I like the lateral thinking on display here. From what I've seen the most successful adopters of the new wave of fabrication technologies are adept at solving p

I like the lateral thinking on display here. From what I've seen the most successful adopters of the new wave of fabrication technologies are adept at solving problems by looking at them in a way that is "upside-down and backwards" compared to how most people would. The fact that these bullet casings are milled out of steel rods isn't that big of a deal, if you have the right CNC mill you could automate that too. Despite the antics of defense distributed I don't think printed guns are that big of a deal in and of themselves, but the idea that someone could be creating untraceable weapons is the worrisome part. It wouldn't surprise me if the moral panic over custom fabricated guns were used to build support for DRM requirements on mainstream printers. But the push for controlling fabrication technologies is going to come from established economic interests wanting to keep extracting rents from the rest of us, regardless of the fact that the realities that created their business models have changed in fundamental ways. And just wait until molecular fabrication technologies become cheap enough that average people can generate any molecule they choose just by picking it from a catalog. That's when the sewage overflow will really intersect with the turboprop intake.