Posted on 05/07/2013 7:47:00 PM PDT by marktwain
(snip)
Similarly, honest citizens should not have a general obligation to disclose to the government what firearms they’ve built or bought, provided they are for honest purposes. An honest person may wish to keep this information private to avoid becoming the target of thieves or unwanted political attacks. A desire for private firearms ownership is not proof of “criminal intent.” And if the government has a specific concern that someone is planning a crime with a gun (or any other tool), the burden of proof should be on the government prior to any search or other invasion of his privacy. Otherwise, anyone owning an “untraceable” 3D-printed gun should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Wilson’s innovation could thus spark a much-needed re-examination of American gun laws, including the current paradigm of imposing ever-increasing restrictions on millions of honest gun owners in an attempt to stop relatively fewer bad guys from committing gun crimes. By making it harder (if not nearly impossible) for the government to regulate gun possession and transfers, his development could move the government to instead (properly) focus its efforts on punishing gun misuse.
That is why I’m encouraged by the development of 3D-printed guns. Not because I want bad guys committing more gun crimes. But because I hope it sparks some vigorous discussions on deeper themes such as “innocent until proven guilty” and the proper scope of government. If enough people start debating these questions, Cody Wilson will have done America a real service.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
The idea that you can control criminal access to guns has always been a totalitarian cover for controlling innocent men.
/johnny
Remember when the Japanese decided against attacks to the US Mainland because there was a gun behind every blade of grass ?
“Remember when the Japanese decided against attacks to the US Mainland because there was a gun behind every blade of grass?”
That can be used as slogan for the marijuana legalization campaign as well.
Guns also ended feudalism. Minimum two week training for musket allowed farmers to kill a knight which took 7+ years to train.
One of my college prerequisites (I thought at the time, a waste of time) was Asian History and during the feudal times in Japan, the turn of the tide that wasted the samurai was the advent of firearms. Whomever had guns usually wins the war.
What makes people believe printed guns/bullets would be untraceable?
The government has been able to trace every printout from every printer for a LONG time now.
The 3D printers will just add some code no one can normally see.
The government will use whatever means they did to make the printer manufacturers fall in line (including lots of foriegn mfgs).
It’s probably already fait accompli.
Trace - or match?
Can’t wait to read the first thread after some punk uses an untraceable 3D printed gun to blow a cops brains out.
They can probably match a serial # to a credit card, if one was used.
Or, the distributors probably forward security camera footage anytime cash is used for a printer purchase at Best Buy.
I'll bet the US government is 3 steps ahead of the average person's wildest dreams.
The 3D printers will probably print out your picture and address on the head of each firing pin - to be stamped into each casing when fired.
(Slightly facetious, but not by much.)
“Can’t wait to read the first thread after some punk uses an untraceable 3D printed gun to blow a cops brains out.”
I do not understand this fetish with “traceability”. Tracing guns almost never solves crimes. Once a gun is stolen, traceability does not matter.
The only thing traceability does is set up former owners for lawsuits, or more commonly, allow stolen guns to be returned to their lawful owners. That does nothing to stop crime.
Not even close in your fevered dreams. A 3D printer does not even have to be connected to the Internet or a phone line. It is like a hi-tech lathe in a way. Even if the printer put a number on a part (highly unlikely) it would only trace to that printer, and no federal agent knows where it is.
Add the emerging technology of printers being able to print more printers, and those imaginary numbers mean nothing.
The government will never be able to find them all, and that keeps the government on its toes.
They can only trace it if you mail the warranty card in.
Otherwise they can match it but they have to know where it is
What I like about this young mans work is the fact that a free man used his intellect to take a modicum of power away from an increasingly tyrannical government. Schumer was wetting his pants the next day.
The more liberty we can take from government with our innovation, the more liberty they will try to take and the less relevant they will become.
That was discovered in 2005.
I’ll bet they’ve been working a bit since then.
MAC address and hard-drive serial # embedded into common fonts and pictures would be my bet.
Well, if it were me - I would embed a small virus inside the most commonly downloaded 3D gun files.
Run an ultra-fast server so all the torrents are sure to grab my files first.
Send a slightly different version to each one, that is identifiable only via microscope and knowledge of teh encryption used.
Then the virus would also attempt to grab the MAC address of the computer and modify the 3D gun slightly to also embed that info.
(But, that’s just me. I’m sure the government would NEVER figure all that out.)
PS I’m not really worried about 3D guns in the foreseeable future. There are about 350 million REAL guns in the US. If you can’t get your hands on one of those, even AFTER a wide-band confiscation, then you aren’t going to be a threat to anybody.
I’m just pointing out that if something is worth tracking, the fed gov can and will run circles around 99.99% of the general public.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.