3D Printed Guns & The BATFE?

Looks like as of right now, they are ok with people making themselves a gun. You have to be legally allowed to own a gun and you can't make anything full-auto or something else that requires registration like a short barreled shotgun.

Little known, it has always been legal to make your own home built gun, you just weren't supposed to make a business of selling them.

Think the ATF will change their mind once President Barack and AG Holder find out?

Interesting. The State Department is making them take down the 3D files to make a gun to prevent them from getting into foreign hands.

I find it very odd that folks are more afraid of the gun than the 3D printer??? I assure you that within a decade that the 3D printer will cause more suffering in our society than guns - more death, famine and suffering - even if they never print another gun.

You can only kill so many people with printed guns, but we can print away our economy from corner to corner. Those with the biggest printers will do better and those that used to make or trade the things they are printing will be absolutely screwed. This progress will come quick, quicker than the correction to the job market. We still have not corrected from opening up China to producing good for us with lower worker protections. We are not economically ready for this yet. Mark my words.

I say if we are going to ban the spread of information, let's ban the spread of the design of these awful printing devices.

Another prediction. As the printers eliminate jobs and thus wages and thus income taxes will go down dramatically. 3D printers assure us of a VAT in the near future, as the govt will need the money, even if the workers never touch it.

Goodby craftsmen, you were already halfway out the door anyway. I bet these printers make 2009 look like the good old days.

3-D printers have been used for many years......not new tech at all. Numerical Control fab machines in many forms are common. This is now a news item in the masses because of gun control......trivial.

deltamrey wrote: 3-D printers have been used for many years......not new tech at all. Numerical Control fab machines in many forms are common. This is now a news item in the masses because of gun control......trivial.

3-D printers just started making guns and have NOT dominated manufacturing for years, but will in the future, why post implying these printers are any significant part of our current manufacturing. Right now I would have trouble buying one of these, but in a few years I will be able to buy them and will likely have no choice to stay competitve. So when I feel I have not chioce, since I am already on top of the economy, I will use that position and the technology to maintain my position and wipe out more of the peons below...those all the do gooders want to help. I am actually concerned about the little guy, this technology will only help me dominate even more, like all other have.

CNC machines, perhaps a good predecessor example were REALLY GREAT for those that bought the machines and the few workers that were left running them, but were a nightmare for craftsmen making things with simpler tools. And now that it takes even less people to run them, all the folks in the 90s that got very special training, are using that great training on video games today, unemployed again.

This is the way of things, but the pace does matter. Remember all the old bitty's working in the offices only 20 years ago, the ones replaced with computers, they did not all find work, we have unemployment as a result. Increased efficiency in increased unemployment. We must rectify this in our economic policies. We simultaneously encourage job crushing and job creating policies and we obviously know from the data that the net effect in 2013 is LESS JOBS. So if we push forward one more technology on the job crushing side, we can expect even LESS JOBS for the weak and stupid and more resources of the well positioned and weathly (you know me) - so I am pushing for the little guy and my employees, I have enough opportunity, more than enough.

Progress can be cool, but mostly only for those that possess the progressive technology and those that can temporarily benefit from its use. Chinese goods are the best example. Cheap at first, until they have all the jobs and people start of feel like in stead of Wal-Mart feeling cheap and us getting all kinds of savings (the way it feels at first, like with the printers), in time when the people who lost the production jobs have no money, it does not matter how cheap the printed good is, they don't have a job or any money to trade.

I brought this up as one of the biggest issues in our economy far before this gun BS came up, it is even in the 285bound record if you want to look it up. Literally my post is about how the gun stuff is piddly compared to the printer itself. This is far from the first time I have said this publicly and I have been saying it for years. We will see the same negative effect of the computer, but some of you don't even see the negative effect of that. It can actually be seen in the unemployment numbers. The mass positive effect of things like this are short lived and then we pay the price forever.

My words have already been marked. History will play out and perhaps you will be right, this time it will be different, but it usually does not happen this way. Inventions don't move us forward, they move the inventor forward at our expense.

OTN, interesting theory. Let's treat farming the same way. Ban combines, if you put people out there with scythes, tens of millions of jobs would be created(but very low pay since they don't create much wealth with their work.). Employ the Mexican model of road construction, eliminate the heavy, capital equipment and start handing out shovels.

I am not suggesting banning anything by law, I am suggesting we simply place fear in the right place.

There are many processes where I elect, though it costs me a little more money, to do it with people vs. machines. People can tool up and down much faster for a small business and require less capitol investment.

But to be honest, we all would likely benefit from a ban on combines, guns, printers, computers if it was possible to actually ban anything that exists effectively....but alas, you actually cannot effectively ban things once they exist, you can only make them illegal and create another profit based industry around the ineffectiveness of the ban. This last concept is not a theory, this is a significant part of our current economy, much of the public sector and more and more of the private.