Communities around the U.S. have seen shootings carried out with weapons converted to fully automatic in recent years, fueled by a staggering increase in small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online. Laws against machine guns date back to the bloody violence of Prohibition-era gangsters. But the proliferation of devices known by nicknames such as Glock switches, auto sears and chips has allowed people to transform legal semi-automatic weapons into even more dangerous guns, helping fuel gun violence, police and federal authorities said.
The (ATF) reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021, the most recent data available.
The devices that can convert legal semi-automatic weapons can be made on a 3D printer in about 35 minutes or ordered from overseas online for less than $30. They’re also quick to install.
“It takes two or three seconds to put in some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,” Dettelbach said.
It’s not an anti-gun argument.
The theory is that you CAN’T regulate guns because people will just 3D print inferior copies.
Ding ding. "3d printers must be regulated for safety and copyright protection "
Go to home depot and you can make a pipe shotgun that doesn’t even require welding to make. A lot of fully 3d printed guns are 9mm. If you havent shot both cartridges I cannot explain the difference between 9mm and a shotgun slug. Maybe it will suffice to say the bulletproof vests that stop 9mm, when hit with a shotgun slug often result in broken ribs, punctured lungs, and general chest cave ins. Your 3d printed gun will undoubtedly have better rate of fire but in terms of accuracy and level of destruction, the shotgun will compete just fine.
Also the 3d printed gun will probably be of questionable durability, and if you think ya can have a 3d printed barrel id love to see ya fire it more than once.
But that’s impossible, not figuratively, but literally. 3d printers are devices designed for hobbiest-hackers you can’t put copy protection or drm controls on a device like that, it won’t work. If any legislation were passed to make that happen, there will be open source alternative firmware for these devices the very next day, months before the legislation would even take effect.
That is in other words, a waste of effort. The genie is out of the bottle and it can’t be put back in. The question is what will we do now that it’s out.