3D printing is expected to revolutionise manufacturing, medicine and even food. But lately, it has been in the news because of concern about how it can be used to make guns. Actually, 3D printed guns have been around for about five years already. In 2013, a self-described anarchist Cody Wilson successfully fired a 3D printed gun and shared the video of it with the world. He then posted the blueprints for that gun on his website. The US government immediately put a stop to that but in the short time that the information was online it had been downloaded more than 100,000 times.
Wilson subsequently sued the Obama administration, citing freedom of speech and the freedom to bear arms (also guaranteed under the US constitution). In June, the Trump administration settled the lawsuit and since Aug 1, those blueprints have been back online for anyone to download.
This issue has sparked a national debate in the US. Pro-gun groups generally support making the blueprints available, but law enforcement officials warn that it could lead to illegal guns being made with no way to monitor or track them.
They’re worried that these home-made guns could fall into the hands of criminals and terrorists. Plastic guns are easy to conceal and the fact that they’re home-made means they will carry no serial numbers. Plastic guns are also easier to destroy after they’ve been used for nefarious purposes. The melting point for 3D plastic is about 240C (compared to 1,371C for steel).
In the US, there’s already a law against undetectable guns. Aptly called the Undetectable Firearms Act (passed by the US Congress in 1988), the law makes it illegal to make, import, sell, ship, deliver or receive any undetectable firearms.
To avoid 3D guns being declared illegal, people like Wilson have in their blueprint, some elements of metal which make the gun detectable (and therefore legal). The problem is that those pieces of metal can easily be removed and the bulk of the gun, made of plastic, can pass through X-ray machines in airports and so on.
Some politicians are pushing the idea for the law to require that plastic guns contain metal elements that are not removable in order for them to be considered legal. Whether such a law will be passed is yet to be seen. But in general, regulators move at a much slower pace than technology.
Genie out of the bottle
This has always been the case. Cars were on the road long before the US government started issuing driver’s licences and it was more than 50 years after the first plane took to the skies before the US Federal Aviation Administration was created. And if you fast-forward to today, you’ll see lawmakers still struggling to find ways to regulate things like Facebook, Uber, Artificial Intelligence and so on.
But even if there were new regulations that could ban the publication of 3D gun blueprints online, it would be impossible for the US to enforce it on websites that are hosted overseas. The blueprints are already out there. This genie is already out of the bottle.
Although many people are concerned about the dawning of the 3D guns era, it should be highlighted that it probably isn’t going to be a serious problem in the short term, for a variety of reasons.
The main one is that it’s not exactly cheap to create a 3D gun. Yes, there are really cheap 3D printers but those are for hobbyists and cannot be used to create something complex like a gun. For that, you’ll need industrial strength 3D printers, some of which cost hundreds of thousands of US dollars. So it’s not like every Tom, Dick and Harry will be able to afford to create 3D guns in their homes.
In a country like the US where there are an estimated 300 million guns in circulation, it would be far easier and cheaper for someone to just buy a gun. And if that person cannot do so legally, they could always buy it on the black market.
But will rich syndicates and crime families who can afford the high-end printers start making their own, undetectable and untraceable guns? Unlikely, at least for now, because plastic guns are inferior to the real thing made of metal. They can be made to shoot bullets, as Wilson had demonstrated in his YouTube video, but they’re hardly top-quality, reliable guns.
Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams put it best when he said this about 3D guns: “Who the hell is gonna print a gun that’s the worst gun in the world when you can just buy a gun?”
Curbing potential abuse
So, making your own guns isn’t going to be something big for the time being, until the technology improves and the price drops considerably. This will happen in the long run and there will come a day when it will be affordable for someone to create a functioning gun from his bedroom.
But even then, it’s doubtful that what they can produce via 3D printing can be anywhere as good as the real thing produced by gun manufacturers. So perhaps 3D guns will never be a problem in the US where real guns are readily available, legally and in the black market, and for cheap.
3D guns could be a concern though for countries like Malaysia where guns are not readily available. What if in the future criminals are able to make simple but functional guns in their homes?
Since it will be impossible to block every site that carries 3D gun blueprints, the only practical option is for laws to be passed that make the manufacturing of such guns as illegal as smuggling guns in from overseas. The same harsh punishment must apply.
The government can also regulate the sales of high-end 3D printers that are capable of producing guns. There won’t be many of these so it’s viable to register and trace every owner of such machines. This can help curb potential abuse of these machines to make illegal firearms.
As mentioned earlier, technology will always outpace legislation and regulation but knowing that 3D guns will be an issue in the future, it would make sense for lawmakers to start looking at this potential problem now.