2024 Defense Bill Threatens Future of 3D-Printed Firearms and Basic Gun Rights
thefederalist.com
thefederalist.com
Not a big fan of someone being able to evade all sorts of gun laws by 3D printing their own gun. There's already far too many nutcases who own far too many guns - allowing them to print their own guns and ammo to avoid being on some sort of watchlist is just a really slippery slope.
I'm all for people owning guns, I support the 2nd amendment vigorously, but there's a reason the words "highly regulated" appears in the 2nd amendment.
Sick and tired of fringe nutcases (supported by the gun lobby) saying any and all regulations are a threat to the freedoms we all enjoy as Americans.
NINJA EDIT: The Federalist is a shitty extremist source.
It's been legal since the dawn of the USA to manufacture your own firearms.
A criminal who is otherwise not legally able to acquire or possess a firearm is not going to care about 3D printer laws. This only impacts the law abiding.
> There's already far too many nutcases who own far too many guns - allowing them to print their own guns and ammo to avoid being on some sort of watchlist is just a really slippery slope.
There's no federal requirement for a "watch list" for owning a gun. There's background checks for transfers of firearms, but even those are not applicable in all cases (e.g. a father can transfer a long gun to his son in most States without any paperwork at all).
Manufacturing your own ammo is legal across the entire country. There's no registration requirement or any paperwork whatsoever needed.
> I'm all for people owning guns, I support the 2nd amendment vigorously,
Let's be honest here, you clearly don't.
> but there's a reason the words "highly regulated" appears in the 2nd amendment.
The words are "well regulated" and they don't mean what you think they mean. In 18th century American English, the phrase "well regulated" means well equipped.
It's saying that people should have lots of guns!
> Sick and tired of fringe nutcases (supported by the gun lobby) saying any and all regulations are a threat to the freedoms we all enjoy as Americans.
The problem with new firearm regulations is multi fold, but the main problems are:
1. There's plenty of existing regulations in place that are not being properly enforced.
2. The majority of new regulations are bans on cosmetic features or simply make things more inconvenient for law abiding gun owners.
3. Anything that was previously considered a "compromise" turns into a "loophole".
Yeah that was conceived and written at a time where you had to hand carve and forge a single shot breech loading rifle. You can espouse history all you want, but asserting unbounded rights in the face of dramatic technological progress is not a healthy attitude towards society.
At the time the Second Amendment was ratified, private individuals could, and did, own fully armed and crewed warships and field artillery pieces.
> You can espouse history all you want, but asserting unbounded rights in the face of dramatic technological progress is not a healthy attitude towards society.
So you're arguing that the First Amendment doesn't apply to the Internet, then?
This is kind of a blanket argument against all laws, right?
A law against carrying a broadsword is enforceable before the broadsword is actually used in a crime, because it's highly visible. A law against a dagger isn't easily enforceable until it's actually taken out in some violent manner.
(Don't over-analyze the example it's just to show a difference in how laws work in practice as opposed to on paper.)
Glad to see the government is finally doing something to fix this.
I bet yes. Which means, the laws existence does deter people from doing certain things. It doesn't deter 100% of people, but the percentage is greater than 0.
> I bet yes. Which means, the laws existence does deter people from doing certain things. It doesn't deter 100% of people, but the percentage is greater than 0.
This is exactly the point. The objective of these laws is not to deter illegal possession of firearms. That's already super, duper, triple, illegal. It's to deter the law abiding from exercising their Constitutional rights.
There is no situation in which a criminal could be charged with these laws, where the criminal would not already be facing decadess of prison time for illegal possession of a firearm. It's already illegal for a criminal to be in possession of a firearm. It does not matter if it is manufactured at or purchased (and the latter is potentially a crime on the part of the seller).
In contrast, this type of blanket ban on otherwise legal activity turns yesterday's law abiding into de facto criminals. And many would not even know they're criminals unless they go out of their way to read the fine print on defense spending bills.
right. the law is not to deter illegal possession, it's to deter certain kinds of manufacturing.
> There is no situation in which a criminal could be charged with these laws, where the criminal would not already be facing decadess of prison time for illegal possession of a firearm.
Someone manufactures the weapon and then sells it. If you have no proof of possession you have no case. If you have proof of manufacturing firearms, then you have a case.
Saying "law A should not exist because if law A were broken, law B would already be broken" does make sense if that can be guaranteed to be true, however it's not possible to provide that guarantee, therefore that logic doesn't make sense to go with.
It's saying that people should have lots of guns!
Um, no. You were doing alright until you get to this bit of mythology. "Well regulated" means then, as now, adhering to rules, regulation, and law as set by an authority. In many towns people could not keep weapons in their homes (that was true in some places up through the late 19th century). A quartermaster kept all the weapons safely stowed, and when a call to arms was issued, the (male) town folk would go retrieve their weapons. As time progressed they would be told what weapons they could get and the quartermaster would ensure they remained in good operational order.
The law and custom of the age made it clear that firearms were not considered a weapon for self defense, but instead were a weapon for town and state defense. As I alluded to earlier, even in territories where firearms could be kept on person it was not infrequent that they would be surrendered when entering town. The 2nd Amendment was interpreted as local law will determine the regulation, as that was what was meant to be "well-regulated."
Can you provide some sources or references for this assertion?
This is from https://constitutioncenter.org/images/uploads/news/CNN_Aug_1...
Ever seen the type of people that are eager to display just how proud they are to own dozens of firearms? Those people generally aren't in the required shape to effectively fight or defend their country.
There is no such thing.
There is a proposed House bill, H.R. 2670, which has passed the House.
There is a proposed Senate bill, S. 2226, which passed the Senate.
Neither has passed into law (though it looks like the House bill, as amended by the Senate, will likely become the final version).
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As it turns out, the provision exists in both versions of the bill. It's also mostly a nothingburger.
The Undetectable Firearms Act is in effect now and has been in effect for my entire adult life. The last extension was in December 2013 for ten years (P.L. 113-57, 137 Stat. 656). The NRA did not oppose it; it was not debated.
Since it has continuously been extended without controversy, this provision of the proposed NDAA would simply make it permanent.
Do better.
Part of do better should at least be coming with a basis for your argument instead of just pointing at political leanings.
The epidemic of gun violence in the United States is blatantly obvious to every one of its allies, and 2nd Amendment rights one of the major political brain worms that is undermining US standing around the world (and don't get me started on Canadians and UK folks who argue about gun rights trying to use an American framing of the position).
If an opposition to gun control and voicing that opposition is ideological warfare inappropriate for this site, I would expect to see this entire submission flagged.
That said, to bring it into context, HN is a tech focused website; the nature of this regulation is rooted in the fact that there is no practical way to regulate how a 3d-printer might be used, since they are trivial to build using off-the-shelf components and software, in many cases, for a skilled engineer, just using components salvaged from common household electronics and appliances.
This legislation is highly relevant to HN since it exemplifies how such an "unregulatable" technology might be regulated by imposing specific requirements on the outputs of that technology, and explicitly criminalizes the use of that technology to manufacture specific devices. A good example of how this contrasts with other technical regulations and laws, and their impacts on technology, consider modern printers - they are easily capable of scanning and printing at sufficient quality and low cost, paper currency that would pass at least casual inspection by observers, provided you can get the appropriate print medium for the currency in question (for some currencies). In response to this, there are several varieties of regulation that extend deeply into print and scan technologies as part of counterfeit deterrence.
This outcome for the manufacture of firearms is actually more desirable than more intrusive legislation that would mandate that 3d-printer firmware or other fabrication technologies attempt to discern what could be a firearm or munitions component, and refuse to print it. Strictly from a technologist perspective, without ideology, I would support this legislation on that front. In other words, as long as you don't use this tech to do crimes, you are ok. More restrictions on the proliferation of firearms is just a bonus :)
Please stop.
While the U.S. murder rate did increase somewhat in the COVID years, it is still significantly below its peak in the early '90s. Pre-COVID, it was only about half what it was.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Right_to...
Doesn't look like it to me.