Do you have a license for that 3D printer?
This is so incredibly stupid. Do you know what else you can create with a 3D printer besides the receiver for a ghost gun? That’s right - another 3D printer!
I could see legislators passing a law that required commercial 3D printers to include some sort of signature within their prints. Regular 2D printers already have these; they have a series of microdots that encode a unique identifier for any commercial printer sold. So if you try to photocopy money (and somehow get passed internal filters meant to prevent that), the money you print will be traceable to your printer.
In principal, you could require 3D printers to have something similar. A printer could automatically add insignificant defects to any print. So instead of printing a straight line of filament, it produces a subtly wavy line. You would make the imperfections so small you need to use magnification to see them. But within those imperfections you could embed a serial number that uniquely identified each 3D printer commercially sold. And if someone tried to print a ghost gun receiver on their commercial 3D printer, that would allow you to identify the source of the part. This is how in theory a 3D printer license could be useful. We license each printer, and any prints made contain unique identifiers making them traceable to those licensed printers.
But here is the problem. Unlike with 2D printers and counterfeit currency, It is possible to 3D print a 3D printer. You can make a 3D printer out of 3D printed parts and generic mass-market motors, computer chips, and aluminum extrusions. See RepRap. And if you have the 3D printing skills to make a ghost gun (which is NOT a trivial task), you also have the skills to 3D print a 3D printer. And while the plastic parts of that ghost 3D printer will have the security code embedded in them, the actual code running the ghost printer need not follow the law.
Sure, you can make it illegal to create such a ghost 3D printer. But it’s already illegal to make a ghost gun! It’s not like 3D printing a gun is the cheapest or easiest way to obtain a firearm. It’s far easier to just go buy one legally. No, people only print ghost guns if they specifically want to hide from the law and are willingly violating it. And if someone is willing to violate federal gun manufacturing law, going the extra step and making an illegal 3D printer isn’t going to stop them.
So by regulating 3D printers, you make the lives of every legitimate 3D printer user harder. And since criminals who make ghost guns can just first make a ghost 3D printer, you won’t actually improve the ability of police to trace the source of ghost guns. Really all you’ll do is be able to add the charge of “illegal 3D printer manufacture” to the long litany of charges thrown at anyone caught printing ghost guns. So they’ll get 31 years in prison instead of 30.
Making 3D printers requiring licensing would do nothing to actually reduce the spread of firearms, would severely burden every legitimate user of a 3D printer, and would do little other than providing minor increases in sentencing to illegal gun manufacturers caught using existing police tools and techniques. You could accomplish the exact same thing simply by slightly increasing the penalties on illegal gun manufacturing.
Furthermore one can build a functional shotgun out of a steering wheel lock, a nail, and a hacksaw in about 30 minutes.
Anyone with access to your average hardware store can walk out with materials to make guns, napalm, plastic explosives, toxic gas, bombs, lethal traps, hand grenades, body armor, incendiary devices, and whatever else so long as they take a few hours to think about how to do it and read a couple resources.
Unless they start requiring background checks to go to the fucking home depot, this does nothing.
We also won’t be allowing welding, filing, whittling or hammering either. Don’t ever try and produce outside of the yoke.
/s
…ghost gun shootings have risen 1,000% across the nation
From what, and to what? I loathe when I see percentage based metrics because they’re so incredibly easy to manipulate.
Until proven otherwise I’m going to assume that there was 1 and now there are 10. That’s 1000% increase for sure, but I’m not sure 10 instances is worth sweeping legislation.
“1000% increase” sure does sound scary though.
Police-submitted requests to the ATF to trace ghost guns jumped from 1,629 in 2017, to 19,273 in 2021, the report said, while cautioning that this data is most likely grossly underreported.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ghost-gun-use-crimes-1000-percent-rise-since-2017-atf-report/
In total, police submitted 1,922,5771 crime guns to ATF for tracing between 2017 and 2021.
That number does not make sense, it’s either 19M or 1.9M. Let’s be generous and assume that trailing 1 was a typo (consistent with the commas).
This would mean ghost guns accounted for 0.01% of all the gun traces. A number so negligible as to be irrelevant.
I’m standing by the “raised by 1000%” being a bit of sensationalism.
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No. Just no. Seriously.
Think about red flag laws. Think about the person who likes guns, and shoots for fun, maybe they hunt too. Lawfully. Then they have a mental health break. They get help, but the state, and you could argue rightfully, temporarily takes their guns. OK. They were a threat to themselves, and the law in place set guidelines resulting in 6 months of no guns, no ammo, and cannot make any purchases.
Important note: this person is NOT a criminal, and hasn’t broken any laws. They would be breaking the law by buying a gun, or ammo, or possessing such during the 6 months to a year (that’s a range in Minnesota).
Honestly, I am a fan of red flag laws in principle. It’s a good idea all told. Now, we’re going to place 3D printers in the same category? What if this person’s favorite hobby, something that is helping them recover, is 3D printing? You, the state, in the interest of preserving health, are now forcibly eroding it by edging toward treating a 3D printer as a gun.
Yes, this comes from a true story, not in New York. This bill really shouldn’t leave committee.
I very much appreciate your take, but I fear you’ve not thought about a few things.
Red flag laws sound great until your psycho ex calls the police. And I’ve had psycho exes do far worse than merely make an accusatory phone call.
Important note: this person is NOT a criminal, and hasn’t broken any laws.
I can’t get behind withholding a constitutional right over a third-party accusation. And talk about a good way to get police murdered. “Yeah, computer says this guy is armed and fruity. Proceed with all caution.” If the flagged person actually has a mental breakdown, and the police are called, they’re getting executed. We all know this.
With fascism incoming, do you want to be on a list of armed citizens?
(Doesn’t matter if the reader doesn’t believe the 2A should exist, it does and the courts have upheld it again and again.)
I hear what you’re saying, I think.
I think that’s why I meant in principle. Due process ought to come quickly. No, the police in this country don’t have a good track record regarding people with mental health concerns.
The reality of the situation makes things far darker. If we lived in a place in which a law like this could exist and truly help people, I’d be for it, especially in the absence of even better scenarios. Ideally, no laws at all perhaps?
Your points here certainly don’t make me more likely to support this bill! Which it sounds like you agree.
Being a liberal gun nut, I think on gun laws a lot, watch a lot on content on the subject. Just don’t have answers.
I think we should be mandating safe storage though. Less kids and thieves with guns sounds great and I don’t see a 2A issue. Maybe allow one unsecured firearm in the home for defense. Maybe even 1 long gun and 1 pistol. Dunno.
And yeah, the 2A is the issue. We can’t ignore or repeal it, stuck for now.
One other thought; If we require a mental health professional to make the call, they’re always going to err on the side of caution. Can you imagine going to therapy and being advised, first visit, “You have zero mental health issues, a perfectly balanced mind. Go home.” Yeah, that’s never going to happen for anyone.
I think we should be mandating safe storage though. Less kids and thieves with guns sounds great and I don’t see a 2A issue. Maybe allow one unsecured firearm in the home for defense. Maybe even 1 long gun and 1 pistol. Dunno.
Couple things on this one:
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For it to be effective, it would have to be ALL guns in the house. If you leave out two, what’s stopping those from being the stolen two? Kids and robbers could still get them.
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Safes are either A) expensive as hell or B) dogshit that can be bypassed in 30sec and there is not much in between. So either you have the $2k to spend on an actual decent safe (that can still be broken into, just harder) or you buy a cheap safe that will only keep honest people honest. If we mandate the safes be good, that’s “guns only for the rich with an extra 2k for a safe,” if any stack on cabinet can do we may as well not have the law as you can get in with a screwdriver.
Furthermore, I have no kids nor roommates. I don’t think my cat is likely to steal a rifle 2x her weight and 4x her length, and my whole house should be considered at least on par with the security of a stack-on cabinet (more I’d argue, frankly.)
Now 3) If you do mandate all be stored in a good rich person’s safe, that still leaves us at “no guns out for home defense,” meaning gun thefts now just occur by making the homeowner empty the safe at gunpoint and nothing has been solved.
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So the government wants to sieze the means of production 🤔
Don’t 3D printed guns still need actual gun parts? I didn’t think a barrel of a fully 3D printed gun would hold up very long.
Yes, you need to buy some actual gun parts, like a barrel. But, at least as far as 3D printed AR-15s the lower receiver is the only part of the gun that you need to pass a background check for and that can very easily be 3D printed. Literally everything else can be bought online and shipped to your house.
And then there’s the FGC9 2.0 (RIP JSTARK), which can be built using only 3d printed and common hardware store parts (including a homemade ECM rifled barrel.)
Metal parts from any hardware store is what I’ve seen on lemmy.
You wouldn’t download a gun
Law stupid. Makes difficult to purchase science project fun tool.
Less laws, more actions.
