The 3-D printed plastic gun has arrived:
“… Early next week, Wilson, a 25-year-old University of Texas law student and founder of the non-profit group Defense Distributed, plans to release the 3D-printable CAD files for a gun he calls “the Liberator,” … All sixteen pieces of the Liberator prototype were printed in ABS plastic with a Dimension SST printer from 3D printing company Stratasys, with the exception of a single nail that’s used as a firing pin. The gun is designed to fire standard handgun rounds, using interchangeable barrels for different calibers of ammunition …”
Excellent!
Of course, not everyone is happy:
” … Congressman Steve Israel (D-Huntington) renewed his call for passage of his recently-introduced Undetectable Firearms Modernization Act that extends the ban on plastic firearms and includes homemade, plastic high-capacity magazines and receivers. The existing ban on plastic guns expires this year and does not clearly cover these major components … Rep. Israel said, “Security checkpoints, background checks, and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser. When I started talking about the issue of plastic firearms months ago, I was told the idea of a plastic gun is science-fiction. Now that this technology appears to be upon us, we need to act now to extend the ban on plastic firearms.” …”
That isn’t what he is worried about. The price of quality plastic printers is still high so it is not as if people are going to start churning these things out at home in the immediate future. What Israel is worried about is what happens say 10 years down the road, when the price has gone down to where they are affordable to the masses. Cell phones have been around since the 70s, but it wasn’t until after 2000 they became pervasive. Laser sintering and microwave sintering technologies are also advancing which allow 3-D printing of metal and non-metal objects. This tech too will eventually be affordable to anyone.
At that point, what I believe will happen will be a repeat of what happened in the 90s when the government attempted to keep control of “strong” encryption and the resulting intimidation/persecution of Phil Zimmermann over PGP. That didn’t go well for the government when internet users essentially gave the feds a giant middle finger and they were forced to back down in the late 90s. Now “strong” encryption is available pretty much everywhere. I envision the same thing for printed guns.