How Will 3D Printed Guns Change The Future?

3D printing is revolutionary technology. It allows people to create their own useful objects they couldn’t easily create otherwise. For example, my friend has a 3D printer we used to print out miniatures for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. It was cheap and efficient. However, this technology has other, more controversial, uses. It is  possible to 3D print guns.

Wired’s Jake Hanrahan interviewed Ivan The Troll, a prominent, but anonymous, member of the community of people making digital models for 3D printed guns.  There has been a large controversy in response. According to Hanrahan, New York State has banned 3D-printed guns, but there is no federal law equivalent to it. As a result, Ivan the Troll and others like him haven’t faced legal repurcussions – although that may also be in part due to their anonymity. However, according to Hanrahan, Ivan’s Twitter account was suspended. There is a concern that 3D printed guns may lead to more shootings or worse violence.

Ivan claims this is misplaced, however. He sees homemade firearms as much more dangerous. According to Hanrahan, Ivan said, “”Take it from me as someone who’s printed a gun. Making a [homemade] slam-fire shotgun is 100 times easier, 100 times quicker, and about 100 times cheaper than printing a [regular] gun. For eight dollars I can pop down to Home Depot and build a shotgun.””

Regardless, the controversy around 3D printed guns will continue to grow as the printing capabilities of 3D printing expands.

References:

Hanrahan, Jake (May 20, 2019) wired.co.uk, retrieved on September 9th 2019 from  https://www.wired.co.uk/article/3d-printed-guns-blueprints

4 thoughts on “How Will 3D Printed Guns Change The Future?

  1. The fact that someone with access to a 3D printer can easily create these weapons is crazy in itself and it is only going to become a bigger problem as technology develops and gets better and better. It just takes one extremely precise and developed blueprint to be distributed and suddenly anyone can have access to a gun that the government or authorities know nothing about since the are not subject to traditional firearm rules. The company Defense Distributed is already selling these blueprints for a relatively low price and has argued that “that publication of the blueprints should be allowed on free speech grounds.” However, this issue isn’t really a matter of free speech but one of public safety. The amount of shootings that occur in America has increased drastically, especially in public areas like schools. I think that these blueprints should regulated the same way guns are because they can be used to harm and potentially kill. If we act too late, the first shooting will eventually happen with these types of guns and those lives would have been lost for nothing. We need to stop the cause at the root before it blows up and becomes a real danger to society.

    Reference: https://www.cnet.com/news/3d-printed-gun-plans-go-online-as-defense-distributed-defies-court-order/

  2. While 3D printing is becoming a rapidly growing innovation, I did not consider the consequences that it could create. Your post helped me to realize the potential dangers of 3D printing, and it made me curious towards the subject.

    According to Marrian Zhou, Cody Wilson created a company a few years ago called Defense Distributed, which profited off of the distribution of 3D gun blueprints (Zhou). His company brought about genuine concern over the arising opportunity for illegal business plans regarding 3D printing. According to Zhou, “the guns Wilson’s plans make are nearly untraceable, they don’t have serial numbers, people don’t have to go through a background check to get one, and criminals could destroy evidence because plastic is easier to destroy than metal” (Zhou). This created a debate between Wilson and the State Department, but Wilson sued the State Department on the basis that his business practices were protected by the First and Second Amendments, and he won (Zhou). Since then, certain measures have been taken to reduce the creation and distribution of 3D firearms, but public safety concerns still arise because of the complexity of the market (Zhou.)

    Not only does this pose as a danger to our already threatened national security from firearm possession, but it also introduces new challenges to businesses and governing regulations. Legal gun distributors could potentially lose future profits from this new market and the cheap production and distribution of 3D printed firearms. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to establish working regulations for a product that cannot easily be traced. I am eager to see a working solution for this problem.

    References:
    Zhou, Marrian. “3D-Printed Gun Controversy: Everything You Need to Know.” CNet.com, 25 September 2019. https://www.cnet.com/news/the-3d-printed-gun-controversy-everything-you-need-to-know/. Accessed 8 September 2019.

  3. It is most likely that a 3-D printed gun will be made of plastic given the required facilities and money needed for manufacturing a firearm made of metal. In the case of a plastic gun, the weapon is likely to blow up in the hands of whomever is wielding the firearm, be they have malicious intent or not. In 2013, Cody Wilson created the first 3-D printed gun and shortly after, had a restraining order issued against him to prevent the plans for the gun to be published. In the same year, police in New South Wales, Australia recreated Wilson’s gun and test fired it in a controlled facility to prevent harm coming to the officers. In all test firings of the gun, the gun blew up in such a way that would have caused harm to the user of the gun and potentially to those around when it was fired (Tynan, 2018). The danger presented by the ability to print guns is seen less through the threat of mass shootings and terroristic activity but more so through the ability for anyone to print their own dysfunctional and hazardous firearm. Given the evidence, it appears as though these plastic firearms are one-use items, therefore they lack the threat to the public of conventional firearms used in domestic terrorism and are more likely to only end up harming the user. 3-D blueprints for firearms pose a threat when concerning mass manufacturing of weapons made from higher quality materials as they are untraceable and do pose a legitimate threat since they can be used more than once. However, as I previously mentioned, the time and resources needed to create such an operation would be great and would likely be noticed by authorities.

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