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The recent developments surrounding the availability of blueprints for 3D printing guns, has thrown even more heat into the gun control debate. The controversy first began in 2012 when Cody Wilson, a political science student at the University of Texas, announced that he wanted to create “the Wiki for guns” and found that 3D printers allowed for this decentralization of obtaining a gun. Although the actual process of printing the gun doesn’t leave you with a ready-to-fire weapon the moment it leaves the printing bed, it does allow you to print a plastic device that’s missing only the firing pin (simply use a metal nail) and a piece of steel that makes the gun compliant with the Undetectable Firearms Act. The Liberator, the name of the model which gained the most attention, barely resembles a gun but is perfectly capable of firing rounds.

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The weapon is made of plastic and is only slightly more durable than a toy cap gun. It is dirt cheap to make if you already own or have access to a 3D printer and is untraceable as conventional regulations surrounding registering serial numbers to individuals hasn’t caught up to all this yet: there is no printed serial number.

The company behind this platform, Defense Distributed, has faced legal (and uncoordinated) backlash, with state judges filing lawsuits to block the free distribution of blueprint files, and a wavering federal decision. This potential starting point for the decentralization of gun production boils down to a conflict between the 1st and 2nd amendments, with politicians scrambling for a legal answer to this emerging threat.

Decentralization for many sectors has lead to increased growth, innovation, and affordability. Across the nation, urgent care clinics detached from large medical institutions have proven to be a simple options for people seeking medical attention and don’t have insurance or the time needed to place an appointment with a primary care doctor. Uber and Lyft have completely decentralized the way we hail rides leading to easier navigation and more efficient trip planning. Open source software, which encourages open design and mass collaboration between developers, has become increasingly popular and powers many of the tools we use in our daily lives. Cryptocurrencies spread the governance of the currency system out to everyone who uses the currency, and in turn prevents any one agent from holding too much power over the entire system. Overall, decentralization creates an atmosphere of transparency and shared responsibility, which in turn better aligns the features, motives, and visions of products and features to what people actually want. This is a positive trend…

… but is extremely dangerous when applied to gun production. Since metal 3D printers are rare outside of industrial settings, most of these printed guns are plastic, which is much easier to dispose of than metal. In addition to being physically untraceable, people can also minimize the digital fingerprint left from the process of downloading and storing the blueprint files. The single biggest barrier to safe widespread utilization of these gun blueprint files is the fact that even if digital regulations and procedures were put in place, they would be circumventable. We need to be extremely careful moving forward with this debate and ensure that good intentions don’t result in more loss of life.