XPost: alt.guns, alt.politics.guns, alt.politics.usa.constitution.gun-rights XPost: talk.politics.guns

The newest bugaboo of the gun control crowd is the bloodcurdling �3-D
printer gun.� Or, as Alyssa Milano, a self-styled expert on these
matters, might call it: �downloadable death.� Reporters at CNN ask,
�3-D guns: Untraceable, undetectable and unstoppable?� Even President
Donald Trump tweeted that �he�s looking into 3-D Plastic Guns being
sold to the public. Already spoke to NRA, doesn�t seem to make much
sense!�

It makes plenty of sense.

First of all, �3-D Plastic Guns� aren�t being sold to the public. Nor
are �downloadable firearms� or �ghost guns.� These things don�t exist.
Data, code, and information is being sold to the public. There is no
magical contraption that creates a new gun on demand. Sorry.

Even if such a machine existed, however, the Trump administration
hasn�t suddenly begun �allowing� Americans to fabricate guns in the
comfort of their homes, as so many stories have intimated. It�s never
been illegal to make your own (non-NFA) weapons in the first place.

The pretext for this freakout is news that the State Department
reached a settlement with Cody Wilson and his company, Defense
Distributed, which offered digital designs for 3-D printed guns, not
guns. The Obama administration had maintained that the company�s
printer code violated the International Traffic in Arms Regulations,
which had little to do with a law-abiding hobbyist milling a lower
receiver for a commercially popular civilian firearm in his suburban Pennsylvania garage.

(As of this writing, a federal judge in Seattle has issued a temporary restraining order stopping release of downloadable blueprints for 3-
D-printed guns. This prior restraint on speech won�t last long if the
First Amendment still means anything.)

Milano may not be aware that Americans have been building their own three-dimensional guns since before the revolution. The Kentucky rifle
was created by German and Swiss blacksmiths living in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, and not one of them owned a computer.

Today, life has become far more convenient, and schematics that offer
hobbyists plans for assembly or creation of firearms can be found
across the Internet. Although a person might need a high degree of
proficiency to pull off making one, they certainly don�t need a 3-D
printer. Here, for instance, is a video of an industrious fellow
turning hundreds of cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon into an AR15. All of it,
already permissible.

Still, Milano contends that the administration�s decision now means
that �felons, domestic abusers, terrorists, those adjudicated too
mentally ill to own guns and any other person unable to legally
purchase firearms will be able to print one at home.�

Guess what? If you�re unable to legally purchase firearms, you are
already prohibited from making a gun in your home, just as you are
prohibited from buying a gun through a straw purchase or stealing one
from your neighbor or smuggling one into the country. That�s settled
law. Good work.

Censoring code on the Internet simply because you find guns
objectionable, though, is another story. As Wilson notes in Washington
Post, code �is the essence of expression. It meets all the
requirements of speech � it�s artistic and political, you can
manipulate it, and it needs human involvement to become other things.�
How can the state ban the transfer of knowledge used to help someone
engage in an activity that is completely legal? Scratch that � to
engage in an activity that is constitutionally protected?

As a practical matter, the perception created by Ed Markey and the
anti-Second Amendment organizations pushing this 3-D-printer code
scare�that Joe Criminal can now merely push a button and �print one at
home� with his 3-D applications and PC-connected milling machine�is
purposely misleading.

You might wonder why criminals would bother spending thousands of
dollars to create a one-shot plastic gun (that probably won�t work)
when they can walk into a store and buy a reliable shotgun for a few
hundred dollars, or procure a weapon illegally for far less?

Well, I�m assured by Milano these 3-D-printed plastic guns are
undetectable and easy to make. Both neither of these things are true.
It�s already illegal for Americans to possess weapons that are
undetectable to metal detectors (even if metal detectors aren�t used
at airports anymore). So don�t make one. But the Defense Distributed
plans for a complete AR-15 include 72 parts, some of which are
comprised of metal to prevent catastrophic malfunctions. Is a
mastermind criminal going to 3-D-print or mill all those parts
himself, a task that requires not only considerable knowledge, skill,
and experience, but also a costly printer and custom machine shop?
This technology has been available for years. Has there been a crime
wave of undetectable AR15s?

What Markey wants to do is pass legislation that curtails the rights
of law-abiding citizens by fearmongering over a settlement that had
nothing to do with the legality of homemade guns in the first place.
As always, he�and other gun restrictionists in states contemplating
increased oversight of a nonexistent problem�are interested in
adopting incremental steps towards more obstructive gun laws. In this
case, they are aiming to limit hobbyist manufacturing, in general.

The entire case against 3-D guns is propelled by the notion,
normalized over many years, that access to firearms is problematic,
even though the presence of guns doesn�t equate to increased violence.
And who knows, perhaps one day, as machines evolve and become more
reliable and powerful, it won�t be prohibitively expensive or
inaccessible for the average law-abiding person to make his own AR15
or 1911. Whether that�s a positive or negative development is
debatable. But gun-control activists are trying to dictate what that
future looks like now.

--
Obama�s legacy is President Trump.

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