3D printers are pretty damn amazing. Another great technological advance made by humanity – aren’t great. Except, for all of our ingenuity, we also have a tendency, throughout history, to use our technological inventiveness to create some pretty horrid things – namely weapons. Nuclear bombs, for example, are incredible feats of science, and yet so much effort and intelligence was spent on a thing that bears quite horrific consequences. Seriously horrific.
Written By William Barns-Graham
The latest example of humanity’s erring towards such consequentially evil genius is the use of one of the latest great inventions – the 3D printer – to make another weapon, guns. 100,000 downloads have been made for the new form of the weapon made by Defense Distributed (or should that be Chaotic Attacks Abound), who spent 8 months making the blueprints for the gun.
The gun is made of plastic but has a firing pin made from metal which allows it work as a genuine gun. The weapon is already popular in the US but is also popular in Spain, Brazil, Germany and the UK. While in the UK it is legal to download the print but illegal to make the gun – you have to be a registered firearms dealer to make guns in the UK and could face arrest if found making the gun – the US, of course, doesn’t have such rules in place (2nd Amendment etc etc).
US politicians and lawmakers are already trying to find ways of banning the weapon – even many gun supporters will surely realise that the ease with which people can access guns through this3D-print is alarming. New York Congressmen Steve Israel and Chuck Schumer have sponsored legislation aimed at adding a 3D-printing provision to the Undetectable Firearms Act which require all guns to be detectable – because the guns are mostly plastic, they could fall under this, but the metal pin creates a grey area. California senator Leland Yee is also determined to prevent DIY guns from taking off.
“I plan to introduce legislation that will ensure public safety and stop the manufacturing of guns that are invisible to metal detectors and that can be easily made without a background check,” he said in a statement.
3D-Printing will certainly bring about many great new innovations that will genuinely aid people in their daily lives for years to come, but DIY guns are not one of these great innovations. The concepts of anyone being able to create and use a deadly gun is quite frankly terrifying – at least at the moment there are some difficulties convoluting the gun obtaining process. The chaos that could potentially be reaped by a situation whereby DIY guns are completely legal and easy to make is almost apocalyptic – in mind anyway.
Alas, with every great invention comes the great need for regulation.
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