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California Lawmaker Wants 3-D Printers To Be Regulated
New submitter phrackthat writes with news that California State Senator Leland Yee (D-S.F.) says he wants regulations to track who owns and uses 3-D printers. Yee's comments come in response to the recent news of Defense Distributed's successful test-firing of a 3-D printed gun.
"He's concerned that just about anyone with access to those cutting-edge printers can arm themselves. 'Terrorists can make these guns and do some horrible things to an individual and then walk away scott-free, and that is something that is really dangerous,' said Yee. He said while this new technology is impressive, it must be regulated when it comes to making guns. He says background checks, requiring serial numbers and even registering them could be part of new legislation that he says will protect the public. Yee added, 'This particular gun has no trace whatsoever.'"
I don't think doing something horrible to an individual qualifies as terrorism. In my day we call those people criminals.
You can have your god back when you are old enough to handle the responsibility.
Wouldn't most "horrible things" that you would do with a gun be illegal? Meaning you wouldn't be able to walk away scott-free.
Unless there is some crazy loophole that says if you kill someone with an unregistered homemade gun it's 100% legal. Which if that's the case I don't think it's the 3D printer that is the problem.
Also, I guess this means it's time to start regulating CNC machines as well.
Guns and explosives are easy to get thanks to America's right to bear arms. The representative would have 3d printer regulation before gun regulation? That makes absolutely no sense at all. Since 3d printers can be made by hobbyists at home, effective regulation is impossible. Not to mention that firing a 3d printed gun as a proof of concept and having an effective weapon are two very different things. A car is a far more dangerous weapon than a 3D printer. Are you afraid to drive?
Why not regulate lathes? They can be used to make a barrel of a high powered rifle.
Why not regulate mills? They can be used to make land mines.
Why not regulate sheet metal? They can be used to make the skin of missiles.
Why not regulate screwdrivers? They can be used to make bombs.
Why not just regulate and put a serial number in each and every bullet manufactured? I doubt that anyone would be able to 3D-print a bullet and its charge for many years to come.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
The blame lies with the politicians. And nobody else.
"Protection" is a disease. The government is not obliged to protect you. Congress has upheld that police are not required to protect you. Protecting yourself and your family is your responsibility. Life is dangerous. Be prepared. More folks die in car crashes, we don't ban cars or streets. Zip-Guns made of junk can kill you, hell, a plastic knife can kill you if sharpened properly, a broken window tied to a stick is a lethal weapon of opportunity. Limiting freedom should never be the answer to fear. The answer is to simply be aware of the danger you face in every day life, and protect yourself. Regulations like these are cancerous leaches of tax-payer money.
We really need to change the 2nd amendment, or create a new one clarifying that we have the right to bear technology, cryptography, photography, computers, and firearms included.
Lets just clear something up right now, gun bans have NEVER worked and will NEVER work because of one simple flaw in the logic. you see criminals? DON'T FOLLOW LAWS which is why they are called criminals, fucking duh!
Take Mexico, a country with a 100% ban on guns, you can't even one a 22 in that country...are the criminals throwing rocks at each other? Nope they do like all the other criminals with connections and buy from the former USSR where you can buy a crate of RPGs for the cost of a used BMW and where you can get a case of AK47s thrown in with every purchase over $50k.
This is as fucking retarded as trying to regulate or ban copper pipes because somebody might make a zip gun. I mean have you SEEN this "gun"? You are gonna be lucky if it fires even a single clip before being just trashed, in fact I've seen zip guns that make better weapons than this thing, and it took a $50,000 3D printer to make a gun that had less quality than what you can make in any machine shop for less than $200!
I'm sorry but this entire thing is just fucking retarded, every major city like Chicago where they have made it practically impossible for a law abiding citizen to own a gun has become a criminal paradise and why not? Don't have to worry about prey fighting back when even the cops in these areas tell you "don't resist, just beg real nice after they are done raping and looting and maybe they won't kill you". Its fucking disgusting is what it is, we should be teaching people how to defend themselves from these fucking scum and instead we are creating a nation of prey, that is ALL they are, they are prey and the wolves will feed and feed well.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
3D guns are ludicrous to anyone who has ever used 3D printers and knows anything about the tolerances, surface finish and strengths needed for a gun.
Any criminal can by a top quality gun for far less than the software and printer needed to make a 3D printed toy plastic so-called gun.
Politicians have no clue as to the real world.
Why do we have laws at all then? Why do we say don't have sex with children when criminals are just going to do it anyway?
Really bad analogy. Your implication is that we could stop people from having sex with children by banning children.
The analogy you're looking for is that just like we have laws that carry penalties for abusing kids, we have penalties for killing people. Using rifles, or using blunt instruments like pipes and bats (which are used far more often than rifles to murder people, says the FBI).
So yes: we have laws that "ban" murder, by making it really suck to be a murderer that's been caught having murdered someone. Just like it sucks to be someone that's been caught having abused a kid.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If I sell you a gun, you and I both consent to the transaction. Doesn't matter whether it's legal or not, neither of us will call the cops.
If you sexually assault someone, that person is not consenting, and will call the cops (or their parents will).
You cannot effectively enforce a law against a transaction where all parties involved consent, and even trying to do so inevitably involved measures corrosive to liberty.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
A democracy stops working for the benefit for all as soon as people stop ignoring the constitution.
When the laws are working for the benefit of all, some people will not be happy and some people will not get what they want. I know some of you believe that guns are evil but criminals will always find a way to procure guns. The majority of gun related violence is perpetrated by criminals. When I say gun violence, I am not just talking about deaths but also non-lethal injuries and use of guns for intimidation. The anti-gun people are too focused on individual stats and do not stop to consider armed robberies where nobody gets shot during the robbery. That is still a use of guns as a weapon to intimidate/coerce others into doing something against their will.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
There is a difference between laws designed to regulate availability of material goods and laws designed to punish human beings.
Exactly. Politicians just love that former category, precisely because it never works. It never works and never solves the problem, so there is always a menacing problem they can promise to do something about the next time they campaign. It also has the side-effect of requiring a police state to have even a slight hope of enforcement, which again is great from the perspective of most politicians.
... unless you exclude Chicago and a few other cities where it is practically impossible to legally own a firearm; then the USA has one of the lowest. They understand all of this.
Politicians know the War on Drugs doesn't stop people from acquiring drugs. They know that mass shootings overwhelmingly tend to happen in "gun free" zones. They know even an outright ban on guns doesn't stop criminals from acquiring them. They know someone not afraid of a murder charge isn't going to be deterred by a weapons violation. They probably know that the USA has one of the highest murder rates of the industralized world
They are interested in perpetuating the problems. It's what wins elections. It's what makes people increasingly feel they need government intervention. It's fun to think of them as a bunch of morons who couldn't find their ass in the dark, but this is called allowing sentiment to interfere with judgment.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
If the only thing keeping you from having sex with children is a law stating so, then you're beyond all help as it is. Laws aren't made for the righteous, they're made so that *when a transgressor is caught* there's a system in place to apply punishment.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
It depends a lot on culture and government as well. Nothing exists in a vaccume. What works for Australia and Britain won't work for the US. What works in Russia won't work in Mexico. China is different than Chile. All of these are pretty much "no duh" statements when you think about them, but most people try to bottle one statistic inside a glass jar as though the size of the country, population, cultural norms, etc have no effect on the outcome of a law. His point, while you can poke holes in bits and pieces all day long, is essentially correct.
Criminals don't follow laws, and especially in the case of the US, the population is way to large and already well armed enough that it would be impossible to police and secure guns. The better option is to place reasonable limits on them (such as the ones that are already in place and have been in place for decades), punish people who use guns for evil purposes (killing, robbery), and let law abiding citizens protect themselves (gun ownership and carry permits). Basically, what has been going on. Instead politicians decide they can win votes by trying to either
a) Invent a big scary imaginary monster, oh no, it'll eat you. Nevermind the fact that this gun is impractical for any realistic purpose, all of which have already been gone over elsewhere or
b) Convince people that someone in an office somewhere, writing something in a book, will somehow protect them. Nevermind the fact that guns that can't be detected by metal detectors have been outlawed for nearly 30 years (if I remember the date right). Nevermind the fact that people can already make more practical firearms at home. Basically nevermind the fact that this breaks no new ground at all anyway.
I call them feel-good laws. They make lawmakers feel like they've done something, they make people ignorant of what laws are already on the books, or the true capabilities of guns feel safer, but they basically do nothing except try to restrict law abiding citizens. There's no point to them at all and they have no real impact on criminals or crime.
Anyway, I'm off the topic, and if your an Aussie and disagree, then feel free to pass all the gun laws you want. I mean that, in a non-sarcastic way, because that's what your country wants and what your culture wants. As an American, I don't want more (or less really) gun laws, I think things are fairly well balanced as they are, the media just likes to blow things out of proportion. All statistics aside, those are cultural differences.
Way off topic from the original point I was making, but there you go.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/
And yet, every day when I look at google news, there is another story about some kind of gun violence/accident in some place thousands of miles from me. It's like a constant drumbeat in the media to get people to think things are so bad, something must be done. And politicians of course, are never hesitant to restrict people's rights or acquire yet ever more power. America's problem with guns is a media conspiracy that makes politicians cum in their pants.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
"Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, but Sam Colt made them equal."
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The more you reduce the presence of firearms by honest citizens, the less they are used to prevent crime.
Some numbers for you:
There are approximately 300,000,000 guns in the US (give or take).
2011 reported 11,101 gun homicides. That means that the gun grabbers
want to restrict the rights of ALL Americans to try to stop the 0.0037%
of guns that cause the problem. To put it another way,
approximately 45% of households own guns. Assuming a uniform
distribution of family sizes across gun-owning and defenseless
households, that means that 140,200,000 people are in a household with
guns (US population in 2011 is 311,591,917). The government wants to
infringe on the rights of over 300 million people to stop 11,101
criminals (assuming one criminal per murder). That means that gun-control laws are trying to stop the 0.008% of gun owners that do
bad things. To put it another way, for every single murderer, there are 12,630 honest gun owners. Wow! Clearly, guns are indeed a problem.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Would you prefer to be raped or dead ?
I'd prefer my would-be rapist be dead, which is much more likely if I'm armed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A couple of years ago if I looked at the news I'd have thought sharks grew legs, walked up on land, and started eating children out of playgrounds.
Never underestimate the medias ability to over report and hyper sensationalize the fixation of the moment.
To make your study meaningful, you should also take a few more data points both before and after the ban. This is so that you can identify any trends that were in place throughout the ban and were not really affected by it. To the best of my knowledge, both the decrease in homicide and the increase in assaults were in that category.
I'd prefer my would-be rapist be dead
Sure we all would.
which is much more likely if I'm armed.
It increases the odds of a lot of things.
It increases the odds he's also carrying a gun. It increases the odds he's had plenty of practice with it, since its legal for him to carry it around.
It increases the odds of a shootout. It increases the odds you get shot. (Maybe he's a better shot than you. Maybe he approaches you with it drawn while yours is still holstered. Not much of an edge for you.
It increases the odds an innocent bystander gets short. It increases the odds of an accidental discharge. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with a gun in their hands. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with -your- gun in their hands.
I'm Not saying I wouldn't want to have a gun in my hands if I were attacked, but its wrong to oversimplify it so that is the only scenario we look at.
It increases the odds he's also carrying a gun.
My being armed doesn't do that.
It increases the odds he's had plenty of practice with it, since its legal for him to carry it around.
Legal to carry is completely orthogonal to plenty of practice, because you don't practice with it while you're wandering around town. Further, odds are good he's already a felon, and is already barred from carry, if not ownership.
It increases the odds of a shootout. It increases the odds you get shot. (Maybe he's a better shot than you. Maybe he approaches you with it drawn while yours is still holstered. Not much of an edge for you.
If he has a gun, and I have no gun, then he's definitely got the edge.
It increases the odds an innocent bystander gets short. It increases the odds of an accidental discharge. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with a gun in their hands. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with -your- gun in their hands.
Yes, there are potential negative outcomes. But in the scenario of a more physically powerful attacker, none of them are very different from the already extant outcome, for the attacked in any case. Meanwhile, preventing or reducing attacks is everyone's responsibility, and we are collectively falling down on the job.
I'm Not saying I wouldn't want to have a gun in my hands if I were attacked, but its wrong to oversimplify it so that is the only scenario we look at.
You and your straw man must be cuddled close tonight. I never claimed that was the only scenario. You wanted something to complain about, but I didn't say what you want me to have said.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"