Overview
The common wisdom, as taught to us by John Howard, that most progressive of reformers, is that less guns on the street equals less gun violence. Seems like a simple enough equation. It seemed to work in Australia after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre and its been the driving idea behind New York's tighter gun legislation. Yet in 8 unbelievable seconds all of our assumptions about gun control and gun legislation became frighteningly and irrevocably obsolete.
Thanks to a little thing called 3D printing, a group of Texan anarchists and libertarians known as Defense Distributed have made printable weapons not only conceivable but 100 percent possible. With nothing more than a few-thousand-dollar printer, a couple chunks of plastic and an online file (which you can download for free right now!), you can make a lethal weapon from the comfort of your own living room. As of March, more than 10,000 people had already downloaded one such gun-making file.
Unsurprisingly, this development has got US legislators going into overdrive. Earlier this week, New York became the first state to take decisive action on the issue introducing a bill that would make it illegal for anyone but a licensed gunsmith to create a firearm using a 3D printer. The bill also includes a number of important restrictions such as compulsory police notification, registration of any weapon within 72 hours of creation and limits on bullet production. California is expected to introduce a similar bill in the coming weeks.
While such legislative action is understandably important, the New York bill ain't about to put a stopper on the production of homemade weapons. According to New York University's resident gun law expert, James B. Jacobs, the Second Amendment will be the least of legislators' worries. He argues that while printable weapons can be restricted in much the same way as assault weapons have been, banning the files that allow you to print 3D guns is a much more difficult prospect.
"The First Amendment will not permit banning posting software that would allow 'printing' such a weapon, just as we can't ban Al Qaeda literature on building pipe bombs,” Jacobs says.
Whether this technology will make any discernible difference to America's already gun-enriched culture remains to be seen, but for the moment the thought of 'gun labs' popping up in the garages of wayward youths across the country has me scared shitless. Between this and a few fairly spine-tingling videos, it seems fair to say that the possible repercussions of having printable weapons are only just beginning to emerge.
