This is not 'printing a gun', this is printing two passive parts that you could just as well have whittled from wood or cast or put together in a hundred different ways. The 'load bearing parts' of a gun are the barrel, the breech and the trigger mechanism. For the sake of the argument let's pretend that the title is right and that you can 'print a gun'.
You could always make a gun, all you needed was a lathe, some tooling, a hacksaw a file, some steel stock and a bunch of patience.
Printing a gun is just another way to get to the goal, possibly an easier one but one with its own unique challenges.
The differentiating factor for a gun from printed ABS is not that you've made it at home, but that it is very hard to detect the gun itself (you'd have a hard time not using metal at all, especially for the parts mentioned above and then there is the ammo).
You can bet that if you get caught with one trying to board an airplane that there will be very serious repercussions, you won't be able to say you left it in your carry-on luggage by accident. Well, you can say that but good luck to get anybody to believe you.
So, printing a gun is not the same as buying a gun, it is the same as making a fire-arm at home through conventional means.
On another note, the design of a working firearm, especially from unproven materials, is not something you muck around with unless you know your materials science. A gun that explodes when fired could have some pretty nasty effects on you and bystanders.
The article focuses on a particular gun, the AR15. After much wrangling, settled law dictates that the "lower receiver" _is_ the gun; all the other parts are incidental. Sure, the lower receiver alone is little more than a big paperweight, but it's the unchanging core to which all other variable components are attached to form something functional. And no, you can't just "whittle it from wood" etc., it's a pretty serious chunk of milled steel (there exists a "plastic" version, but that ain't generic plastic).
Yes, some jurisdictions aside you can make one AR15 lower receiver on your own without any paperwork, fees, checks, or permission. Understanding is that nobody going thru that much effort is going to waste it by doing something stupid (if there's criminal intent there are many far easier ways to acquire one).
The issue here is: where's the line on making one? You can make one yourself legally, but if you hire someone else to knowingly make it they'll need an expensive big-hassle manufacturer's license. The key is "knowingly", as up until recently it was pretty obvious to the machinist what he was being asked to do. Now, with "printing", you just upload the pattern for what is otherwise just another odd-shaped chunk of metal, a computer & machine crank one out, and the result gets sent back to you with a minimum of comprehension by any humans involved - are _you_ "making" it? or is the printing house "making" it and, in effect, selling it to you? The legal line has been blurred.
Anybody that wishes to pretend that the legal line has been blurred will find themselves sooner or later in an excellent position to try to prove that to a very unrelenting judge.
If the legal fiction is that the lower receiver of that gun is the gun, then legally that didn't change so the method of manufacturing it is not relevant.
Hiring someone to produce it while obfuscating the intent is not gray, it puts you in the docket. The printing house is acting on your explicit instruction, and if they don't review the orders (hard to do, after all, you can't know each and every prohibited item) then you are still on the hook.
Trained machinist or 3D printer operator the change is only in the material of the produced item.
As for not being able to whittle that part from wood, there are many kinds of wood that are much stronger than the ABS wire that a 3D printer uses.
And if it can't be made out of those kinds of wood then it certainly can't be made out of plastic printed ABS (if you expect the gun to function).
While I agree it would be unwise to test this legal question in court, I think it is fair to say this is a murky legal question. The BATFE, the federal law enforcement agency responsible for enforcing US laws regarding firearms manufacture, have a history of arbitrary rulemaking in defiance of simple logic (for instance, in one famous rulemaking BATFE ruled that a shoe string would meet the legal definition of 'machine gun' if used to repeatedly fire a gun with a single pull of the trigger [1]).
Given this environment of legal uncertainty, it's not at all clear that BATFE would not pursue the 3D printer operator who produced the receiver. In this case, charges against the 3D printer operator would likely be unlawful manufacture of a firearm, possibly in addition to charges related to interstate transfer of a firearm. Given the creativity of some US attorneys, perhaps a conspiracy case would be made alleging the buyer of the printed part 'conspired' with the printer operator.
I would also suggest a lower receiver could probably be made from materials weaker than you might imagine. The lower receiver does not bear any gas pressures from the firing of the cartridge, though the holes for the roll pins which hold the hammer and trigger in place would probably start to 'egg' after a round or two. In any case, the legal question has nothing to do with how reliable the resulting firearm is; only whether it meets certain vague and broadly-interpreted legal definitions.
They didn't really rule that the string was a machine gun. They sent a badly proof-read letter saying words to that effect, but their intent was to declare that a rifle jury-rigged to fire automatically (using a shoe string) was in fact an automatic weapon.
And I doubt they will declare the manufacturer of the lower receiver is manufacturing a weapon, if it's done in such an automated way. They will just change their rulings so it's a crime to order such a part. If they can't do that, they will work with whatever federal agency regulates telecommunications, and it will suddenly become a serious crime to order certain gun parts from a 3D printer.
Laws don't always change faster than technology, but they change pretty quickly when there's the right kind of pressure.
Why wouldn't a 3D print operator have people/entity sign a legal document stating that placed order would not violate any federal laws and anything which resulted in violating federal law regulation would boomerang back to the entity placing the order?
> Anybody that wishes to pretend that the legal line has been blurred will find themselves sooner or later in an excellent position to try to prove that to a very unrelenting judge.
The line is blurred, that is tautological considering the complexification of the issue. The argument would be that the blurring is enough to warrant a different interpretation of the law.
> If the legal fiction is that the lower receiver of that gun is the gun, then legally that didn't change so the method of manufacturing it is not relevant.
Likely so.
> if they don't review the orders (hard to do, after all, you can't know each and every prohibited item) then [they] are still on the hook.
In the past making a custom part required a skilled machinist familiar with common machined parts. They would more than likely recognize an unlabelled but common part.
Now a part can be made without a single human involved, or if there were they could be lesser-skilled cleaning technicians only.
In the past they'd notice what you were doing by default, unless it was severely obfuscated. Now they'd have to hire machinists to spy on customer jobs and try to guess your intent to ban 'bad' items. One is trivial, the other invasive and ultimately impossible.
It's a bit moot. They can't effectively pass a law putting the genie back in the bottle without banning 3d printing and rapid-turnaround prototyping - something which would drive the last of our development businesses away.
There's at least one instance of a guy who machined his lower from a polymer cutting board. A wooden lower is certainly within the realm of possibility, although I can't find a video of this one being fired: http://www.weaponeer.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8035&....
No video but he did fire it, see page 2. It cracked on the 2nd round. Interesting enough, this was made of pine, which is just about the worst possible choice short of balsa.
Obviously pine's a bad choice. I'd be surprised if some nice walnut didn't hold up longer; with laminate, you could probably see durability on par with steel.
"You could always make a gun, all you needed was a lathe, some tooling, a hacksaw a file, some steel stock and a bunch of patience.... Printing a gun is just another way to get to the goal, possibly an easier one but one with its own unique challenges."
A sufficiently large quantitative change is a qualitative change. Also the debate is ultimately not about this one thing today, but about a future in which one can download and print an open-source AK-47-equivalent with only slightly more difficulty than printing a picture.
I'd contend this isn't "printing" or the definition of "making it yourself" that you'd consider here in 2011; it's a new semantic category that very few people are prepared to grapple with, least of all the law. I'd contend the law is yet to catch up with what computer programs permit people to do, it really isn't ready for how computer programs will increasingly freely impinge upon the real world. There is simply no legal category to handle this question, and many conventional ethical ones can't handle it very well either.
The only solution is to go back to first principles, but most people can't really reason on first principles.
> A sufficiently large quantitative change is a qualitative change
True, but I submit this is not a sufficiently large quantitative change.
> Also the debate is ultimately not about this one thing today, but about a future in which one can download and print an open-source AK-47-equivalent with only slightly more difficulty than printing a picture.
I humbly suggest there is more to it than that, and will still be more to it than that in a future in which 3D printers can print composite materials strong enough to survive the extreme pressures of a 7.62x39mm cartridge firing a bullet down a long rifled barrel. Even if that were possible, the result of the AK-47 print job would be a whole mess of parts, including tiny pins, springs, etc. With the exception of the lower receiver, all of these parts can be bought (in the US at least) online with no government oversight or regulation. Once the parts are obtained, they must be assembled, which is not difficult for the mechanically inclined, but is considerably more difficult than printing a picture.
So, before this quantitative change:
* Obtain AK-47 spec and assembly instructions
* Obtain necessary tools for assembly
* Order AK-47 parts kit online
* Buy AK-47 lower receiver from firearms dealer, or assemble yourself from sheet metal
* Assemble AK-47
Legally I don't see any sticky issue here, and if there's an ethical dilema I don't see it. Having said that, I agree with the general proposition that the law has not kept pace with technological innovation, and that there are areas in which this lag has serious consequences.
Being easier by orders of magnitude is my point. That matters. You can't just wave the problem away by declaring it's just a quantitative change, because it's a big enough quantitative change to become a qualitative change.
In fact, quantitative changes that become qualitative changes by being large enough are the entire reason we're having this discussion in the first place! It's perfectly possible to kill a person with just your hands. "All" a gun does is make it easier... but trying to dismiss all of the legal and moral questions around guns by claiming that it's only a difference of degree, not kind, isn't going to convince very many people. A big enough quantitative change is a qualitative change.
That's a good point. I do believe that to people that are a bit more handy with tools the change isn't nearly as large as you make it out to be.
Making this part out of wood or plastic is a days work or less for a person that is moderately handy with tools, it would be probably a run of an hour for a 3D printer with some serious post processing required, say 2 hours altogether.
And that's with an investment in a 3D printer in one case and an old drillpress and some milling bits in the other, which at the moment is the lower bar to entry.
That's less than an order of magnitude.
If you could print a fully loaded ready to use weapon in a few minutes then yes, that would be a game changer. As it stands this isn't, but it may evolve in to one.
"If you could print a fully loaded ready to use weapon in a few minutes then yes, that would be a game changer."
This is the interesting discussion to have, and the one I am having. And even if the weapon itself is not ready in minutes, it's easy to imagine a world in which printing the open source AK-47 is as easy as: Visit website, search for AK-47, click print on first result, eventually refill relevant cartridges. It may only pop out hours later, but it'll still be a different world than the one we live in.
I completely disagree with anelson's characterization of the difficulty; I could make "printing a web page" look as difficult if I spelled out all the steps ("purchase paper for printer, insert paper into printer..."), but that's not reflective of the real difficulty.
Remember, Thingiverse is not version 7.2.3-final. It's 0.0.1-pre-alpha. We are not at the endgame of this technology, we are at the very, very, very beginning, and even this discussion about guns is merely one high-profile example of the sorts of questions we're going to have to grapple with when the full power of software is unleashed into the physical world.
If you haven't done so please read Singularity Sky by Charles Stross.
It's the kind of book that opens your eyes to the kind of change that you are talking about. I think that you are basically talking about a post-singularity society, that's how much change that would cause. As a result of that we can speculate about the changes but we will never ever be remotely ready for the real thing, if and when it hits.
The 0.0.1-pre-alpha of the cornucopia machine is not even close to the real thing in terms of effect, the one is a neat little machine that you can use to experiment with additive manufacturing rather than the usual subtractive methods, the other will change the world in ways we probably can not even predict.
As long as AK47 variants are available in my local sporting goods store for $300, I think we've got larger leaks to plug if we're trying to play collect-the-guns.
You don't need to - anyone who takes apart the gun will see how that works. You actually just remove one part and it's full-auto. However, books to make seers and whole weapons have been available through Paladin Publications at gun shows since the '90s and are now fully scanned and torrentable.
"A sufficiently large quantitative change is a qualitative change."
I think this is pretty clear: making something by hand is very different from having a magic button to do it for you. "You could have whittled it out of wood!" completely misses the point.
Unless you also think the creation of high level programming languages was not a qualitative change over the days of punch cards.
The creation of high level programming languages is not analogous to easier gun making. It would be more analogous to easier gun making accelerating the pace of firearms development and resulting in firearms that are orders of magnitude more lethal.
I find it sad that manufacturing your own firearm is seen as magical enough to warrant an article like this one. Thank you for not being caught up in forgetting that things can be made with your hands.
But it (kind of) is, specifically with regards to US law. I mean, that's the point. There is a huge market for AR-15 upgrade parts, and everything else can be acquired easily with no regulation.
And yes, this could be made at home with old technology, but it requires a fair amount of dedication and skill. Downloading a file and clicking 'print' is a significantly different process.
> But it requires a fair amount of dedication and skill
To specifically address that point, you could use a 5 axis machining center and a standardized control sequence ('G-codes') to do the exact same thing.
I think the bigger difference is the amount of funds that needs to be put on the table for the machine itself.
Once you have the rig set up for a part the major operations are mounting the blank, hitting 'start' and removing the finished part (assuming it can be made in one pass).
That's extremely expensive equipment that you're not going to have at home without a lot of dedication and investment.
You could always send something off to eMachineShop.com, but that's still not really comparable to the not-so-distant future where we'll all have easy access to local 3D printers.
>That's extremely expensive equipment that you're not going to have at home without a lot of dedication and investment.
You can stamp AK receivers with little more than a hydraulic shop press and a simple jig, followed by either riveting or welding things in place. That's totally within the realm of many home workshops, and people have been doing so for years.
Perhaps so, but the point is that manufacturing receivers is already fairly trivial compared to the rest of a firearm since it's a low stress part, and that this is already well-covered legal ground.
Even if 3D printing reaches the ubiquity of everyone having the equipment at home, 3D printers will not be capable of producing full, functional firearms.
Perhaps so, but the point is that manufacturing receivers is already fairly trivial compared to the rest of a firearm since it's a low stress part
I still don't really agree with that. A stamping machine isn't particularly easier to come by than a good boring machine, in my opinion. The whole process of creating a rifle isn't terribly high-tech, as demonstrated by the vast number of cheap AK-variants flooding the world. It is still, however, beyond the skill and motivation of most people.
Even if 3D printing reaches the ubiquity of everyone having the equipment at home, 3D printers will not be capable of producing full, functional firearms.
I completely disagree with that. Given sufficient time, it seems inevitable that we will have 3D printer medium capable of containing the high pressure of even a rifle.
> Given sufficient time, it seems inevitable that we will have a 3D printer medium capable of containing the high pressure of even a rifle.
Materials science doesn't magically provide you with new materials and and structural side effects just because you give it enough time.
The physical properties of 3D printed stuff, be it full metal parts or plastics are typically a notch below that of the same substance when used in a reductive setup (ie, milling, turning, drilling etc).
The reason for that is that depositing the material layer by layer from a grain or a wire (or a fluid) means that you have to fuse all those layers. Essentially a solid, defect free chunk of a hardwood tree is about as good as it gets when you are composing from parts (molecules in that case).
And the hardest of hardwoods can just about compete with the softest of the metals used for structural elements (but are still a notch above most plastics).
Cast metal (also an additive process) still requires some re-work, and 3D printed parts that have to be made to a certain precision require (skilled) re-work as well.
It is possible that you are right but at the moment that is pure speculation and I don't think it seems inevitable at all.
The one exception I would like to make to all this is a single-shot, single-use firearm. That might be possible, something that would just need one round, and which you'd dispose of after firing. The accuracy would be horrible (no way to sight it in) and it would be a pretty bulky thing compared to its efficiency but I think that might be possible, even with todays printers. Extrapolating from that to future materials you might get more accuracy but I doubt you'd ever go over that single shot unless the gun is to be as much a risk to the user as it is to the target.
On another note, a fake gun is sometimes just as effective as a real one, and printing fake guns is definitely a possibility.
> A stamping machine isn't particularly easier to come by than a good boring machine, in my opinion.
A basic shop press which is sufficient to stamp AK receivers can be had for under $200. That's not even in the same league as basic CNC equipment, and hardly out of reach for anyone that decided they wanted to homebrew a receiver.
>I completely disagree with that.
As 0x12 also notes, you're being hugely optimistic about the material sciences involved. Even when using steel, barrels are either milled or hammer-forged, not cast, to achieve sufficient strength.
Even when you're talking about small parts, like extractors, MIM[1] parts are absolutely notorious for being prone to breakage or being out-of-spec.
Color me highly skeptical that plastic-based additive printing is going to catch up to or surpass what we know about metalworking any time soon.
Fine, so cast it using the lost wax method and clean it up. There are literally a hundred different ways in which you could make this part for pennies and some of those methods would be much more rapid and much cheaper than 3D printing.
Are you seriously trying to suggest that carving the part plug, building a box, acquiring appropriate sand, packing the part into the sand, acquiring and melting metal, pouring said metal, then finishing the part's surface is anything like the ease of downloading, printing, and waiting?
Yes, building a 3D printer is an investment now. But cheap, common 3D printers are going to become a reality, and soon.
There's a concept called the 80% receiver, which is a freely-transferable hunk of metal that's almost but not quite a receiver. You can order a receiver flat for an AK-type rifle, a parts kit, and assemble a complete rifle for cheaper than you'd buy one. You need a means to heat treat the metal, and probably a drill press. That's not a much greater barrier to entry than the 3d printer for the lower receiver on an AR.
So really, this doesn't change anything. This brings preexisting truths more prominently to the public discussion.
The AR platform's direct impingement operating principle has a far greater accuracy potential than the AK or FAL's gas piston (or a piston AR, for that matter). DI is probably the best operating principle for building a supremely accurate semi-automatic rifle. That's why the M110 system is an AR, not just an updated M14.
However, for the next generation of infantry rifles, you're seeing nothing but gas piston systems. Modern piston accuracy is "good enough" for the engagement distances that modern infantry units encounter. Modern DI rifles are "reliable enough" for the field conditions that trained, equipped first-world militaries operate under.
However, I'm not a trained, equipped first-world military. I'm some random dude who'd rather spend more time shooting and less time cleaning. A gas piston rifle is much more tolerant of bad hygiene and maintenance than a DI rifle, and my FAL is still more accurate than I am from field positions.
An AK isn't - I shoot better than even the nice Bulgarian AK-74s or converted Saigas. Most FALs are 3-4 MOA guns, and I'm about a 2-3 MOA shooter, depending on the day. But without an extremely steady rest like you see at Camp Perry, my FAL is more than accurate enough for my shooting.
...a decision by the United States Supreme Court ruling that under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, the United States Congress may criminalize the production and use of home-grown cannabis even where states approve its use for medicinal purposes.
There will certainly be people to make that argument. But people already make guns, and it's not illegal (at least under federal law; some states probably do criminalize it). Selling a gun you've made is a problem, but making one for personal use? NBD.
Here in the UK, just being in possession of a home-made handgun is going to get you a hefty (mandatory minimum: 5 years) prison sentence.
Being in possession of part of a rifle or shotgun might be legal, depending on whether you have a firearms license for that particular device. But I'm pretty sure AR-15s are blanket banned (semi-auto rifles have been illegal since the aftermath of the Hungerford massacre).
Now.
Is it legal (or not) to merely download the 3D model over the internet in the UK? What if you, for example, printed it out ... but after applying a distortion that renders it unfit for use as the receiver of an AR-15? What if you've scaled it up by a factor of two, so it could in principle be the receiver of a 1:2 scale (large) copy of an AR-15?
(What if, in the USA, you download the file coding for the magazine and expand it to hold 30 rounds?)
>(What if, in the USA, you download the file coding for the magazine and expand it to hold 30 rounds?)
The assault weapon ban--the federal law banning (among other things) magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds--sunset in 2004. Thirty-round magazines are perfectly legal once again, except in a few states, like California, with their own assault weapon bans.
Oh definitely, when I said federal law I was just referring to the U.S. I don't know enough about UK law to speak to your questions, but they are interesting ones that will have to be answered in the coming years.
Don't mind him, Americans routinely forget that there's places that aren't America where people live. I used to do it too, at least until I expatriated.
PS: Diggin' my copy of Rule 34 that arrived yesterday.
IANAL, but mere possession of an automatic weapon is prohibited, is it not?
I thought the idea behind the receiver for the AR15 is that with a slightly different receiver that the AR15 becomes an automatic weapon (aka. an M16)? Or are we talking about the semi-auto (AR15) receiver?
The receiver doesn't make any difference at all whether it's full auto. Or rather, the legally designated lower receiver contains the firing mechanism (which can be full or semi auto), but the receiver itself is just a piece of steel and you can change out the actual mechanism.
Not entirely accurate. The ATF actually specifically requires that semi-auto weapons are not readily convertible to fully automatic by way of a simple parts swap.
A standard, semi-automatic AR-15 will not accept a full-auto M16 trigger group; the M16 trigger group requires an extra hole to be milled in the receiver which isn't present on semi-auto receivers.
The lower receiver doesn't determine if it is automatic or semi-automatic. That's the upper receiver.
And automatic weapons are regulated in the U.S., they are not prohibited (everywhere, anyway). If you go through the appropriate paperwork (and a few months wait), and live in the appropriate places (Louisiana, etc.), you too can own a (pre-May 1986) fully automatic weapon.
Don't know about the legality, but you're correct about the reality. There are number sliding and rotating parts in the lower receiver that determine whether it fires single shot, burst or fully automatic. Modern M-16s have single shot and 3 round burst. The original 70s model had single shot and full auto.
Legally, I'd think this would be the same as if a gunsmith were to make a lower receiver for himself. If that activity would be regulated in a given jurisdiction, is there any reason printing the receiver wouldn't be?
This article doesn't really get into the question of printing then subsequently transferring a receiver to another person. Were that to occur, I assume that the person who printed it would be regulated in exactly the same manner as any other gun manufacturer.
>Transferring it is going to be treated the same as any other firearm transfer in the U.S. as well.
i.e., expect the BATFE to get rather upset with you if you manufacture a receiver intending to transfer it to someone else without being a licensed firearms manufacturer.
Manufacturing a firearm for personal use is generally good to go as long as you stay within the bounds of NFA, etc regulations.
Exactly my point. I think all the speculation about the legal ramifications of printing a receiver is off-base. I see no reason why the government wouldn't view it as just another form of manufacturing.
The article says "license to buy" not "license to own." I know that in Minnesota you need a Permit to Purchase from your local PD or a Permit to Carry from your local Sheriff in order to purchase an AR-15 (or a handgun).
The majority of US states have no such requirement. In VA I can purchase a gun from another VA resident with no paperwork; I can purchase from a dealer by filling out a one page form with name, DOB, address, and place of birth.
You can do that for long rifles in MN as well (although I think you forgot the NICS check required for all gun purchases regardless of state). It's just hand guns and "black" rifles that require the permit. VA obviously has a more enlightened view than MN (IMO).
That's not accurate either. You can own an AR-15 in California without a license of any sort, it just cannot have any of the restricted features like a 30 round magazine.
"The fact that we are now able to manufacture usable weapon parts is an important step..."
It's not clear to me if a rifle part printed from plastic at home is usable.
I wonder how the manufacturing of these thing are regulated normally: Can you have a professional place make 2-3 of these for you without telling them what it is?
The law is pretty clear cut in the U.S. about gun manufacturing. If you want to build the lower receiver of an AR-15, go ahead, but if you plan on selling it you need either a Type 7 or Type 10 Federal Firearms License. The rest of the AR-15 is just parts. If a "professional" makes them for you, whether or not he knows what they are, he better have a license or he could be committing a felony.
But in the hypothetical future where 3D printers are ubiquitous, if you sell a script to build the lower receiver, then does that count as selling one?
Reminds me of the case where Phil Zimmerman noticed that exporting crypto was a form of arms export, but exporting books was protected by the First Amendment. So he published the source code to PGP and shipped it.
IANAL but I know my way around US federal firearms law. I am not aware of any law or rulemaking which would classify, for example, CAD files describing a lower receiver as an item subject to firearms regulations. There exist books sold openly and without restriction detailing how one can make improvised firearms, some of which if constructed would be illegal for possession by American civilians. I'm sure this information has by now made it to the Internet as well. Up to this point, such materials are treated as speech and thus strongly protected by the First Amendment. I see no reason why 3D printer instruction files would be treated any differently, under current law.
It's not hard to imagine a Congresscritter raising a fuss over concerns of "children printing machine guns" or some such nonsense, and thereby introducing legislation to regulate such materials, including executable scripts for 3D printing machines. It's even possible to imagine such legislation passing the House and Senate. Our current president would likely sign any such legislation he was given. However, it is very difficult to imagine the legislation surviving a Supreme Court challenge on First Amendment grounds.
Then again, I said the same thing about the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act, and SCOTUS upheld that 5-4, so what do I know.
> However, it is very difficult to imagine the legislation surviving a Supreme Court challenge on First Amendment grounds.
Next month is the TEN YEAR anniversary of the USA PATRIOT act, the legislation that abolished the fourth amendment. Checks and balances only work when they, well, balance.
Legally, the only difference between a CAD file of the AR-15 and an AR-15 repair manual should be that one is actionable by a machine. They're both a description of the operation of the object (and thus speech).
And let's go even further into the hypothetical future where we've made great advances in AI. Also, for whatever reason, a court has found weapons CAD files to be illegal. What will the law say when a machine is intelligent enough to decipher the same human-targeted AR-15 repair manual and reconstruct one from that information?
The machinery that makes firearms isn't unique or special. Some of the tooling may be, but I can't imagine all the CNC mills an lathes are purpose specific at firearms manufacturers' plants.
As with most things firearms related, the offense occurs with the action. In this case, the transaction. You can manufacture a firearm with standard machinery and suffer no penalty. The same applies for a printer capable of printing a firearm (or parts). It is when you sell those firearms (or parts) that you have broken the law.
If it is against the law to possess a firearm in your location, then it doesn't matter how you made it. Possession remains illegal.
I see your point, but I am more thinking if 3D printers became household item then the cost, time, and specialized knowledge prerequisites that exist currently to make your own gun are all gone.
>It's not clear to me if a rifle part printed from plastic at home is usable.
It wouldn't surprise me if it were perfectly functional. The lower receiver on an AR houses the trigger group, buffer tube, magazine, and grip. Not really a lot of high-stress parts there. The barrel, bolt, gas tube, etc that have to withstand 60k+ PSI of pressure are all part of the upper receiver.
Legally, only the lower is classified as a firearm in the United States (meaning they have to be transferred through a licensed firearms dealer if shipped); the upper and the rest of the gun are simply parts and can be shipped directly by UPS/FedEX/USPS.
You can't just print a metal part without some serious post processing to reach the desired strength, and even then you'll be hard pressed to come up with a part that is the same size and just as strong.
Printing full metal parts is possible but there are some penalties, relatively low tensile strength is one of those.
Nevermind the dozen easier ways to get a gun without a background check... When will people realize bad people that want a gun, figure out how to get one. All the ridiculous waiting periods and background checks just hassle law abiding citizens.
This seems like over-analysis to me. Why is said villain going to be printing a gun? To rob money, right? And what is he going to do with this stolen money? Buy a car? Why doesn't he just print that instead?
I think when the day arrives that we can just print out whatever we can get a blueprint to the world will be so drastically changed that our current biggest concerns won't even be relevant anymore.
Actual Laws aside, I get goosebumps thinking that this isn't completely sci-fi. Just because you can't print the whole weapon now doesn't mean you can't do it in 15 years or so. I can't wait till home depot is selling you "models" of nuts and bolts rather than actual nuts and bolts!
It is actually quite possible to print the entire gun, if you wanted to use a metal Selective Laser Sintering machine. They are just cost prohibitive ($500,000+).
You could always make a gun, all you needed was a lathe, some tooling, a hacksaw a file, some steel stock and a bunch of patience.
Printing a gun is just another way to get to the goal, possibly an easier one but one with its own unique challenges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm
The differentiating factor for a gun from printed ABS is not that you've made it at home, but that it is very hard to detect the gun itself (you'd have a hard time not using metal at all, especially for the parts mentioned above and then there is the ammo).
You can bet that if you get caught with one trying to board an airplane that there will be very serious repercussions, you won't be able to say you left it in your carry-on luggage by accident. Well, you can say that but good luck to get anybody to believe you.
So, printing a gun is not the same as buying a gun, it is the same as making a fire-arm at home through conventional means.
On another note, the design of a working firearm, especially from unproven materials, is not something you muck around with unless you know your materials science. A gun that explodes when fired could have some pretty nasty effects on you and bystanders.