to print weapons then most people will not do it because they do not wish to break the law. In fact the people who would wish to break the law to get a gun will just go get a actual gun not a 3d printed one. No point in getting arrested over a temporary weapon.
Disagreeing with you does not make me a troll.
1st amendment + 2nd amendment = right to print arms
rewriting history since 2109
The right to keep and bear arms goes back to the founding days of this country. Our founding fathers realized that without an armed population, government is free to do as it wishes. Our founders needed their guns to declare their independence and self-rule. They also knew that maintaining that independence required an armed populace.
I am stunned when someone poses a statement along the lines of: "You don't have tyranny, why do you need guns?" The person asking this question never stops to think "maybe they don't have tyranny because they have guns".
The next standard argument against guns is that a guy with a rifle could never challenge a tank or aircraft. This is true. But what an armed population lacks in technology, they make up for in numbers. During hunting season the woods of Pennsylvania are filled with 600,000 to 700,000 armed people. At that time, it is the largest "standing army" in the world. Think about that for a minute - one state of hunters dwarfs the biggest standing army in the world.
If tyranny comes to our country, the entire armed population will need to fight. If Afghanistan and Syria taught us anything it's that armed asymmetric guerrilla warfare is very effective. It even gives the world's best funded, best trained military a difficult time.
The responsibility of bearing arms is not a "macho" or "manly" thing. I choose to become proficient with firearms for a number of reasons - readiness if my country needs me, and readiness if my family needs me. I could not live with myself if someone caused harm to my family and I could do nothing to stop them.
Finally, the right of free men and women to defend themselves and their property is a natural-born right, not subject to the political process or the whims of others. Those that say they are free without the means to defend themselves are only free so long as others allow them to be free. That is not true freedom.
The concepts of freedom, liberty, and self-defense are not difficult concepts to understand. They are so deeply ingrained in american life, that these protections have been intentionally and strongly worded into our government's founding documents. These are the documents we all agree to govern ourselves by.
As far as I can tell, school shootings are no more common in the U.S. on a per person basis than anywhere else in the world. There are two reasons they seem more common in the U.S. The first is that they get more press. The second is that there are more people in the U.S. relative to the populations of other countries than most people realize.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
In my life, the slippery slope fallacy has more often than not been the fallacy. I am sad to say that the slippery slope predictions are usually what end up being true in the end.
I think that's the main point. Guns have been around for the better part of a millenia now. The basic principle of modern semi-automatic cartridge-fed firearms has been around for over 100 years. The reality is that people have been making these things with the most basic of tools LONG before modern 3d-printers and CNC machines were invented.
At its heart a gun is a pretty simple device. Those "high capacity magazines" that they keep whining about are a couple pieces of folded metal and a spring (alternatively, a printed plastic tube and a spring). Regulation of such things was always futile, and the better home manufacturing tools get (for all things) the harder it will become.
Eventually you have to accept the stark reality that people cannot be controlled. If they do something bad they can be punished, but that goal of controlling the populace to keep them from doing something in the first place is just a pipe dream.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
If you were a 3d printer manufacturer, would you like your company to be associated with a mass killing?
What. The. Fuck. Are. You. On. About.
Does Harbor Freight get 'associated' with mass killings because they sell machines you can use to make a gun? Do people (who aren't complete fucking imbeciles, that is) associate Lowe's with the OKC bombing because they sell pipe nipples and fertilizer?
See, what you've done here is provide a sterling example of what vapid political hacks with a fucking agenda do, when they don't have any actual, valid arguments to make - they start searching for an innocent party to martyr. Congratulations, you're part of the problem.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese