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Of 1000 Americans Polled, Most Would Ban Home Printing of Guns
An anonymous reader writes "In results that may signal some discomfort with the enormous DIY promise of 3D printing and similar home-manufacturing technologies, a new Reason-Rupe poll finds that an otherwise gun control-weary American public thinks owners of 3D printers ought not be allowed to make their own guns or gun parts. Of course, implementing such a restrictive policy might be tad more difficult than measuring popular preferences." This poll is of only 1000 people, though; your mileage may vary.
Whatever happened to the concept of Personal Responsibility? Of being held accountable for your own actions, instead of the knee-jerk reaction of "it's the firearms fault, ban them everywhere we can." This mass punishment, this taking away of people's ability to use their time and money as they see fit, is crazy. If someone proves that they can't handle a level of responsibility, then I can understand rights being taken away, but to punish everything, to take away abilities from everyone? I find it insulting, that I am automatically assumed to not be responsible off the bat.
Good for them. I want a unicorn, and I'm not going to get that either.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Manufacturing your own guns is not illegal in the US, as long as you don't sell it nor produce certain forbidden pieces/materials.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
Thankfully my rights aren't governed by popular opinion.
Dallas Real Estate
If you're one of the 38% who didn't support the ban, the IRS and ATF would like to contact you to request your clarification of your position. Be prepared to submit copies of your Twitter and Facebook postings.
And after 9/11, you could probably have gotten the same results for warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, etc. This is why we have a republic, not a democracy. The rightness of a public policy is not measured by popular support. The only real reason to go by what is popular is that if you constantly ignore the popular will on things that are neutral or right, you risk delegitimizing the government.
Guys and gals, we made zip guns in Jr. high shop in the 1950s. They might not have been very accurate, but guns they were, and shoot they did. Any attempt to keep people from building and owning guns is a waste of time and money. We do have the right, not priviledge, to keep and bear arms. Just how many tax dollars are we going to spend to deny rights?
Watch out for the guy printing a pointed stick...
Well, according to TFA, 29% of people surveyed didn't think people should be allowed to own 3D printers at all!
There are way too many luddites out there.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
There's no such thing as an AK-47 permit in Texas or elsewhere in the US, assuming you're referring to the semi-auto variant.
Assuming that one is not otherwise prohibited from possessing firearms (e.g. not a criminal), it's perfectly legal to make any otherwise-legal firearm for personal use in the US. For example, if one wished to build a semi-auto AK-47, that's fine (here's a guy making one from a shovel he bent into the appropriate shape, while here are the stamped/punched flats that you'd need to bend, drill, and heat-treat to make your own semi-auto AK receiver, the only regulated part). If you wanted to build a full-auto one, that's forbidden. You can make silencers, short-barreled rifles/shotguns, etc., but ONLY after getting the appropriate tax stamp from the ATF.
A Grizzly gunsmith lathe and mill combo costs around $4000, less than a 3d printer. The steel and aluminum rods and blocks are also cheap and available. Anyone can machine a REAL gun cheaper than they can make a plastic one. You make bullets out of lead/tin tire rim weights. If you use an older cartridge that was originally a block powder round like .45 colt or 45-70 govt. you can make your own powder. The only part that I'm not sure of is how one would make brass shell cases or primers.
I know photoshop does that, and that most printers have dots whose stated purpose is to track counterfeiters.
https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots
http://petapixel.com/2011/08/09/heres-what-happens-when-you-try-to-edit-photos-of-money-in-photoshop/
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
29% of people are just idiots.
Did we get it down to 29%?
This is exactly why we have a constitution. The fear of the framers was that a "passing majority" could remove our freedoms/rights out of fear or anger.
There is a "public interest" in meddling in the affairs of others. Whether or not that is consistent with our founding ideals is another matter entirely.
Most busybodies are just idiots manipulated by the media to fear the wrong thing and ignore the real problem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You're allowed to build homemade guns in the US under the condition that the gun itself would be legal to own anyway (for example, it isn't fully automatic). 3D printers just make it a bit more accessible than crafting it by hand. Apparently, many people in the US just don't know this fact.
Here's a video of a homemade 12 gauge zip gun, better then anything from a 3d printer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1wV3lmbSv4
Well, guns are pretty much banned in Chicago, New York City, etc. And yet, dozens of shootings every day....
This image has a nice take on it... apparently cold weather causes violence.
http://danieljmitchell.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/houston-chicago-guns-weather.jpg?w=500&h=500
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
If you know a ban wouldn't make sense or be effective, then why would you support it? You're admitting that you let your emotion overpower your logic.
Yes, that was one girl, and just because some people manage anyways, does not imply that firearms don't make it easier and lead to deaths that might otherwise not happen. A firearm is an extremely easy way of killing people you might not already be capable of killing. With a firearm, that same 8 year old girl could have killed the 12 year old brother which would have been substantially less likely were she only to have had access to pointy sticks.
Posts like yours really reinforce the idea that perhaps the people with firearms are precisely the people that shouldn't be allowed anywhere near them. Because critical reasoning is an essential firearm handling skill.
1000 out of 300 million +. Like the original poster said, is it 1000 people from NYC? Or 1000 from Texas?
I have worked in market research and understand the sample sizes and statistical analysis.
The question remains, where are the 1000 people from? Answer that and then we will have a clearer picture of the validity of the results.
All points of time and space are connected.
1. Most polls are only of around 1000 people are so, they are done statisticly to reflect the demographic they are meant to represent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_%28statistics%29#Sampling_methods
2. Speaking of 1, given the poll was done by "reason.com" themselves, i want to know the sampling method used and its error rate.
3. the results of the poll where 53-44, so the reality is public opinions are really "mixed".
When I studied statistics and polling, I learned that a sample of 1,000 gave you answers that were reliable to a confidence interval of 1%. The Gallup poll and other polls use a nationwide sample of about 1,000.
There's no benefit to using more than 1,000 because they'd have to poll very large numbers of people for very small and meaningless improvements in the confidence interval. It doesn't make any difference whether 53%, 53.2% or 52.9% of Americans oppose printing guns at home.
Politicians don't say, "Well, I wouldn't worry about this if 52% of those polled opposed it, but now that 53% oppose it we have to do something about it."
No, actually, they don't give a shit. I could make myself a firearm, RIGHT NOW, and they're OK with that (so long as it doesn't infringe on certain things, like bore diameter, barrel length if it's a shotgun or pistol.. stuff you can own, but need some licenses (tax stamps) from the ATF to own).
For the price of a single 3D printer you could slam out dozens of zip guns. Don't even need any serious machining tools for that.
The whole 3D printed gun scare is just that. A scare. It's headlines. That is all.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
if your survey includes mostly people who do those things you'll get different answers but this survey was almost entirely of people who don't print 3D guns.
I wouldn't be surprised if surveys found that 53% of the population said any of these if the survey is mostly of people who don't do them
I don't buy 16+ ounce sodas. Nobody should.
I don't drink. nobody should.
I don't smoke. nobody should.
I don't vote republican. nobody should.
I don't get food stamps. nobody should
I don't own a gun. nobody should.
I don't send my kids to private school. nobody should.
So the poll really reveals that most people are ignorant of the facts, and would happily remain ignorant while voting to take rights away. Though if asked directly "would you educate yourself on all the facts before voting" most would say "yes," but wouldn't actually do it. Or they would consider reading their favorite completely one-sided blog as "education."
It is also commonly known that having a baby causes huge neurological changes in both parents, which in turn changes their political values. Ostensibly they are more willing to sacrifice freedom (theirs and everyone else's) for promises of security (theirs, that's all they care about). Based on my experience, the changes are a bit deeper than that: it makes them lose their ability to think critically, to see the big picture, and to be smart.
I wonder how many people in this poll were parents.
I believe otherwise. I think the ATF does care if people make their own firearms because a large portion of the people that make up the ATF do not believe that anyone but themselves are responsible enough to own firearms.
Someone that makes a firearm at home might be doing so completely within the law but it appears to me that the ATF does not like this because they would have no record of it. If they don't have a record of it then they can't take it from us when they wish. That's just the way they think, it's a culture that exists within the ATF since it was created.
Of course certain individual ATF agents may not have a problem with responsible firearm ownership, manufacture, or transfer but the people in charge certainly do. There are all kinds of examples of people having their weapons taken from them and never returned, despite it being quite illegal for the ATF to do so. People have ended up dead because the ATF didn't have the right paperwork and they thought someone had an "illegal" gun.
The ATF has to be very nervous right now over 3D printing. Now it no longer takes expensive machine tools and a certain level of skill to mass produce firearms. Now all it takes is a computer, 3D printer, plastic, and the ability to stack up Lego blocks.
If the ATF cannot find a way to regulate this then they are going to find themselves irrelevant, and out of a job.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
So, if someone borrows your car, accidently kills seven people, YOU should be brought up on seven counts of manslaughter alongside your (presumably ex-)friend?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
USA, murder rates are many times higher among blacks and hispanics than among whites
And yet Houston has MORE blacks and hispanics than Chicago, yet lower murder rate. Here's the source.
among poor people of all races
Income levels are the same. source.
Looking at the chart before stomping it into the ground helps.
I know the gun thing is the big boogieman now in regards to 3-D printers, but I can't help but think there's more mundane things that a 3-D printer can do that the powers-that-be are afraid of. It sure would be nice to print out a new head light bezel for my truck for ten bucks instead of paying over $200 from the dealership.
Today, sure. But tomorrow?
The current "zip gun" design is simply a proof of concept, proving that you can in fact CTRL+P a working, untraceable, undetectable firearm.
It's not dissimilar to the 3d printed large capacity magazines created before it. Although they're already much more practical: A 30 round clip that's cheap/easy enough to simply be thrown away after 1 use doesn't need to reliably fire more then 30 rounds to be fully effective.
The point however, is that it's a zip-gun today...it's a fully working AR-15 or Glock 17 tomorrow, or even a full on mini-gun, or printed caseless ammo. And "tomorrow" isn't a euphemism for "some day far in the future, maybe, but probably not". No, "tomorrow" really is tomorrow. Between advancements in 3D printer tech, advancements in materials, advancements in software, and a whole bunch of people suddenly becoming interested in and buying their own 3D printers...we'll be far, far past "zip-gun" this time next year.
Wake the fuck up. This really does change everything. This bell cannot be unrung. No matter where you sit politically on issues of guns, this is the new reality and any regulations you care to write can't pretend reality is something else if you want them to have any real effect.
Want to ban 30 round clips so bad guys can't fire so many rounds at once as they're marching through an elementrary school? Or ban assault weapons? Or ban silencers? Or require background checks?
Noble intentions, but how's that going to be effective when 3D printers are as common place and easy to use as ink jet photo printers are today?
My
What a load of bullshit. The government isn't supposed to fear us, you twit, and to be brutally honest, it's that attitude that has gotten us into such the mess we're in today. After all, how far a leap is it from "government is supposed to fear us" to "if only someone would bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City or an Olympic venue in Atlanta, that would show 'em"?
The government is supposed to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the country. When some dictator stages a military coup d'état against his government, how well is that government able to provide for the common defense and general welfare? It's impossible for a government that fears its citizenry to fulfill that mandate. It's also utterly moronic to espouse rule by physical intimidation, which is exactly what you're supporting when you propagate this idiotic notion that people should have guns to keep government in check.
A little anecdote I like to relate to "government is supposed to fear us" twits:
On April 12, 2009, three Navy SEALs shot and killed three Somali pirates holding Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama hostage. They had parachuted in two days before, and were set up on the fantail of the U.S.S. Bainbridge, a destroyer dispatched to handle the situation. The pirates were on a lifeboat being towed over 75 feet behind the Bainbridge. The SEALs had been manning their sniper rifles for over 24 hours straight, and both boats were bobbing up and down. Three simultaneous shots were taken, and there were three direct hits in the heads of each of the pirates. Captain Phillips was successfully rescued without injury.
I bring this up for a couple of reasons. First, because Navy SEALs are badass, and you do not want to mess with them. But mostly because you need to understand that if the government wants you dead, you are going to be dead. You will be a red splatter on the wall before you even have the chance to get your military-grade weaponry.
Several times since the Revolutionary War, nutcases have tried to rise up in armed resistance to the U.S. government. The largest such rebellion took place between 1861 and 1865. You would have thought that that would have settled the matter once and for all, but no, even almost 150 years later, we still have people romanticizing revolutions trying to convince others that overthrowing the U.S. government via armed conflict is a good idea, or that the U.S. government is even remotely concerned about the possibility; thus we end up with incidents like Ruby Ridge and Waco. So let me break it down to you really simple-like: 1) Armed revolt against the U.S. government by U.S. citizens will never work, and 2) if you try, you will be quickly dispatched with no matter how many guns you own.
And personally, I'm glad. Unlike apparently you, I realize that we need government to maintain our society. If someone burns down my house or murders someone in my family, I don't want the government to be afraid to arrest and prosecute the guy who did it because he has a lot of guns, that's the height of idiocy. If you want a haven where there is little to no government interference, you should move to Somalia. There's practically no government there past the "might makes right" rules imposed by local warlords. If you have a lot of guns, you have a lot of power. If someone commits some perceived injustice against you, there's nothing stopping you from using your resources to carry out justice in whatever way you want. As an added bonus, you wouldn't have to pay taxes. Of course, you do have to worry about your warlord neighbors getting jealous of your stuff and, if they have more guns and mercenaries than you do, coming over and taking it. But hey, at least you can go down in a blaze of glory knowing that you and your family are dying without the benefit of government helping you with your personal protection or interfering with your ability to acquire lots of guns and that the only limit you have on what kind you can buy is how much money you have.
P
I'm not a right-wing "US government is conspiring with UN to set up concentration camps" nutcase, but the amount of incorrect claims in your post is so staggering that I have to play the devil's advocate here.
What a load of bullshit. The government isn't supposed to fear us, you twit
A democratic government of free people is not supposed to fear those people, you're right. However, is that governments can sometimes devolve from democracy into a populist tyranny of the majority, and ultimately into a dictatorship. Nazi Germany was an extreme example of that; more mild recent ones are Russia and Venezuela. The point is that any people in the government who have similar notions should be fearful of an armed and vigilant populace.
Several times since the Revolutionary War, nutcases have tried to rise up in armed resistance to the U.S. government. The largest such rebellion took place between 1861 and 1865.
So Civil War was just a bunch of nutcases rising up in armed resistance against U.S. government, really? And not, say, duly elected governments of several states, which at that time considered themselves sovereign, seceding and establishing their own government?
Regardless of the unsavory causes for the sake of which CSA was established, it is as far from what you're trying to portray here as can possibly be. It was an example of two professional, state-funded and state-controlled armies hashing it out in the field, not unorganized militia.
. If someone burns down my house or murders someone in my family, I don't want the government to be afraid to arrest and prosecute the guy who did it
Hypothetically speaking, what if the government burns down your house and murders someone in your family?
TL;DR version: your entire argument hinges on the notion that government is always beneficial. This is provably not the case: USSR, Nazi Germany, DPRK are all examples of extremely oppressive governments. There are also numerous examples of benign governments which devolved into oppressive ones, either through abuse of populism in times of crisis, or through an internal coup d'etat. The "security of a free state" argument is about preventing that from happening, not about resisting a legitimate democratic government.
NRA is a marketing arm of gun manufacturers.
Except for the fact that the NRA gets very little money from gun manufacturers. Where they get their money from is millions of Americans writing checks so that the NRA will represent them in Washington.
More facts, less emotion.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Did you see what you did there? Is "gun violence" somehow more criminal, cruel, or notable than any other kind of violence?
Fact is that total violent crimes hit a new low, I recall it's the lowest it has been in something like 50 or 60 years. I don't know what the "gun violence" rate is and I don't care to look it up. I don't care because I know that "gun violence" statistics are loaded with inaccuracies by people with an agenda to deny law abiding people of their right of self defense.
While violent crimes have hit a new low we've seen gun ownership hit new highs. The "gun violence" rates may have gone up but that is only because "gun violence" as defined by people like the Brady Campaign include suicides, self defense shootings, police interventions, and accidents. I would not consider the killing of a home invader by the home owner to be "gun violence" but Brady Campaign does. In most jurisdictions this is not even considered a crime. As someone smarter than me has said, "There are four types of homicide, felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy."
Even if "gun violence" is high I am not so sure that is a bad thing. If someone breaks into the home of another they should expect some "gun violence" from the home owner in return. That would be something praiseworthy.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
NRA is a marketing arm of gun manufacturers.
Except for the fact that the NRA gets very little money from gun manufacturers. Where they get their money from is mostly from advertising revenues from firearms companies, donations to it's Ring of Freedom corporate sponsors program from firearms companies, donations to its 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 organizations (again largely from firearms companies. The membership dues cover less than half of their budget, and even some of those are paid for by firearms companies: Taurus buys a membership for each customer.
FTFY.