by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
In late June of this year the federal government reached a settlement with a private firm that would have allowed that business, a gun rights organization called Defense Distributed, to begin posting blueprints for making actual guns through a 3D-printing process. The decision was a rollback of an Obama-era rule which prohibited the practice. Several states and the District of Columbia went to court to try and block that settlement.
This week Federal Judge Robert Lasnik of Washington state temporarily blocked the settlement. His action makes the act of posting plans or blueprints for making guns with a 3D printer a violation of federal law - for as long as the judge's ban remains in effect. However, all parties will soon be back in court.
Several problems exist with this particular use of the new 3D printing technology. First, guns "printed" privately will have no serial numbers and thus be untraceable. Second, these guns are essentially plastic and, as such, undetectable by many scanners. Also, people could acquire these guns without going through background checks, a lack of process that would be of benefit to criminals and others, such as the mentally inpaired, who could not pass a background check.
Donald Trump, recognizing that this issue has the potential to be a flash-point in the culture wars currently being perpetrated by his administration, appears to be struggling with where to come down on the topic. His administration has been enthusiastically rolling back all of the advances of the Obama administration, but Trump now feels that this particular rollback may have been a bit of misguided overreach. Trump was so conflicted that he resorted to something that he seldom does - he asked for the opinion of others.
True, he did not deign to get the thoughts of any victims of gun violence or public safety groups, but he did trot over to the National Rifle Association to solicit their advice. The NRA, which has been eerily silent on this new hot-button gun issue, apparently quit counting its rubles long enough to tell Trump to chill out. The group informed him of the existence of a law already on the books, the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, which makes it illegal to possess an "undetectable" gun.
The National Rifle Association (NRA), when it isn't focused on milking Russians, is usually busy doing the bidding of its other sugar daddies - gun manufacturers and sellers. It seems odd almost to the point of incongruence that this gun lobbying group isn't raising holy hell about the emergence of a technology with the potential to undermine gun sales. They, like Trump, appear to be caught between a rock and a hard place where any position will be popular with some of their supporters and an anathema to others.
3D printers can currently be purchased for as little as four hundred dollars, and ones capable of printing guns - ranging from a pocket pistol to an AR-15 assault weapon - can be had for three to five thousand dollars - and all of those prices will drop precipitously as sales increase. Soon every toothless moron and school dropout in America will have the ability to be making meth in one end of the trailer and printing guns in the other.
Don't tell me this isn't a great country!
Citizen Journalist
In late June of this year the federal government reached a settlement with a private firm that would have allowed that business, a gun rights organization called Defense Distributed, to begin posting blueprints for making actual guns through a 3D-printing process. The decision was a rollback of an Obama-era rule which prohibited the practice. Several states and the District of Columbia went to court to try and block that settlement.
This week Federal Judge Robert Lasnik of Washington state temporarily blocked the settlement. His action makes the act of posting plans or blueprints for making guns with a 3D printer a violation of federal law - for as long as the judge's ban remains in effect. However, all parties will soon be back in court.
Several problems exist with this particular use of the new 3D printing technology. First, guns "printed" privately will have no serial numbers and thus be untraceable. Second, these guns are essentially plastic and, as such, undetectable by many scanners. Also, people could acquire these guns without going through background checks, a lack of process that would be of benefit to criminals and others, such as the mentally inpaired, who could not pass a background check.
Donald Trump, recognizing that this issue has the potential to be a flash-point in the culture wars currently being perpetrated by his administration, appears to be struggling with where to come down on the topic. His administration has been enthusiastically rolling back all of the advances of the Obama administration, but Trump now feels that this particular rollback may have been a bit of misguided overreach. Trump was so conflicted that he resorted to something that he seldom does - he asked for the opinion of others.
True, he did not deign to get the thoughts of any victims of gun violence or public safety groups, but he did trot over to the National Rifle Association to solicit their advice. The NRA, which has been eerily silent on this new hot-button gun issue, apparently quit counting its rubles long enough to tell Trump to chill out. The group informed him of the existence of a law already on the books, the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, which makes it illegal to possess an "undetectable" gun.
The National Rifle Association (NRA), when it isn't focused on milking Russians, is usually busy doing the bidding of its other sugar daddies - gun manufacturers and sellers. It seems odd almost to the point of incongruence that this gun lobbying group isn't raising holy hell about the emergence of a technology with the potential to undermine gun sales. They, like Trump, appear to be caught between a rock and a hard place where any position will be popular with some of their supporters and an anathema to others.
3D printers can currently be purchased for as little as four hundred dollars, and ones capable of printing guns - ranging from a pocket pistol to an AR-15 assault weapon - can be had for three to five thousand dollars - and all of those prices will drop precipitously as sales increase. Soon every toothless moron and school dropout in America will have the ability to be making meth in one end of the trailer and printing guns in the other.
Don't tell me this isn't a great country!
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