8 ms·

The proliferation of 3D printed firearms completely changed my opinion on gun control a few years ago. I used to think that getting rid of guns was a great firs

The proliferation of 3D printed firearms completely changed my opinion on gun control a few years ago. I used to think that getting rid of guns was a great first step. But, it seems like it's not really feasible to do that. Now my opinion is that maybe it should be the last step, after addressing the causes of gun death (suicide and the drug war are at the top of the list). But at that point, if we'd actually fixed those problems, I wonder if there would be much of a pressing need to get rid of guns at all.

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
Absolutely. The people buying illicit weapons need the means and motivation to do it, both of which stem from the black market for drugs.
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Even if you solved that, you'd still have problems with knives (you can't outlaw kitchen knives), homemade explosives, sticks, screwdrivers, acid, etc. Mental health, crime, and drugs (also, again crime related to those), and you've solved most of the problems. Just legalizing some drugs would probably solve more than half of the issues in some places.
- closewith 4y ago
  Watching Americans try to justify gun culture and why it isn't the real problem is always baffling to me. I do wonder if you're expressing genuinely held beliefs or if your head is wilfully in the sand.
  - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    Lol watching non-Americans and their Stockholm syndrome about their governments taking their rights away is always amusing to me. If you don't have a gun you're not a citizen, you're a subject.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    The irony of your "head is willfully in the sand" remark in the context of an ever-widening hole in the effectiveness of gun control is thick enough to spread on toast. "Gun culture" (whatever that actually means) is not the problem. The fact that the US is the least-developed of the "developed" world is the problem. The fact American income disparity and mental health are both deteriorating at a rapid pace is the problem. People kill each other (or, more commonly, themselves) here in the US - with or without guns - because they're broke, stressed the fuck out, and so desperate for any semblance of relief that they're driven to either put themselves out of the misery our capitalist system has thrust upon them or else lash out at the rest of the very society disenfranchising them.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  Fitting right in with Nicaragua and Zimbabwe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
- VikingCoder 4y ago
  Have you looked into the statistics of how many people succeed in suicide, world-wide, from knives, homemade explosives, sticks, screwdrivers, vs. how many succeed in suicide from firearms? I mean, have you? If you haven't, then why would you bring them up as "problems"? Or are you just spit-balling?
  - kobalsky 4y ago
    Disclaimer: I'm not from the US. I don't understand this importance of that metric. The US has a high suicide rate but there are EU contries with a much lower guns per capita that have similar suicide rate. Sweden has a rate of 12.4 vs 14.5 suicides in the US per 100k people [1], yet the guns-per-100-persons in Sweden is 23.1 vs 120.5 in the US [2]. An undeducated glance of the numbers shows that people tend to hang themselves when guns are not readily available like in the US [3]. How much do you think suicide will drop in the US if you removed all weapons overnight? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2649482/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2649482/
    - VikingCoder 4y ago
      You haven't answered my question. What is the suicide rate from knives? You specifically brought up knives as a "problem." Your word. What is the suicide rate from homemade explosives? Sticks? Screwdrivers? You brought those up as "problems." The evidence I have seen makes me believe that suicide in otherwise healthy individuals seems to be a fleeting goal. It's not as though someone becomes set upon their decision, and continues attempting it until they succeed, for the vast majority of people. Thus, when someone has the temporary motive of suicide, and they have a firearm available, they tend to succeed. When they have a temporary motive of suicide, but they don't have a firearm available, they succeed less often. I get that the burden would be on me to argue that perspective with evidence, and I'm not going to be able to provide it any time soon, and I apologize for that. But since you brought up the "problems" of knives, homemade explosives, sticks, and screwdrivers, again, I have to ask - do you have any evidence that those are worth being described as "problems"?
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  It's much harder to kill people with a knife than with a gun. In the US, mass shooters have killed a dozen or more victims in a minute or two. Very hard to achieve with anything else short of explosives.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Good thing no one ever uses IEDs then…..
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      As I said, short of "explosives" which IEDs need. And yes, IEDs are rarer than gun shootings pretty much everywhere, because explosives are a lot better restricted, even in the otherwise completely insane US. I guess some control works??
      - lazide 4y ago
        There are explosives, as in actual regulated explosives, and then there are IEDs, which can use anything from repurposed old artillery shells, to stolen construction explosives, to mixed kitchen chemicals and fertilizer. IEDs are not rarer than shootings because of controls, most likely. A Timothy McVeigh style attack is still very doable with off the shelf stuff. Explosives were never okay in Iraq either, post-Saddam (or guns, for that matter). It didn’t stop IEDs being the #1 threat. Same with Ireland during ‘the troubles’. Guns are direct in application, limited in impact, and expose the wielder to direct harm. Explosives, don’t. Explosives do require a degree of planning that a gun doesn’t though. And tend to be clearly ‘terrorist’/‘terrible’ in nature. The crazy just hasn’t been bottled up enough for it to get there in the US. Yet, anyway.
  - karaterobot 4y ago
    Look up vehicle ramming attacks. Easy to commit, hard to prevent, very effective from the mass murderer's perspective. For example, in 2016, an attack with a truck killed 86 people and wounded 458 in Nice. You can't stop people from mass murder if they have their mind set on it. The best prevention would be figure out why they want to kill and solve the underlying issue, but that's too hard I guess. Strategies like "ban X" are an admission that we're not interested in root causes. Instead we pretend that removing the instruments or making the penalties worse will work. Predictably, all that will happen is people who want to commit mass murder will find other ways to do it.
- throw0101c 4y ago
  > Mental health, crime, and drugs (also, again crime related to those), and you've solved most of the problems. ¿Por qué no los dos? At the very least having a filter so that not just any rando can walk around packing heat would probably be helpful: * https://www.autoblog.com/2022/01/31/florida-man-road-rage-shoots-out-windows-video/ https://www.autoblog.com/2022/01/31/florida-man-road-rage-sh... If you want it at home for whatever reason, have fun. Though some safe storage laws may be a good idea (and strong liability): * https://www.cbsnews.com/news/first-grader-allegedly-shot-teacher-virginia-expert-what-could-be-next/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/first-grader-allegedly-shot-tea...
  - allanmacgregor 4y ago
    Canada has already the filters for legal gun owners; we are not the states the amount of hoops that legal gun owners have to go through. Anyone that owns a restricted firearm; like handguns or rifles under certain length is added to a database and their name is daily checked for felonies, domestic abuse, etc. In order to get a permit, you have to get sign of your spouse or if you are under 2 years divorced from the previous partner. Mandatory training and course certification is part of it. We don't have open carry here. Restricted can only be used on ranges. We have transport permits; etc etc etc 80% or more or guns used in violent crime are illegal and coming from the US border. Why? Harder to trace, don't any of the magazine or automatic restrictions that there are in Canada.
- incomingpain 4y ago
  >Even if you solved that, you'd still have problems with knives (you can't outlaw kitchen knives), There are many pictures with labels in the uk saying you have to be over 18 to buy plastic utensils, because there's a knife. This is why the UK had more homicides after banning firearms. Homicides up, gun related homicides down. Turns out, you have some gangster shoot up a place. They land perhaps a couple shots and run off. The victim is rushed to hospital where they are saved. Chef knife victim on the otherhand will die. So the politicians who banned guns in the UK are morally responsible for more deaths occurring. They could have addressed the actual reason the homicides were occurring but failed to do so.
downrightmike 4y ago
Unfortunately, Mental illness is largely not the cause of gun violence like the media says it is, the issue is that there are so many guns out there that are so easy to get a hand on by anyone, that gun violence is so bad. And since JFK got rid of sanatoriums and expected the private companies to pick up the slack, 60 years ago, there will never be enough care as proven by the lack of care today. Sorry, we don't, nor will we ever, prioritize it enough to have any meaningful impact on gun violence. You take the weapons out of reach of people who would use them to do harm to others _first_, and only then can we make any progress on the issues. But too many companies and unscrupulous people are out there and they actively block and write legislation to make gun violence a certainty. Bad advertising and death is still good advertising to these people. As for 3D printed guns, we have a whole ATF bureau that should be on this just like they are on the illegal fully auto gun mods.
- maxwell 4y ago
  Unconstitutional. We keep a gun behind every blade of grass for a reason.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- ruined 4y ago
  3d printed guns are as difficult to control as media piracy, which is to say, it's impossible.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    Not true. A 3d printed gun won't do you any good unless you at least test it and probably not until you carry it around outside your home. Plenty of chances to get caught with an illegal firearm. Between firearms being easier to detect than pirated media and police being a lot more motivated to go after them, 3D printed guns are quite controllable...
    - 4y ago
devwastaken 4y ago
Tried to illegalize alcohol - failed. Tried to illegalize drugs - failed Trying to illegalize guns - failing. Today's progressives are tomorrow's conservatives. Yesterday's progressives wanted drugs to never be spoken of or taught. Today's progressives never want guns to be spoken of or taught. Everyone thinks they're special and more moral, but they're just the same human condition.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  Gun control works quite well in all civilized countries. With remarkably better results than in the US... Gun control even worked in the US until some people redefined the 2nd amendment and drank the NRA koolaid.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    It did? So gun violence was lower in the 1990s/2000s than it was after the Heller decision?
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      In so far as it was tried. The assault rifle ban had some positive impact, its revocation certainly made school shootings more deadly. There is a long history of gun control in the US actually. The 2nd amendment originally was only meant for well regulated militias to carry simple rifles. Not for disgruntled white males to dismember school children.
      - dazilcher 4y ago
        > The 2nd amendment originally was only meant for well regulated militias to carry simple rifles That is your opinion, and it is very wrong.
        bayesian_horse 4y ago
        It's the literal text of the amendment. And the opinion of most historic and legal scholars.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
It's totally possible to control 3D-printed guns. Perfectly? Maybe not. But it helps if guns are illegal, so police can stop people who go around carrying them. The way of manufacturing the gun really doesn't matter. Tons of "legal" guns get stolen, misplaced or sold illegally. Gun control is much more about restricting access as much as possible and making it hard for people to have an opportunity to use a gun. If you can just carry one around casually in your every day life, there are just too many opportunities for something to go badly.
908B64B197 4y ago
> Now my opinion is that maybe it should be the last step, after addressing the causes of gun death (suicide and the drug war are at the top of the list). That, unlike gun regulation, would actually save lives. Keep in mind The US has a much lower suicide rate than South Korea, despite South Korea having extremely strict gun control, for instance. In countries where guns are unavailable, people simply resort to other means. But their casualties aren't aggregated under the "firearm death" column. To me, gun control is about political gains. Not saving lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shafia_family_murders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shafia_family_murders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London,_Ontario_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London,_Ontario_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Calgary_stabbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Calgary_stabbing https://nypost.com/2020/11/03/quebec-police-release-new-details-in-deadly-halloween-attacks/ https://nypost.com/2020/11/03/quebec-police-release-new-deta... https://www.the-sun.com/news/2445508/toronto-van-attack-incel-killer-guilty/ https://www.the-sun.com/news/2445508/toronto-van-attack-ince... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_London_Bridge_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_London_Bridge_attack
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
If 3D printed firearms made gun production so accessible, then why aren't we seeing a proliferation of gun usage in countries where gun controls and purchase requirements are much more strict than the USA? Is it just because those are stronger societies so people are more apt to follow the law even if it technically easy to break those laws? Backyard gun production has been something done in China for a couple of decades now, but you still see very little gun usage in that country where it is otherwise banned (backyard gun production is also a death penalty crime, so there are strong disincentives).
- notch656c 4y ago
  Other than the occasional mass genocide hardly anyone dies from guns in China! On the plus side, most modern day peace-time gun deaths being caused by suicide, the state will just execute you to save the danger of you having a gun to commit suicide with!
- nradov 4y ago
  We are seeing a proliferation of craft built firearms (some 3D printed) in Myanmar. Gun controls and purchase requirements are very strict there, but it's somewhat of a failed state with ongoing insurgencies. You can find plenty of videos of those weapons online; quality looks close to low-end factory products. I predict we'll see the same thing happen in China in about a decade when Xi Jinping dies and the central government starts to lose control over the southern regions. There was a already a lot of local workshop firearms manufacturing in China during the Warlord Era before the Communist Party consolidated control over the mainland so history may repeat itself.
yellowapple 4y ago
> Now my opinion is that maybe it should be the last step, after addressing the causes of gun death (suicide and the drug war are at the top of the list). But at that point, if we'd actually fixed those problems, I wonder if there would be much of a pressing need to get rid of guns at all. I've given myself plenty a sore throat stating and restating this exact point over the years. Even waving a magic wand that magically erases the very concept of a firearm from existence would do precisely nothing to address the underlying causes of violence and suicide - and actually addressing said underlying causes would be far more effective in reducing (if not outright eliminating) said violence and suicide (not to mention the myriad other societal benefits!) than said gun-erasing magic wand (let alone any less-stringent form of gun control). Unfortunately, said underlying causes - in particular, socioeconomic inequality and mental healthcare inaccessibility - are notoriously difficult to address without pissing off the people largely in control of the world's governments/economies/societies. Said people also happen to not like it when their serfs have the means to fight back against that control - and therefore have a vested interest in convincing us serfs to demand our own disarmament instead of demanding they pay their fair share toward actual solutions. (In case anyone thinks I'm being too coy: yes, I'm referring to the ownership class - i.e. the beneficiaries of capitalism, i.e. the ones who subsist primarily/entirely on the profits skimmed from the rest of our labor. You don't have to be a full-blown Marxist or whatever to understand the age-old adages of "money is power" and "power corrupts".)
- kaba0 4y ago
  Is gangs shooting each other, (usually family) homicides and school shootings not big enough problems? Because we have plenty of countries with similar social problems, yet they have much much lower deaths per capita, so it is safe to conclude that guns are a problem. (Nonetheless, I won’t pretend to know a solution, the car is out of the bag and the US is not easily fixable. But stricter gun control is definitely a good way ahead)
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > Is gangs shooting each other, (usually family) homicides and school shootings not big enough problems? They are symptoms. People don't join gangs or shoot up schools for the hell of it. They do those things because either their material conditions drove them to that point or they failed to receive the mental help they needed before it was too late (respectively). > Because we have plenty of countries with similar social problems, yet they have much much lower deaths per capita The ones with lower deaths per capita also typically have lower degrees/magnitudes of said social problems. The correlation is with socioeconomic stability and equality, not with any particular tool. That is: > it is safe to conclude that guns are a problem No, that ain't a safe conclusion, and does not logically follow. If that was a safe conclusion, then countries like South Africa - with far stricter gun laws and far fewer guns per person - would have lower homicide rates, and that is rather evidently not the case.
incomingpain 4y ago
Prohibition = Black Market without elimination. Trudeau got rid of cannabis prohibition because the black market simply ran through the Canada Post. Gun control has an end goal of "If we banned guns worldwide, the supply would eventually dry up." But this is entirely unrealistic. Regardless of gun control this will never change anything like the number of homicides. All the recent shootings in Toronto were from guns which were never legal in Canada. Even in the USA with right to bear arms. It's really 50,000 suicides out of 300,000,000 population consisting of the vast majority of gun crime. Trying to help prevent suicides by gun control is ridiculously bad policy to ignore suicides.

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

Absolutely. The people buying illicit weapons need the means and motivation to do it, both of which stem from the black market for drugs.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

Even if you solved that, you'd still have problems with knives (you can't outlaw kitchen knives), homemade explosives, sticks, screwdrivers, acid, etc. Mental health, crime, and drugs (also, again crime related to those), and you've solved most of the problems. Just legalizing some drugs would probably solve more than half of the issues in some places.

closewith 4y ago
Watching Americans try to justify gun culture and why it isn't the real problem is always baffling to me. I do wonder if you're expressing genuinely held beliefs or if your head is wilfully in the sand.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  Lol watching non-Americans and their Stockholm syndrome about their governments taking their rights away is always amusing to me. If you don't have a gun you're not a citizen, you're a subject.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  The irony of your "head is willfully in the sand" remark in the context of an ever-widening hole in the effectiveness of gun control is thick enough to spread on toast. "Gun culture" (whatever that actually means) is not the problem. The fact that the US is the least-developed of the "developed" world is the problem. The fact American income disparity and mental health are both deteriorating at a rapid pace is the problem. People kill each other (or, more commonly, themselves) here in the US - with or without guns - because they're broke, stressed the fuck out, and so desperate for any semblance of relief that they're driven to either put themselves out of the misery our capitalist system has thrust upon them or else lash out at the rest of the very society disenfranchising them.
Gwypaas 4y ago
Fitting right in with Nicaragua and Zimbabwe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
VikingCoder 4y ago
Have you looked into the statistics of how many people succeed in suicide, world-wide, from knives, homemade explosives, sticks, screwdrivers, vs. how many succeed in suicide from firearms? I mean, have you? If you haven't, then why would you bring them up as "problems"? Or are you just spit-balling?
- kobalsky 4y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm not from the US. I don't understand this importance of that metric. The US has a high suicide rate but there are EU contries with a much lower guns per capita that have similar suicide rate. Sweden has a rate of 12.4 vs 14.5 suicides in the US per 100k people [1], yet the guns-per-100-persons in Sweden is 23.1 vs 120.5 in the US [2]. An undeducated glance of the numbers shows that people tend to hang themselves when guns are not readily available like in the US [3]. How much do you think suicide will drop in the US if you removed all weapons overnight? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2649482/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2649482/
  - VikingCoder 4y ago
    You haven't answered my question. What is the suicide rate from knives? You specifically brought up knives as a "problem." Your word. What is the suicide rate from homemade explosives? Sticks? Screwdrivers? You brought those up as "problems." The evidence I have seen makes me believe that suicide in otherwise healthy individuals seems to be a fleeting goal. It's not as though someone becomes set upon their decision, and continues attempting it until they succeed, for the vast majority of people. Thus, when someone has the temporary motive of suicide, and they have a firearm available, they tend to succeed. When they have a temporary motive of suicide, but they don't have a firearm available, they succeed less often. I get that the burden would be on me to argue that perspective with evidence, and I'm not going to be able to provide it any time soon, and I apologize for that. But since you brought up the "problems" of knives, homemade explosives, sticks, and screwdrivers, again, I have to ask - do you have any evidence that those are worth being described as "problems"?
bayesian_horse 4y ago
It's much harder to kill people with a knife than with a gun. In the US, mass shooters have killed a dozen or more victims in a minute or two. Very hard to achieve with anything else short of explosives.
- lazide 4y ago
  Good thing no one ever uses IEDs then…..
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    As I said, short of "explosives" which IEDs need. And yes, IEDs are rarer than gun shootings pretty much everywhere, because explosives are a lot better restricted, even in the otherwise completely insane US. I guess some control works??
    - lazide 4y ago
      There are explosives, as in actual regulated explosives, and then there are IEDs, which can use anything from repurposed old artillery shells, to stolen construction explosives, to mixed kitchen chemicals and fertilizer. IEDs are not rarer than shootings because of controls, most likely. A Timothy McVeigh style attack is still very doable with off the shelf stuff. Explosives were never okay in Iraq either, post-Saddam (or guns, for that matter). It didn’t stop IEDs being the #1 threat. Same with Ireland during ‘the troubles’. Guns are direct in application, limited in impact, and expose the wielder to direct harm. Explosives, don’t. Explosives do require a degree of planning that a gun doesn’t though. And tend to be clearly ‘terrorist’/‘terrible’ in nature. The crazy just hasn’t been bottled up enough for it to get there in the US. Yet, anyway.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  Look up vehicle ramming attacks. Easy to commit, hard to prevent, very effective from the mass murderer's perspective. For example, in 2016, an attack with a truck killed 86 people and wounded 458 in Nice. You can't stop people from mass murder if they have their mind set on it. The best prevention would be figure out why they want to kill and solve the underlying issue, but that's too hard I guess. Strategies like "ban X" are an admission that we're not interested in root causes. Instead we pretend that removing the instruments or making the penalties worse will work. Predictably, all that will happen is people who want to commit mass murder will find other ways to do it.
throw0101c 4y ago
> Mental health, crime, and drugs (also, again crime related to those), and you've solved most of the problems. ¿Por qué no los dos? At the very least having a filter so that not just any rando can walk around packing heat would probably be helpful: * https://www.autoblog.com/2022/01/31/florida-man-road-rage-shoots-out-windows-video/ https://www.autoblog.com/2022/01/31/florida-man-road-rage-sh... If you want it at home for whatever reason, have fun. Though some safe storage laws may be a good idea (and strong liability): * https://www.cbsnews.com/news/first-grader-allegedly-shot-teacher-virginia-expert-what-could-be-next/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/first-grader-allegedly-shot-tea...
- allanmacgregor 4y ago
  Canada has already the filters for legal gun owners; we are not the states the amount of hoops that legal gun owners have to go through. Anyone that owns a restricted firearm; like handguns or rifles under certain length is added to a database and their name is daily checked for felonies, domestic abuse, etc. In order to get a permit, you have to get sign of your spouse or if you are under 2 years divorced from the previous partner. Mandatory training and course certification is part of it. We don't have open carry here. Restricted can only be used on ranges. We have transport permits; etc etc etc 80% or more or guns used in violent crime are illegal and coming from the US border. Why? Harder to trace, don't any of the magazine or automatic restrictions that there are in Canada.
incomingpain 4y ago
>Even if you solved that, you'd still have problems with knives (you can't outlaw kitchen knives), There are many pictures with labels in the uk saying you have to be over 18 to buy plastic utensils, because there's a knife. This is why the UK had more homicides after banning firearms. Homicides up, gun related homicides down. Turns out, you have some gangster shoot up a place. They land perhaps a couple shots and run off. The victim is rushed to hospital where they are saved. Chef knife victim on the otherhand will die. So the politicians who banned guns in the UK are morally responsible for more deaths occurring. They could have addressed the actual reason the homicides were occurring but failed to do so.

downrightmike 4y ago

Unfortunately, Mental illness is largely not the cause of gun violence like the media says it is, the issue is that there are so many guns out there that are so easy to get a hand on by anyone, that gun violence is so bad. And since JFK got rid of sanatoriums and expected the private companies to pick up the slack, 60 years ago, there will never be enough care as proven by the lack of care today. Sorry, we don't, nor will we ever, prioritize it enough to have any meaningful impact on gun violence. You take the weapons out of reach of people who would use them to do harm to others _first_, and only then can we make any progress on the issues. But too many companies and unscrupulous people are out there and they actively block and write legislation to make gun violence a certainty. Bad advertising and death is still good advertising to these people. As for 3D printed guns, we have a whole ATF bureau that should be on this just like they are on the illegal fully auto gun mods.

maxwell 4y ago
Unconstitutional. We keep a gun behind every blade of grass for a reason.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ruined 4y ago
3d printed guns are as difficult to control as media piracy, which is to say, it's impossible.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  Not true. A 3d printed gun won't do you any good unless you at least test it and probably not until you carry it around outside your home. Plenty of chances to get caught with an illegal firearm. Between firearms being easier to detect than pirated media and police being a lot more motivated to go after them, 3D printed guns are quite controllable...
  - 4y ago

devwastaken 4y ago

Tried to illegalize alcohol - failed. Tried to illegalize drugs - failed Trying to illegalize guns - failing. Today's progressives are tomorrow's conservatives. Yesterday's progressives wanted drugs to never be spoken of or taught. Today's progressives never want guns to be spoken of or taught. Everyone thinks they're special and more moral, but they're just the same human condition.

bayesian_horse 4y ago
Gun control works quite well in all civilized countries. With remarkably better results than in the US... Gun control even worked in the US until some people redefined the 2nd amendment and drank the NRA koolaid.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  It did? So gun violence was lower in the 1990s/2000s than it was after the Heller decision?
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    In so far as it was tried. The assault rifle ban had some positive impact, its revocation certainly made school shootings more deadly. There is a long history of gun control in the US actually. The 2nd amendment originally was only meant for well regulated militias to carry simple rifles. Not for disgruntled white males to dismember school children.
    - dazilcher 4y ago
      > The 2nd amendment originally was only meant for well regulated militias to carry simple rifles That is your opinion, and it is very wrong.
      - bayesian_horse 4y ago
        It's the literal text of the amendment. And the opinion of most historic and legal scholars.

bayesian_horse 4y ago

It's totally possible to control 3D-printed guns. Perfectly? Maybe not. But it helps if guns are illegal, so police can stop people who go around carrying them. The way of manufacturing the gun really doesn't matter. Tons of "legal" guns get stolen, misplaced or sold illegally. Gun control is much more about restricting access as much as possible and making it hard for people to have an opportunity to use a gun. If you can just carry one around casually in your every day life, there are just too many opportunities for something to go badly.

908B64B197 4y ago

> Now my opinion is that maybe it should be the last step, after addressing the causes of gun death (suicide and the drug war are at the top of the list). That, unlike gun regulation, would actually save lives. Keep in mind The US has a much lower suicide rate than South Korea, despite South Korea having extremely strict gun control, for instance. In countries where guns are unavailable, people simply resort to other means. But their casualties aren't aggregated under the "firearm death" column. To me, gun control is about political gains. Not saving lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shafia_family_murders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shafia_family_murders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London,_Ontario_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London,_Ontario_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Calgary_stabbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Calgary_stabbing https://nypost.com/2020/11/03/quebec-police-release-new-details-in-deadly-halloween-attacks/ https://nypost.com/2020/11/03/quebec-police-release-new-deta... https://www.the-sun.com/news/2445508/toronto-van-attack-incel-killer-guilty/ https://www.the-sun.com/news/2445508/toronto-van-attack-ince... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_London_Bridge_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_London_Bridge_attack

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

If 3D printed firearms made gun production so accessible, then why aren't we seeing a proliferation of gun usage in countries where gun controls and purchase requirements are much more strict than the USA? Is it just because those are stronger societies so people are more apt to follow the law even if it technically easy to break those laws? Backyard gun production has been something done in China for a couple of decades now, but you still see very little gun usage in that country where it is otherwise banned (backyard gun production is also a death penalty crime, so there are strong disincentives).

notch656c 4y ago
Other than the occasional mass genocide hardly anyone dies from guns in China! On the plus side, most modern day peace-time gun deaths being caused by suicide, the state will just execute you to save the danger of you having a gun to commit suicide with!
nradov 4y ago
We are seeing a proliferation of craft built firearms (some 3D printed) in Myanmar. Gun controls and purchase requirements are very strict there, but it's somewhat of a failed state with ongoing insurgencies. You can find plenty of videos of those weapons online; quality looks close to low-end factory products. I predict we'll see the same thing happen in China in about a decade when Xi Jinping dies and the central government starts to lose control over the southern regions. There was a already a lot of local workshop firearms manufacturing in China during the Warlord Era before the Communist Party consolidated control over the mainland so history may repeat itself.

yellowapple 4y ago

> Now my opinion is that maybe it should be the last step, after addressing the causes of gun death (suicide and the drug war are at the top of the list). But at that point, if we'd actually fixed those problems, I wonder if there would be much of a pressing need to get rid of guns at all. I've given myself plenty a sore throat stating and restating this exact point over the years. Even waving a magic wand that magically erases the very concept of a firearm from existence would do precisely nothing to address the underlying causes of violence and suicide - and actually addressing said underlying causes would be far more effective in reducing (if not outright eliminating) said violence and suicide (not to mention the myriad other societal benefits!) than said gun-erasing magic wand (let alone any less-stringent form of gun control). Unfortunately, said underlying causes - in particular, socioeconomic inequality and mental healthcare inaccessibility - are notoriously difficult to address without pissing off the people largely in control of the world's governments/economies/societies. Said people also happen to not like it when their serfs have the means to fight back against that control - and therefore have a vested interest in convincing us serfs to demand our own disarmament instead of demanding they pay their fair share toward actual solutions. (In case anyone thinks I'm being too coy: yes, I'm referring to the ownership class - i.e. the beneficiaries of capitalism, i.e. the ones who subsist primarily/entirely on the profits skimmed from the rest of our labor. You don't have to be a full-blown Marxist or whatever to understand the age-old adages of "money is power" and "power corrupts".)

kaba0 4y ago
Is gangs shooting each other, (usually family) homicides and school shootings not big enough problems? Because we have plenty of countries with similar social problems, yet they have much much lower deaths per capita, so it is safe to conclude that guns are a problem. (Nonetheless, I won’t pretend to know a solution, the car is out of the bag and the US is not easily fixable. But stricter gun control is definitely a good way ahead)
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > Is gangs shooting each other, (usually family) homicides and school shootings not big enough problems? They are symptoms. People don't join gangs or shoot up schools for the hell of it. They do those things because either their material conditions drove them to that point or they failed to receive the mental help they needed before it was too late (respectively). > Because we have plenty of countries with similar social problems, yet they have much much lower deaths per capita The ones with lower deaths per capita also typically have lower degrees/magnitudes of said social problems. The correlation is with socioeconomic stability and equality, not with any particular tool. That is: > it is safe to conclude that guns are a problem No, that ain't a safe conclusion, and does not logically follow. If that was a safe conclusion, then countries like South Africa - with far stricter gun laws and far fewer guns per person - would have lower homicide rates, and that is rather evidently not the case.

incomingpain 4y ago

Prohibition = Black Market without elimination. Trudeau got rid of cannabis prohibition because the black market simply ran through the Canada Post. Gun control has an end goal of "If we banned guns worldwide, the supply would eventually dry up." But this is entirely unrealistic. Regardless of gun control this will never change anything like the number of homicides. All the recent shootings in Toronto were from guns which were never legal in Canada. Even in the USA with right to bear arms. It's really 50,000 suicides out of 300,000,000 population consisting of the vast majority of gun crime. Trying to help prevent suicides by gun control is ridiculously bad policy to ignore suicides.