All-purpose gun legislation thread

Are we talking about printing a fully automatic lower receiver for like, an AR15?

Because while you could do that, it’d be totally illegal.

What about 3D printed viruses (but made for nefarious purpose)? Free speech too?

Yeah, you would be allowed to work a paper about such a thing.

You understand that while the designs for a 3d printed weapon like a fully automatic rifle would be legal, but actually making one would be illegal, right?

I mean, if you created a deadly virus and killed people with it… Obviously that would be illegal.

I guess I don’t. Say I design a virus that makes cognitive dissonance fatal. Ok, that’s legal. It sits on a AWS server, but I can’t distribute it? Is that the argument being made here for 3D guns? People can design them but not distribute them? (Not trying to be snarky, I’ve not followed the issue.)

How is that different from publishing methods to culture HIV or Staphylococcus? Because there are tons of papers on those and similar subjects.

Because most people don’t have centrifuges, but 3D printers are accessible (i.e. affordable) to (many).

Edit: Made some edits

You don’t need a centrifuge to culture dangerous pathogens.

You can make ricin, one of the most deadly poisons there is, with basically no equipment.

Hell, you can make a tin of chewing tobacco into a super deadly poison just through extracting the nicotine using plastic bottles and filters.

Fake news, I’ve seen TV procedurals. (That’s a joke.)

I don’t know, seems you would need some expertise to make a viable cultural, but anyone can push a button to print something.

But I stand corrected!

Again, if you print a fully automatic weapon, you are violating the law. You will go to jail for 10 years.

And the extract is absorbed through the skin. It will kill you if you say, sit on some.

You can literally buy books and videos on how to machine your own firearms, and those have been around for decades. Even better, you can buy an “80% lower” which is an incomplete lower receiver. All you have to do is go finish drilling out that last 20% to make a working lower receiver. It’s unserialized and legal.

You say that, but I watched a Youtube video on how to replace a shower drain. Easy, done in 20 minutes right?
Except it took me half a day and it still didn’t work. :/

Yeah, crude blunderbuss-type guns turn out to be pretty easy to make if you can find a sturdy steel tube to use as a basis. Otherwise you might need a lathe. But of course a printed plastic gun is good for passing metal detectors, if it doesn’t explode in your hand.

The whole 3d-printed thing is a joke of an issue, though. There are supposed to be at least 265,000,000 real guns in the US. A few crappy printed ones that are more likely injure the shooter than the target are neither here nor there.

“Look around you. Can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?”

This deserves a like

Well, they are certainly more “there” than “here” right now… but only because of technological impediments that are quickly evaporating.

In the last day in this thread, people have hand-waved off designing custom viruses (“most people don’t have centrifuges”) and the efficacy of a 3D-printed gun (“gonna blow up on the first shot”). The problem is that these are simple tech issues that are either already cheap to solve (you can build a pretty nice centrifuge with a couple hundred bucks) or else is going to be solvable in the very near-term (metal-laced filaments are already becoming available). These issues seem like ridiculous science-fiction today, not worth worrying about… just like computers that weigh less than 1.5 tons.

Why worry about 3d-printed guns at all when ordinary guns are both universally available and will always be superior weapons? Because there is simply no way to sinter powder to make more reliable parts than conventional machining of solid metal. But even if by some magic a 3D-printer becomes available that stamps out Glocks, so what? Anyone can get a gun trivially as it is.

Any legislation or regulation that doesn’t address conventional firearms will have no effect whatsoever on gun violence in this country. Absolutely none. And that’s why this whole subject is a joke.

If you can afford a 3D printer, you can afford a gun.