3D Printing Will Make Gun Control Laws Irrelevant, J.D. Tuccille Tells RT America

RT America

Yesterday, RT America ran a report on the impact of 3D printing on the debate over firearms and gun control laws. RT's Marina Portnaya interviewed me for the report, and I told her what I've written before: 3D printing has the ability to decentralize manufacturing to the DIY level and thereby render legal restrictions irrelevant. If prohibited or restricted items can be created in the privacy of your home or office, the law doesn't matter. We also discussed chemical printing and CNC machines, but as is often the case, only a brief bit on 3D printing made it into the report, There's no embeddable version available The embedded video is below, or you can see it here. My contribution begins at the 3:00 mark.

Comments

[The Late P Brooks]

ZIP GUNS!

[LTC(ret) John]

SHARKS vs. JETS!

[sloopyinca]

Man, fuck the Western Conference. Leave the Jets in the East so this matchup won't happen.

[$park?]

3D printing has the ability to decentralize manufacturing to the DIY level and thereby render legal restrictions irrelevant.

But, that would be ANARCHY!

[WTF]

Which would lead to pirates!

[bmp1701]

Gay pirates lighting doobies using the smoking muzzles of their machineguns after firing celebratory gunfire at a Man-Dog wedding!

[Fist of Etiquette]

3D printers are going to be the next big thing, if you can get a permit of necessity to operate one.

[Death Rock and Skull]

I hate having to insert my foid card into my unregistered firearms, or putting my driving license in the ignition to start my car.

[Rich]

Serious question (for J.D.): What legislation restricting 3D printing is being developed as we speak? I can't believe TPTB are unaware of its, um, uses.

[jdtuccille]

None that I've heard of yet, and the technology is so promising in a variety of uses that I think even legislators realize that restricting it would be economic suicide. I expect, though, some sort of ignorant attempt to require printer makers to build in anti-gun-building artificial intelligence. That should be fun.

[db]

I suspect they'll try to regulate purchases of resins and printer replacement parts and watch them like they watch hydroponics and electric bills or restrict access to pseudoephedrine and other building block chemicals for synthetic drugs.

[Brett L]

Eh. Printer replacement parts are scrap stepper motors and threaded 1/4" threaded rod. Everything else you can print.

[Counterfly]

I don't think they'd bother until they figure out a way to either make money off of restricting them or winning votes by restricting them.

Both of which will probably happen after the industry will have advanced to the point that it could work around said restrictions.

[geekster]

NY (surprise!) Congressman Steve Israel calling for changes to the Undetectable Firearms Act to include a ban of homemade, 3-D printed, plastic high-capacity magazines.

http://israel.house.gov/index......Itemid=131

[mr simple]

3-D printing is a new technology that shows great promise, but also requires new guidelines.

How will we know how to use something if our government masters don't explain the rules?

[thom]

It will be confusing to many when second amendment issues turn into first amendment issues.

[Restoras]

Just to idiot libtards and Dumbocrats

[IceTrey]

"If prohibited or restricted items can be created in the privacy of your home or office, the law doesn't matter."

Tell that to all the meth cooks in jail.

[jdtuccille]

Most of them were detected because of their interactions with buyers or through purchasing precursor chemicals. 3D printers ... nobody knows what you're up to if you keep your mouth shut.

[sloopyinca]

I like you, JD, but this is a pretty naive statement. Do you mean to tell me that the cops won't require resin buyers to sign their name the same as the buyers of cough medicine now do? Or how about registries for the buyers of 3-D printers or users of freeware/shareware? They're gonna be all over those site admins like white on rice to hand over the IP addresses and user names of everybody that ever downloaded a "build a gun on your own" program, and they're gonna use their bullshit reasonable suspicion claims to conduct surveillance on them. And once one, just one, of them is found to have a cache of weapons he printed at home, the big, bad hammer of government regulation is gonna come down on everybody that might provide information on how to print your own gun, not to mention the actual buyers of items that can be fabricated via 3-D printers into a gun.

You may think theyre are work-arounds, but they're still gonna make it hard for people to print their own guns without committing serious felonies and risking lengthy prison sentences. And most people don't weigh their freedom pretty well against getting ass-raped for a decade in a federal penitentiary.

[tarran]

I'm not so sanguine about 3-D printing;

The point is that if you defend your home with a gun containing more than 7 bullets, you are arrested and jailed; if CPS inteviews your kids and finds out you have a home-made clip that illegally holds too many bullets, you lose your kids.

They don't care that the law is easily circumvented. For some it's even a feature since it converts people they don't like into criminals.

[bmp1701]

*The point is that if you defend your home with a gun containing more than 7 bullets, you are arrested and jailed*

STEP ONE: Print a sound suppressor, and attach it to your printed gun.

STEP TWO: Buy a medium-to-large wood chipper.

STEP THREE: .....

STEP FOUR: Enjoy not getting caught.

[tarran]

Bullshit.

The notion that you can disappear guys breaking into your home is so moronic that it makes my brain hurt.

You or your family get injured in a violent altercation with a home invasion crew. ARe you really going to allow your family or you to die rather than go to the hospital? Are you going to brutalize your children into never talking about what happened?

Are you really this stupid?

[darius404]

Or he's joking. Turn your sarc-detector on, tarran.

[bmp1701]

Yup, I'm really advocating grinding up people with forestry equipment.

[bmp1701]

Preferably, right in the middle of your suburban basketball court.

[BakedPenguin]

Obviously, you're not a Steve Buscemi fan.

[db]

Step 1A: watch as your printed suppressor turns into a Looney Toons-esque mess at the muzzle of your gun as the muzzle blast from your first shot wrecks it.

[Brett L]

Area effect shrapnel on the first shot.

[Death Rock and Skull]

Kids love this kind of shit. They'll be printing right under their clueless parents' amphetimized noses.

[Death Rock and Skull]

"Supposedly"... Color printers/copiers/scanners/all-in-one-combos have software to make printing counterfeit cash difficult. Yeah right.

[Zeb]

Most of them do print tiny yellow codes on everything you print identifying the specific printer.

[Francisco d Anconia]

3D printing has the ability to decentralize manufacturing to the DIY level and thereby render legal restrictions irrelevant.

Gotta question for ya J.D.

Has the ability to grow pot in your house made MJ laws irrelevant?

Or do the cops still come arrest ya for doing so?

I don't necessarily agree with your premise. I wish it were true, but 30 round clips will still be illegal whether you print them or not.

[jdtuccille]

Growing small quantities for personal use is almost undetectable. It's big growers who are detected by their power usage and other noticeable features. Growing your own is a time commitment and has to be continued because the stuff is consumed, so it's not as easy, but yeah, it's basically beyond the reach of the law.

[db]

This. If I can't use a 30 round mag at the range without fear of being turned in by some Elmer Fudd stoolie, it makes no difference if I can print a thousand of them.

[Francisco d Anconia]

Or if you actually used it to protect yourself...

Off to teh big house.

[Fatty Bolger]

3D printing has the ability to decentralize manufacturing to the DIY level and thereby render legal restrictions irrelevant. If prohibited or restricted items can be created in the privacy of your home or office, the law doesn't matter.

Sure. Just like when you grow pot in your own house, the law doesn't matter. It's not like you could be arrested, go to jail, or lose your house or anything.

The truth is that we'll have to fight for printed guns the same way we do for manufactured guns.

[The Late P Brooks]

I'm all in favor of "early adopters" whether they are playing with 3D printed guns or electric cars. However, as far as I am aware, high strength sintered metal forming requires high temperatures and pressures.

Let's forget about guns for a minute. We'll "print out" some brake calipers and bolt them on a car. I'll let somebody else test them in heavy traffic.

I'm not convinced we're there yet, but that doesn't mean I don't want people to continue their experiments.

[Brett L]

Maybe we should test the calipers on a real car in a parking lot or other open area first.

[SlowburnAZ]

Why do I see so many articles on Reason, a libertarian website, where someone goes on RT to talk about issues?

Isn't RT Russia's state-run media outlet? Or am I wrong about that?

[darius404]

You're not wrong. They're on RT a lot because RT allows them air-time, I think. You'll see them on American outlets too, but I guess they take what they can get to reach a wider audience.

Besides which, RT is perused by Americans more than you might think. Sometimes they'll break stories or get interviews (Wikileaks/Julian Assange) before outlets owned here. One of the RT personalities (Alyona) even got hired by an American outlet (HuffPost Live).

[Rich]

And don't forget RT's coverage of the third-party presidential debates.

Gotta love it.

[Atanarjuat]

Alyona is on...Huffpost?

She's dead to me.

[Enough About Palin]

Then call me Mister Necrophiliac!

[ThatSkepticGuy]

Youtube has a bizarre obsession with forcing RT's shitty videos into the most obscure and random "reccomended for you" selections.

[bmp1701]

RT is funded by Russia, sort of like NPR. It's like All Things Considered, only infinitely funnier.

[bmp1701]

*sort of like NPR* - I meant like how NPR is funded by the US gov. I don't think Nina Totenberg takes cash from Vlad Putin.

[BakedPenguin]

Some one brought up the fact that RT may have more libertarians on it because they believe that libertarianism would hurt the US vs. Russia, in the same way the USSR supported the ACLU.

[The Late P Brooks]

You don't think NPR is going to do a segment celebrating freedom and self-sufficiency, do you?

[SlowburnAZ]

I suppose not. It just struck me as strange... ironic, even.

Whatever.

[BakedPenguin]

No Serbu for you!

[Warty]

New York's recently passed gun laws that don't allow residents there to buy the high-powered sniper rifle he produces.

S-s-s-s-s-s-sniper rifle???

[BakedPenguin]

At least they didn't say "assault weapon"

[Enough About Palin]

If prohibited or restricted items drugs can be created in the privacy of your home or office, the law doesn't matter.

Oh really? I can't wait to go home to start building my meth lab.

[Zeb]

If you were just doing it for your own use, you'd probably get away with it.

[The Late P Brooks]

Maybe we should test the calipers on a real car in a parking lot or other open area first.

That's how I would do it. Actually, the "two feet on the pedal, bending the steering wheel" test would come first. I seriously doubt a "printed" caliper would survive without a catastrophic failure. Then we could move on to heat cycles and repetitive stresses.

[ThatSkepticGuy]

"Tech Anarchy". Heh. Oh, Russia Today, is there any depth to which you won't stoop?

Maybe we can just refer to it from here on out as "MURDERDEATHKILL Printing".

[rts]

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colorado): "I will tell you these are ammunition, they're bullets, so the people who have those now they're going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won't be any more available." (April 2, 2013, Denver Post forum)

These are your betters, people

[SweatingGin]

Well, that is far-to-awesome, and needs to be posted in every thread for at least the next three days.

I wonder if there's a market for pre-loaded magazines?