I understand the intent, but feel that there are so many other loopholes that put much worse weapons on the street than a printer. Besides, my prints can barely sustain normal use, much less a bullet being fired from them. I would think that this is more of a risk to the person holding the gun than who it’s pointing at.
The thing is, if 3D printed guns were a significant problem (and not primarily just an excuse to do nothing about failing gun laws), your situation would still be a massive improvement.
Domestic terrorism is planned. At some point, every mass shooter has thought about how they could kill the most people, with the least effort and lowest chance of failure.
And of course when they can walk into a gun store and buy cheap, semi-automatic weapons on a whim – even with a long history of red flags – that’s exactly what they do.
Sure, maybe they could kill more people with a bomb. But they’d have to learn how to build one, then actually build it without being caught or blowing their hands off. On top of all of that, there’s no for-profit death cult for explosives so many of the most effective tools will bring men in suits to your door.
The reality is if they had to buy, build and tune a Voron, then print a gun, then clean up the spaghetti and print another gun, then test the gun wouldn’t explode in their hands many of them simply would just try and stab people instead (or better yet, just do their suicide without taking innocent people with them).
Means reductions has been proven to reduce suicide rates. Mass shootings are a form of suicide.
This proposal is just an awkward attempt to address an issue early, because they can do so without the gun lobby sicking their lawyers and reactionaries on them, who are the ones pushing "Why bother with gun control when you can just 3D print full auto weapons?“ in the first place.
Just with household items you could already come up with half a dozen options that are better than a gun, kitchen knife, or explosives.
Security is fragile and we are kind of lucky that there aren’t too many intelligent manicas.
If any of those (conspicuously unnamed) household items were used to kill even half as many people as guns, there would absolutely be legislation to reduce the public safety risk.
If that legislation failed as routinely as America’s gun laws do, it would be improved or replaced until it worked.
Say goodbye to your pipe clog cleaner.
Baking lye roll at home? That’s NaOH too.
Old car battery or battery acid somewhere? H2SO4
Chlorix? People have accidently killed themself by releasing Chlorine. That’s why there are warnings to not mix it with other cleaning agents.
There is far more in a normal household and don’t even touched on the old stuff still laying around.
You might say those are not lethal: Panic is a strong weapon and an attacker has the advantage that he chooses the where, when and how with as much planning/preperation as he likes.
Yet with all these amazing weapons of mass destruction in their pantry, every single domestic terrorist just goes and buys a gun instead.
I’m sure the executives over at Chlorox are thrilled to hear that if radicalised psychopaths started killing and maiming thousands of people a year with their products, you’d fight to protect their profits.
But I’m not interested in solving every vague act of violence you’re able to inflict on the people in your imagination, I’m interesting in solving the violence that is happening right now, to real people, using a specific tool.
The British have an issue with acid attacks. Absolutely devastating to a life: Death is death. It’s just over. Those people on the other hand life for years with it and will never fully recover.
Oh, current Clorix accidents are the results of our lackluster education. Shouldn’t be too difficult to understand why hypochlorite releases Chlorine when mixed.
I honestly can’t imagine being so self-absorbed that I felt entitled to choose death for other people.
Of course, it’s apologist bullshit anyway, which means you’ve had a single thought about it and decided “job done”.
Most people being murdered in America aren’t being killed with that level of premeditation. Someone (usually a man) has a gun on their person or laying around their house, they lose control of their emotions, then they shoot someone.
People don’t tend to have a cup of acid in their bedside drawer but in the extremely likely event acid attacks became even a fraction of gun deaths, you have my full support to change the laws to address it.
Because I’m not on a death cult.