Gun Control Dead 3D Printing Alyssa Milano
courtesy New York Times

Can you feel it? That low background rumble you’re hearing, the one that’s resonating into your very being, is palpable fear. No, dread is more like it. It’s being stoked by gun control activists and their media stenographers over Defense Distributed’s impending release of plans for printing 3D firearms.

What’s that you say? You’re not terrified? Maybe it’s because you know that people have been building their own guns in the United States since before there was a United States. Or maybe it’s because you know that plans for 3D printing firearms have been available on Al Gore’s Internet for years now.

For the rest of you, for all the muggles out there who don’t follow these things in any detail, the full-court press is on to sow fear and loathing.

Imagine this: the convicted domestic abuser next door tries to buy a gun. He’s turned down because he fails his background check. When he gets home, he opens up his browser, and in half an hour he’s printing out his own undetectable, fully functional plastic gun, with no background check and no record of his purchase.

That’s the dire warning being raised by the noted technological and ballistic subject matter expert, Alyssa Milano.

It is not hyperbole to say that this could mean the end of our ability to have meaningful gun violence prevention in America.
There are those who will say that 3D printing of guns is not a major issue — that it’s unpractical or too expensive, but many people said the same thing about tablets, e-readers, cell phones, laptops, home printers, computers and cars. And in 2013, for a printer that then cost less than $2,000, it was possible to make a plastic gun that successfully fired at least 9 shots.

Some might say it’s “unpractical” to turn to a vacuous, uh, entertainer for an opinion on, well, anything of import, but we couldn’t possibly comment. To hear Milano tell it, it won’t be any time at all now before we’re all packing our own undetectable GLOCK 7s.

But to a certain extent — and against all odds — she’s right. 3D printers will come down in cost (they already have), just like every other bit of whiz bang technology ever invented. And at some point in the not-too-distant future, turning out a frame for a 1911 or an AR-15 lower receiver will be as easy as printing off a recipe for watermelon gazpacho. Assuming you want to do that.

So efforts like those of the New Jersey Attorney General or the Los Angeles City Attorney to try to strong-arm Defense Distributed are not only ultimately doomed to fail, they’re utterly beside the point. And while DD may block Pennsylvanians from accessing their plans for now, Keystone Staters who really want to will be able to easily access whatever plans they want with a couple of clicks of a mouse.

But that won’t stop these new Luddites from furiously trying to stuff their fingers in the electronic dike.

Gun violence prevention organizations — Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence — filed a lawsuit to get an injunction to keep these downloadable guns from becoming legal, but on Friday a judge denied their motion to halt the sale of these deadly weapons.

Partnered with The Newtown Action Alliance and Fred Guttenberg of Orange Ribbons for Jaime, the No Rifle Association (NoRA), my organization, is helping to build a coalition of state attorneys general to also fight in court. We hope that we will be able to keep us safe long enough to enact a permanent legislative solution to this menace.

It may finally be dawning on the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex that governments’ ability prohibit civilian firearm ownership — or keep individuals from building their own — is quickly becoming even more futile and lulz-worthy than ever. They’re doomed to fail and the death throes of gun control will be fun and fascinating to watch over the next couple of days, let alone years.

As Defense Distributed is about to demonstrate and we’ve been fond of saying, you can’t stop the signal.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

95 COMMENTS

  1. A firearm receiver DESIGNED to be 3-D printed would presumably both simple and strong when using common resins.

        • A polymer receiver doesn’t have to contain the pressure of a cartridge like this “thing” which hesitate to call a “gun.” I think the whole point of this project was to troll the ignorant anti-gun movement and to that end, it worked perfectly. As a credible weapon however, not so much.

        • I don’t do “plastic” guns. Period. But I think felons should. It’ll leave more of the metal ones [that they’re not really prevented from obtaining, by any regulatory or gun-grabber fucking bullshit] for us.

          If (ever) 3D printer technology could be combined with laparoscopic surgery think gun regulators and grabbers SHOULD PRINT A PLASTIC GUN IN THEIR RESPECTIVE ASSES.

    • These already exist. Many of the newer files include improved designs with reinforced weak points, adding additional material where needed.

      Youtube used to have tons of videos – not sure if they’re still up.

  2. Waiting for a big run on depends by lib-tard d-rat d-suckers. Maybe if they had printers they could generate a reasonable supply, not have to make walmart trips every time some 2a news comes out. Chuckee Spew-mer probably just bought himself a boatload of brown pants.

  3. “Gun Controllers Are Finally Realizing That The End is Near”

    No they aren’t!!

  4. For much of history, swords were highly regulated, and their possession successfully controlled by sufficiently tyrannical governments. That’s all I’ll say about “the end of states being able to control production of guns.”

    • They didn’t have 3d printers. Making a sword with a forge is much more comparable to making an AR or 1911 frame on an old Bridgeport mill from paper drawings.

      The whole point is, the computer control relocated the required expertise from the operator of the fabrication equipment to the designer of the thing being produced.

      • Frankly, for most of history it was NOT necessary to have a ‘forge’ of any sophistication to make a sword, or a scythe, or a sickle, or any other interesting-but-primitive sharp metal thing. Possession of some copper (Egyptians), some bronze (Bronze Age), or iron (everybody until the invention of ‘steel’), some clay to make a mold, a hammer and ‘anvil’ (hard, flat stone will do in a pinch), some other hard stone for honing some kind of edge, wood/bone/leather for a handle, and Viola! You have a sword/sickle/edged-thing-that-will-cut-and-kill.
        Before that, flint weapons were all the rage–except, unless attached to a spear, one had to be a mite closer.
        No matter how much ‘governments’ try to forbid the making or possession of lethal weapons to the peasants, the peasants will always manage somehow.

      • with a little imagination, and some heat and time, farming tools can be fasioned into weapons. The Scots proved that. it’s analagous to this situation. bottom line is, the information age is undoing tyranny. It’s taking longer than I’d prefer, but it’s happening.

    • Swords were not regulated until the ability to mass produce them in mills from crucible steel came on line in the 17th century. Before then, swords were individually hammered out in a labor intensive blacksmithing operation that resulted in weapons that most could not possibly afford.

      • . . . except perhaps in Japan, where possession of a sword by the ‘wrong sort’ would result in summary execution by somebody who was of the ‘right sort.’

      • Swords were not regulated until the ability to mass produce them in mills from crucible steel came on line in the 17th century.

        Uhmm, Christians and Jews, as well as pagans who managed not to be murdered outright, in Muslim lands were in virtually all cases forbidden from keeping or especially carrying weapons like swords from the 8th century right up through modern times. This is the case from Morocco to Indonesia.

    • An axe is as effective as a sword, a spear moreso, every peasant had one or the other or both (or various other agricultural implements that doubled as weapons)…….and as a group armed with spears and axes they could be pretty formidable as is shown time and again through history.

    • Anybody can make a sword with a forge. Not everyone can make a quality sword, however. Then again, blacksmiths didn’t have access to file sharing technology back then.

      • Does being killed with a quality sword hurt more, or less, than being killed with a cheap one?

  5. Dan, you need an editor, even if you got a junior from the local high school with a gpa of at least a 3.0. I believe one would sow fear and loathing, as in to plant prior to harvest, as opposed to sew fear and loathing which would bind them together with needle and thread.

        • I can answer that! Grammar was not being discussed, we were speaking of spelling. If you can’t understand the difference perhaps you should leave the subject alone!

        • me grammar less gooder than many. To be honest, the only thing that really pisses me off is when “educated” people misuse the words “to”, “too” and “two”. also the different forms of “hear”. man I hate that!

  6. We have been 3D printing our own receivers for years. They do a fine job, and are easy to engrave a serial number into, or embed a small aluminum block into. These gun control nuts are no more able to stop us than the damn government would be, if they tried. This country was founded by gun owners, and gun owners will protect it, even if that means we have to protect it from within. The snowflakes among us are going to have a hard time fighting with nothing to fight with. Not to mention the military is going to be on our side. Let them pitch whatever fit they want, in the end, if they pitch enough of a fit, their gonna get shoot. Ether by a law enforcement officer, for inciting a riot, or by us for just being a dumb-ass.

  7. That’s right hoplophobic harpies, for only several times the cost you can make an inferior firearm than any criminal can purchase off the street.
    Oh, the horror.

    • You know a Home Depot slam-fire grease-gun knock-off can be made with several ‘off the shelf’ items, that, with a welder and a little grease, will outlive most high-end AR’s out there.

      • you know what’s more complicated than an open-bolt fired fully auto submachine gun?? I’ll tell you what, a small 2-cycle engine. I know a couple local guys that can make one better than MacGuyver, and he had hollywood special effects

  8. You can 3D print guns all you want. They will just pass a law saying owning them is illegal. It seems most of you fail to realize there are plenty of states that restrict guns everyday. Florida had AR’s ban for a minute. You don’t think after they turn that blue in the next couple of years that minute won’t turn permanent? They are indoctrinating more commies in the school system than old people. The trend is democratic socialism which means the end of America and the most American thing of all. Gun ownership.

    • Democratic socialism means armageddon, and we will keep our eyes out for the next iteration to rear its fucking ugly satan’s-suck head, to whack-a-mole that too.

    • You havent been paying attention. The lefties are locked into an endless pissingcontest of who can out-commie who…..that might be fine and dandy for liberal urban enclaves on the west coast and the northeast, but isnt playing well with centerist red state democrats or, you know, sane people, hence the #walkaway movement…..once kavanaugh is confirmed it will be the true beginning of the end of gun control as we know it today, Even liberals know it which explains why the 9th circuit ruled being able to carry a gun was a right…..didnt want it going to SCOTUS and have something concrete set as real precedent.

    • “They will just pass a law saying owning them is illegal.” This statement is missing the point.

      There are two general approaches to gun-control:
      – stop the transfer to a prohibited-person at the point-of-sale;
      – prosecute a prohibited-person when discovered in possession.

      Felon-acquiring-a-gun and felon-in-posession are both illegal. Which one gets the emphasis in the criminal justice system? Gun controllers hope to stem the flood of guns from the white market to the black market by (somehow) controlling at the point-of-sale.

      80% receivers and 3-D printing make control at point-of-sale futile. That is the huge shock to the system; once the gun controllers take notice.

      There remains no choice but to turn emphasis from point-of-sale to possession. Why hasn’t this happened long ago?

      Felons found in possession are overwhelmingly male minority youths; a demographic already over-represented in prisons filled to capacity. The criminal justice system, legislators and the voting public have concluded that there is no more room for more members of this demographic to be imprisoned. Therefore, vigorous prosecution of felon-in-posession (or, for that matter, any other class of crime that can be swept under-the-rug) will be out-of-the-question.

      The implication, here, is that there is no hope for any vigorous system of gun control. None. Something, somewhere, would have to give. Technology, smuggling and evasion of the paperwork controls, can’t be stopped. Incarcerating more male minority youths is a political decision not easily adopted.

      So, what do we make of what little hope remains for gun-control? The target is not the criminal; nor the suicide. The target is the peaceable, law-abiding, OFWG. Why? I suspect only one explanation. That it is a long-standing plank in the platform of Progressives. It can’t be moved without disrupting the critical element of solidarity.

  9. Gotta love the part where Alyssa says “people said the same thing about tablets, e-readers, cell phones, laptops, home printers, computers and cars.”

    Tablets, e-readers, cell phones, laptops, home printers, computers and cars… The horror! It looks like Miss Milano wishes she could have stopped those things, too. Damn all that progress! Next thing you know, people who aren’t Hollywood insiders will be able to broadcast their own opinions to the public and travel wherever they please. Imagine the chaos!

    I do really appreciate the name of her organization, though. “No Rifle Association” makes it pretty darn clear what she and her fellow travelers really want in the end, and that’s unusual.

    • I never heard anybody say that “tablets, cell phones, laptops, home printers, computers”, were “unpractical”(sic) or too expensive. I do remember people(me included) wishing that computers were cheap enough for them to afford a better one, but that was before Milano was even born, back in the 1980s.
      I only remember laptops and cell phones being heralded by everyone as the greatest thing since sliced bread! And complaints about tablets being harder to use than a mouse. Which is true, but not in the way stated. But, at perhaps 2 percent accuracy, still right on par for Milano. But she gets some attention out of all her BS, which is pretty much all that matters to child stars once they grow up and become an ‘unstar’. Sure a few, like “The Beaver” bite the bullet and become insurance agents, but by and large, only a very few can muster that level of maturity.

  10. “It is not hyperbole to say that this could mean the end of our ability to have meaningful gun violence prevention in America.“

    Yes, this is what we call a feature, not a problem.

    I eagerly await for the era in which home made lowers are common place.

    • I’d prefer what will follow that in a few years, the ability to buy lowers mail order, without govt interference.

      • Yep. Why make them when you can get a higher quality product cheaper and faster and without any legal hopscotch.

  11. The fight has been futile for a number of years now, but the antis just don’t know enough about what they want to ban to realize it.

    Nobody tell the hoplophobes that building from an 80% receiver has been easy to do for quite a few years now, and it’s far cheaper than buying a 3D printer. Oh, and don’t mention anything about the other sites that have been quietly providing firearm CAD files for years either.

  12. But thanks to places like California they are trying to regulate both making your own gun and buying ammo, and gun parts.

    I wonder if anyone would ever realize all the minority report based pre-crime gun possession laws don’t matter, that anyone can own or carry anything, but we actually only really care when someone COMMITS an active crime, with or without a weapon. Murder, assault, battery, kidnapping, robbery, etc, it doesn’t matter if they have twenty 3d printed guns or an AOW or if they legally bought an AR, the crime is the problem, and thus the criminal, not the tools used.

  13. Yeah, Pandora’s box has been open a long time kids…
    Go download a little diddy called fusion 360, a very nice little cad cam package. The basic is free to hobbyist or people who just want to learn. Even if you subscribe it’s damn affordable. You can design anything, then print it out with the built in 3d printer utility. I personally use a lulzbot printer. Or just use the cam side and mill it out of 6061.
    Out of curiosity, any other machinist on here that just laugh there asses off at the futility of trying regulate all this? I know I do.

    • Most every shop I’ve worked at would let you use machines for small personal projects after hours or on weekends. And a lot of machinists have small mills at home. It would truly freak out the leftists to find out how many people have the capability to do it already.

      • They assume the good man will go bad, and aid-and-assist and import all the bad men that they can, because it’s not about guns or safety.

        THE FUCKING EVIL POS (D) ARE TRYING TO DESTROY AMERICA.

        That hasn’t changed in the last 180 years that they were doing it.

        • One thing seems to have changed. They seem to be losing ground, for the first time ever.

          To borrow a phrase from my grandma, I’m tickled pink about it.

  14. Remember the NRA ALREADY wrote and pushed through a law to ban 3D printed firearms TWICE with the Undetectable Firearms Act and its renewal. You have to include metal weights in a 3D printed firearm for it to be legal. Now liberals are trying to ban them even further.

    Remind me again how I supposedly wouldn’t have any guns if not for the NRA?

    • my wife whines alot.

      she has redeeming facets, hot and cold running faucets (with a spray attachment) and has her way with carbonara.
      more cowbell and bacon, less peas. a solid plate of pasta and some mississippi queen on eleven.
      gnawnachos. and the ants roll downhill. a suffusion of yellow. my suicidal mexican girlfriend has converted to judaism. no more al pastor for her diabetic chirruns.
      old car antennas made pretty cool zip guns for 11yr olds. you can only ban posession because you can’t prove i made it. and that same summer we left the phono stack arm up and over the tonearm so school’s out would repeat endlessly.
      it’s my saturday. i think i’ll buy a buell.

    • Remember the NRA ALREADY wrote and pushed through a law to ban 3D printed firearms TWICE with the Undetectable Firearms Act and its renewal. You have to include metal weights in a 3D printed firearm for it to be legal.

      Nanashi, I am convinced you work for Everytown. Your posts are total horse5hit. And yuu just attack the NRA with bull5hit claims here over and over.

      That law had NOTHING to do with 3d, mode or method of manufacture or whether an individual or gun company was making the gun. It had to do with use of 100% undetectable plastic, including in guns made with 1970’s tech.

      The NRA did not write or sponsor that legislation. It opposed it’s initial language, and NRA used its opposition of a bill that 90% of Congress was already supporting, and was a slam dunk to pass, to a) force a sunset clause and b) also to reduce the amount of required metal by half.

      You keep making yourself look foolish by repeating long debunked talking points of tiny and useless anti-NRA organizations

  15. Imagine this: the convicted domestic abuser next door tries to buy a gun. He’s turned down because he fails his background check. On his way home, he steals a fully functional gun, with no background check and no record of his purchase.

    What’s the difference??

    • While your garden variety wife beater probably would be averse to the risks associated with robbery or burglary and most likely isn’t connected to the gang-controlled secondary market, he could still:
      a) Buy or borrow a gun from a buddy
      b) Have a buddy buy a gun for him
      c) Grab a crowbar, a knife, and a gallon of gasoline.

      The brain-dead Alyssa Milano types of the world just don’t have the imagination of the common criminal.

  16. Alyssa Milano is eye candy, nothing more. Nobody likes her because she’s intelligent and a talented actress (the high points of her career are Who’s the Boss and Charmed, FFS). They like her because she’s hot. Women want to be her and men want…well, we all know. That’s the problem with celebrities. They get nothing but praise and wind up with an inflated sense of importance. So they weigh in on things they don’t have any clue about and have no business being involved in.

    • They know that, in a communistic state, entertainers, and MSM, stay one cut above the rabble in a comfortable ‘slack-zone’. They never survive the collapse though, so we should all work to make any rise of communistic motherfuckers out there very short-lived, and painfully bloody.

    • You call a person who uses the word “unpractical”, as if it is an actual word, “intelligent”?
      Wow… If I spell dumb: “dumm and dummer”, am I then a genius?

      • The word you are looking for, in NewSpeak, is ‘untelligent.’ Better, ‘unsmart.’ Like, ‘doubleplusunsmart.’

        In a sentence: “Often, people who come up with unpractical ideas are strikingly untelligent, irregardless [sic] of their level of education.”

    • I used to think she was quite… er… appealing. She did a really fun turn in My Name Is Earl a decade ago.

      But then she started doing this whole “look at me, I’m an activist” rigmarole, and that was the end. Now I just find her repulsive. Shrill and stupid are a fatal combination.

    • Total agreement from me. It’s clear that the good Lord focused mainly on only one aspect when he designed that charmer.

      If she’d just shut her huge trap, I might let her share my bed.

  17. “Gun Controllers Are Finally Realizing That The End is Near”

    Oh, puullleeez, give me a break. No they’re not, and they never will.

  18. It is as simple as using a VPN that lets you simulate any location on earth to get what you want. The are no geographical restrictions that can be put in place, period!

  19. Sigh. The end is not near for gun controllers. It never will be.

    It hasn’t mattered that Roe vs Wade was passed in 1973, State legislatures have attempted to tweak laws to limit abortions. Meds, insurace, religious liberties, SCOTUS nominations and fetus heartbeats are some of the tactics that have used to stop abortions. Pepole have been fighting against each other over this decision for 45 years.

    So why would anyone think that a technology or a SCOTUS ruling would stop anti-gun sh!tstain politicians from passing more laws to make their backers happy. Just wind through the system to bee shotdown or upheld based on human opinion. Tax dollars are used so they don’t care. Layers making laws so other lawyers can argue in a court presided over by a lawyer in a black robe at our expense.

    Standing on a soapbox, running at the mouth, telling others how to live is, unfortunately, how many, many people make themselves feel better.

  20. If there is one axiom about social change it’s that technology always develops in advance of culture. As new technologies emerge they alter critical social relationships and this put societies in the position of constantly adapting to new and often unexpected changes. While most people easily accommodate the new technologies into their everyday lives—think cell phones and now tablet computers—other people experience the phenomenon of “culture lag” as they increasingly find that people are using their new technologies to engage in behavior that ignores or even repudiates their closely held values. Culture-lag has rough edges which explains why gun-controllers are so indignant about homemade 3-D printed guns. Couldn’t happen to a better bunch of people.

  21. With all the modern technology available to the public, the only way Democrats would be able to limit the number of ways a gun can be manufactured would be to turn everything they control back into a third world country. 😉

  22. Its all just one ATF rule-change away from being a felony.

    CA, NY & NJ will start demanding background checks for 3D printers and “certain” raw materials.

  23. Tell that to the states that are doubling down on gun control after events such as Sandy Hook and Parkland even in formerly pro-gun bastions and that federal gun control has never been repealed (spare me the expiration of the AWB, Bush admitted he would have signed it but Congress forgot to bring it up and expired. If they had the will we would still have a federal AWB).

    So no, I see them winning more and more with more laws and import bans being signed left and right. Merely stopping them from coming after more isn’t winning!!!! Oh and don’t rely on Kavannaugh too much. He wasn’t exactly ecstatic about machine gun ownership or repealing the NFA.

  25. Even if we’re winning, it’s important we don’t act like we are. 2017 was the most horrendous display of complacency I’ve ever seen in the gun community.

    Our backs are always against the wall, ALWAYS. We are always only one rule change away from sweeping illegalization of firearms.

    For example, today we found out that the ATF is now trying to categorize AR uppers as firearms by bullying Safe Harbor Firearms. Yes, you read that right: the UPPER.

  26. I am going to go into the details (some of you here know them already) but there are ways now of obtaining a functioning firearm of the net with little to no assembly. You don’t need to mess w/ 3D printers or machine shops – just end around. The shades of legality vary from white to black w/ alot of gray in the middle.

  28. I notice some people here don’t believe in plastic guns. Are these the same ones that own Glocks and other similar weapons?

    I also don’t believe in plastic guns, that’s why I don’t own any. All of mine are what God intended, metal over metal. However, some do have wood on them….. 🙂
    BUT, when push comes to shove, I’ll take whatever is handy, even if it’s plastic.
    As a designer, I have done work with 3D printers, and I have personally seen ones that deposited metal. So it won’t be very long before barrels, receivers, cylinders, triggers will be 3D printed out of metal…..

    We are on the threshold of a new age of LIBERTY and I embrace it.

    • I have no problem with guns that use polymer for low pressure sub assemblies. It saves a significant amount of weight. Pressure bearing components should always be made of properly heat treated (preferably forged) steel alloys rated to withstand at least twice the operating pressure.

  29. Need to put out a rumor that someone has developed untraceable Jello bullets for the 3 d plastic guns. Frozen, they are armor piercing, when they thaw out they cannot be traced. Bet they believe it.

  30. “It is not hyperbole to say that this could mean the end of our ability to have meaningful gun violence prevention in America.”

    The heroes in Texas and Maryland who stopped bad guys with guns did meaningful gun violence prevention. The brave men and women of law enforcement who go to work every day to protect and serve, knowing they may not come home to their families, they do meaningful gun violence prevention. A blowhard celebrity with armed guards, while, that’s just tyranny by another name.

  31. With Trump in office in 2016-2020 we were able to really slow the tide and hit back hard with his wave of Originalist judges getting put into lower and upper courts. We also gained a lot of ground in multiple red states by pushing things like constitutional carry.

    That being said, we need to push more. We are still losing in coastal states and we need Trump in office 2020-2024 so we can get SCOTUS to be 6-3 or 7-2. We also need to keep expanding our outreach to not only white men but to women, minority, and the LGBT communities. There is absolutely no reason why the pro-gun pro-self defense movement can not be a big tent movement. Everyone deserves freedom and everyone should be welcome into our community.

  33. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/3D-Printable-Guns-States-Lawsuit-489617081.html

    ALERT…Not so fast everyone!

    Fraud Trump and the NRA about to CAVE on 3D printers!

    Trump say’s on 3D printed guns after speaking with NRA, “They don’t seem to make much sense”!

    If you closed your eyes, you would almost think Hillary was President!

    Hey Trump you Phony, the American people will take all of this Flip Flopping from you into consideration, when you ask us to Trust you about going to War against Iran or cooperating with Martial Law!

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