I have long been of the opinion that the problem with gun violence is not guns, but people inclined to use them to do violence. A news item from overseas is bringing home how this should start being a more important part of the debate.
Guns as most people know of them are precisely machined tools of aluminum, steel and high-strength injection-molded plastics, the manufacture of which until very recently has required a quite significant investment in skill and hardware and money. And for the civilian market, this is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. A hunter wants a rifle that has repeatable accuracy at long range and they often care about the aesthetics of the weapon, like engraving or a burled walnut stock. A person wanting a pistol for home defense or concealed carry wants something reliable and with an ease of use appropriate to their skill and familiarity. A person who hunts waterfowl will want a shotgun with certain specific characteristics, and so on. The common factors are that all of these people want a durable, reliable weapon and all of these people are the least likely set of gun owners to do violence to someone. Even if they are the sort of people who own a pistol, rifle or shotgun that looks scary or has a large magazine.
Now, read this story:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...
A 3D printer and suspected "homemade" gun components have been seized during police raids in Manchester.
"The worst-case-scenario would be a cheap and 100% reliable device that could be made overnight and then destroyed after just one use, disposing of crucial evidence to pin to a suspect."
This is in England, often seen as a model for
gun control efforts by some people (total handgun ban, ballistic fingerprinting of all firearms, etc.).
The point is that people who desire firearms for illicit purposes are very soon going to have the ability to make them using off-the-shelf consumer technology. 3D printers are no more likely to be banned than the motion picture industry was able to ban VCR's. Similarly, such printers cannot be kept from making gun parts anymore than DVD burners can be kept from copying movies or color photocopiers from making counterfeit bills. There is
always someone out there who has made a software patch to get around that sort of thing. Likewise, the supplies necessary can be made without going through regulated channels. Bullets, gunpowder, primers, the works.
Are any of these going to be the sort of thing a gun owner like myself would want? Hell no.
But neither am I part of the gun violence problem.
The short of it is, if you are interested in reducing gun violence, but cannot see any further than background checks, magazine limits and banning weapons with bayonet mounts, then you are quickly becoming someone who sees a Model T and stridently demands new regulations on buggy whips. The picture is bigger than the limited hardware-only view on law and regulation.
If a person wants to use a gun for criminal purposes, even if only as a threat of violence, then it does not need to be an heirloom weapon that will work reliably for thousands of shots and scores of years. It just needs to be reliable and deadly enough to do or imply the appropriate violence. And if it is cheap enough that if you do use it, and you can melt it down in a microwave afterward to destroy any evidence linking you with the crime, all the better.
Right now the technology is in its infancy, and what few legislative efforts have been made to deal with it have been short-sighted and useless at stopping crime, like the D.C. or California proposals to make 3D printed guns illegal. "Hey Al, did you know that gun you wanted to kill Fredo with was illegal?" But the technology is only going to get cheaper, more reliable and more durable. In the past year we have gone from a 3D printed plastic receiver for an AR-15 that broke after a handful of shots to one which lasted for several hundred shots. We have gone from all-plastic single shot weapons that break after a few shots to designs for semi-auto pistols with high-capacity magazines.
render of 3D-printed pistol
There are already commercial sites that can do
3D printing in metal. The cost of this technology is likely to decrease. Compare the change in cost and capability to something equally revolutionary like the laser printer. Instead of being hulking 70 pound beasts that cost a few thousand dollars (HP LaserJet series I) when the tech was new, they now cost a few hundred dollars and are a tenth the weight.
Now think about what today's 3D printers are going to become ten or twenty years from now. They're going to be like Easy Bake ovens in the Sears toy catalog (or Lego Mindstorms). You think you can stop that from happening? You think you can keep
construction files for digital weapons from being available? You think you can restrict ownership of 3D printers or place hardware or software locks to prevent creation of unauthorized parts? You think you can restrict the supply chain of
raw materials for 3D printers?
Good luck with that.
Estimates are that there are perhaps 310 million guns in private hands in the United States, and about 11,000 firearm murders per year, or one firearm murder per 28,000 guns. Even if you add in all accidental deaths and suicides, it is about one per 10,000 guns. And if you counted the murders based on the number of gun owners (47% of adult population of 228 million), it would be something like one murder per 10,000 gun owners. To put that risk into perspective, the chance that someone's intimate partner will take a knife to them this year is about one per 5,000 adults (46,940 recorded incidents in 2011).
So, gun owners as a class of people are not the problem. Calling other Kossacks a "menace to society" simply for having a concealed carry permit is not a productive tactic. Saying that someone is partially responsible if they brag about owning a gun and then have it stolen and misused is as tactless as saying a woman who flaunts her appearance is partially to blame for being raped.
I am a strong RKBA advocate. I've been a shooter from back in the days when you brought your rifle to school so you could get some hunting done after classes and before dark...and this was considered normal. But like probably every RKBA person here at Kos, I deplore gun violence as much as anyone else. I just see the problem as being mostly in the person holding the weapon, and that's where I think the most effective solutions will be. And things like 3D printed guns are going to bring this point home, when in a few years "assault weapon" and "high capacity magazine" bans and universal background checks become moot for keeping guns out of the hands of those who would deliberately misuse them. We can pass initiatives aimed at increasing safety education to decrease accidents among non-criminal gun owners. We can have mental health initiatives to deal with the problem of suicide (all suicides). And you will probably get the support of gun owners for these. After all, gun owners and their families are the ones most likely to benefit from decreased accident or firearm suicide rates.
But if in addition, you are interested in reducing gun violence, then keep the above in mind when deciding where to focus your efforts. Societal factors that give rise to violence, or inanimate objects which could end up beyond your ability to control criminal access to? Law enforcement aimed at an existing criminal minority, or blanket efforts that treat a hundred million gun owners as would-be criminals? Which is going to give you the greater benefit for the time spent? Which is more likely to get overall public support? Which is more likely to get support of that 47% of adults who own a gun?
Think about it. Think forward.