alt Hacker NewsA quick search suggests that 3D-printed guns being used in crime is an actual, for-real, and growing problem.
I take it that you wouldn't be OK with somebody building a uranium enrichment facility in their backyard for their hobby reactor. So there is a line to be drawn on where people's freedom to tinker ends; it's just a question of where you draw it.
Personally, I think given there is an actual documented, non-isolated problem with 3D printed guns being used for violent crime, there's a debate to be had that's more sophisticated than "REGULATION BAD".
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Once you know how easy it is to make a gun using parts from a hardware store the concept of banning it becomes a joke.
It’s like trying to ban wrenches.
Lever and tube - that’s what it is. People create makeshift ones even when it’s legal to buy them, because it’s cheap and easy to do so.
You can’t ban computers or personal transportation or words either.
You can’t even ban a person from a website. You can ban an account - but you haven’t stopped the person. Any attempt at playing arbitrary authority you’re gonna lose
It’s not 3d printed guns, it’s 3d printed parts. You don’t need the 3d printing at all if you want to make a DIY gun in the US, you can literally just buy the gun parts.
You don’t seem to have a good grasp of the topic but already decided the opposition position is „regulation bad“, but that’s not the case at all. The pushback comes from introducing the government as middleman between your slicer and 3d printer, that’s dystopic af
Then I missed the public discussion on why making it illegal to possess DIY guns is not enough. Did that actually get debated or just handwaved away? By the time I became aware of this whole technical blocking thing, that was the only proposal on the table.
My position on anything is "REGULATION BAD" when it's against individuals and non commercial/open source projects, "REGULATION GOOD" for massive corporations, and "REGULATION MAYBE GOOD NEEDS NUANCED DEBATE" for anything in between.
> I take it that you wouldn't be OK with somebody building a uranium enrichment facility in their backyard for their hobby reactor.
Your analogy fails in that yes, you are not allowed to make hobby reactor. But that's because you are not allowed to have any kind of reactor at all.
Banning 3d-printed guns while not banning real guns (which are order of magnitude more effective) makes no sense.
The problem may exist, but I don't believe that intrusive "gun part deyection" solves it.
3d printed guns are just a fancier pipe gun. Physics is the real enemy here. Make thing go fast out of tube is too simple of a design.
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.
Fully 3D-printed guns have awful performance, though. You would likely get significantly better results improvising with the stuff available at literally any random hardware store. Yet, despite that kind of gun being around for centuries, we weirdly aren't seeing bans on rigid metal tubes yet.
3D-printed "guns" become a real issue when you combine it with unregulated sale of firearm parts and ammunition. To get a fully-functional gun you just need to 3D print a fairly trivial component which is legally considered the entire gun as it carries the serial number. But that's not a 3D printing problem, because there are also companies selling that same part in a mostly-finished legally-not-a-gun form, together with a drilling jig guiding you how to drill the last few holes with a regular Dremel. And nobody is proposing banning Dremels. Heck, it is totally okay to own a lathe - which you can use to make your own high-quality guns!
And the entire discussion is of course pointless once you realize that this is the USA, so anyone is only a weekend road trip away from legally and fully-anonymously buying a gun two states over. If 3D-printed guns are such a huge problem, why aren't we seeing European countries mass-banning 3D printers?
To extend your analogy: it's like being fine with the sale of ultracentrifuges and uranium hexafluoride, then getting upset at someone selling a screwdriver to attach the plug to the power cord of the ultracentrifuge because "screwdrivers lead to nuclear bombs".
3D printed guns are a nothingburger. There is indeed a non-zero number of violent crimes committed with them - but there is also a non-zero number of violent crimes committed with shoelaces, so that's clearly not enough of a reason to ban them. It only makes sense to regulate them if they are involved in a significant number of crimes and leading to a huge increase in gun violence - and at that point you probably want to crack down on all forms of DIY guns instead of just the 3D printed ones. But that's simply not the case, so the regulation is pointless and doing more harm than good.
Walk into Lowes and buy some steel pipe and a nail.
Congrats, you built a zipgun.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-63198715
There's now much more of a debate that's to be more sophisticated than "3D PRINTED GUNS BAD".
> A quick search suggests that 3D-printed guns being used in crime is an actual, for-real, and growing problem.
Making actual firearms from steel is trivial. In fact you can look up Kalashnikov designs online and then replicate it with a relatively simple mill/lathe/tapping setup.