Slashdot Mirror
3D Printed Guns Might Lead To Law Changes In Australia
angry tapir writes An inquiry by an Australian Senate committee has recommended the introduction of uniform laws across jurisdictions in the country "regulating the manufacture of 3D printed firearms and firearm parts." Although current laws are in general believed to cover 3D printed guns, there are concerns there may be inconsistencies across different Australian jurisdictions. Although there aren't any high-profile cases of 3D printed weapons being used in crimes in the country, earlier this year a raid in Queensland recovered 3D printed firearm parts.
How about you include the costs of investigating murders with firearms, as well as prosecution, incarceration. Less firearms seems like a generally good idea to me. Disarmament of the general public certainly helped in Europe after the World Wars to make it a safer place.
3D printed gins are no different to any other home-made gun.
It doesn't matter if its 3D printed, machined with a lathe, hand-forged by a blacksmith or made on a production line, its still a gun and is still just as illegal or legal as any other gun (depending on what sort of gun it is and what jurisdiction you are in)
True, the difference is not in the gun itself, but in the means of production. A 3D printer requires little skill to operate (or soon will), lowering the bar to making a gun for most people. People making home made guns with a CNC machine or even by hand has not proven to be a big problem in most countries. It isn't clear yet if 3D printed guns will be a problem or not, but it seems like law makers want to get in ahead of time.
Plus it means they can throw some extra charges at anyone they arrest who happens to own a 3D printer. Law enforcement is always looking for new ways to apply some additional stress on people it questions, even if most of the charges are eventually dropped as completely baseless.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The rest of the developed world seems to find the opposite is true, and judging by their number of gun deaths, something seems to be working.
Simple. IT ISN'T TRUE.
How about using (gasp) some FACTS! Hard to believe, but if it were true, you should be able to prove it.
Australia has greatly tightened its gun laws since 1996. Let's look at the great change.
http://www.aic.gov.au/dataTool...
According to this, in 1995, guns accounted for 18.38% of all murders. In 2012, guns accounted for 17.5% of all homicides. Yes, less than one percent drop! WOW! WHAT A DIFFERENCE!
OK. Gun homicides DID go down quite a bit, but so did knife homicides and blunt object homicides. Did Australia ban all knives and clubs? Yes, the police hassle people who carry such things in public, but you can have a bunch of cricket bats and very large knives in your home in Australia.
The homicide rate went down overall, but the proportion of weapon used did not seem to change much as at.. This points to some other cause for the drop in homicide. Some people point to less lead in the environment -- removing lead from gasoline and paint, for example.
So, tell me. Where is your proof?
Oh, and in the US, go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
Copy this table into your favorite spreadsheet. Make an X-Y scatter plot of "Gun Ownership" and "Murders." Add a trend line. Look: more guns = less homicide (a weak trend, but it is there). Hey, the District of Columbia has the most murders and the least number of guns (wow, go figure). Delete that row. Look, the trend is still there -- weaker, but still there.
Now, I ask you: where is your proof?
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
"Personally, I prefer civilization"
Please name one Oppressive state/Tyranny without any gun control laws. You claim you prefer civilization, but history proves that Humans can and will elect dictators on a regular basis. They get elected, then start instituting all sorts of rules and regulations for "security" reasons, and then ... quietly assume "President for life" status, often through the legal and legislative processes.
And, it is clear from your post you have no idea how vast our country actually is, with huge swaths of country with little or no "police" to protect the citizens.
Lastly, if you take out the bastions of Liberalism (Chicago, New Orleans and Washington DC), our gun crime rate is actually quite low. It is sad when people who don't know shit about America, make up what they believe to be true, and it gets modded as Insightful.
In the last 300 years, how many dictators have hailed from Europe? How many from the USA? You call it civilization, I call it recipe for tyranny.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.