Quote:
Originally Posted by zeek
Great argument, bro. Why did Moses bother bringing the 10 commandments down the mountain? Those laws didn't stop murder or the other nine crimes on the tablets. By your reasoning God was just wasting our precious time by listing laws that were not enforceable. If children kill themselves or blow their hands off with defective 3-D plastic guns, that's their problem. Nothing society can do about it. You have come up with many, sometimes far-fetched ideas to solve all kinds of other problems on this forum. But, on this issue, you acquiesce helplessly . I wonder why?
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No one has convinced me it is an issue, that is why. If someone wants to sell the plastic gun then by all means we can have regulations to make sure it isn't going to blow up in your hand. But we sell all kinds of dangerous things, even things that do blow up in your hand (ask Pierre Paul on the Giants). A pdf file on the internet that gives instructions to a 3d printer is not one of them. When I look at these plastic guns they look stupid. They are bulky (so harder to hide). Don't work as well, cost thousands of dollars (when the cost of the printer is factored in) which is much, much more than a far more effective gun. They will almost certainly last far less than a typical metal gun, and probably jam and deform much easier. To my knowledge they don't have rifling so they are far less accurate. Like I said, you can make a zip gun for less than $100 which would work every bit as well as one of these. Also, they are not able to be snuck past a metal detector because you still need metal bullets and a metal firing pin. The idea that these are "ghost" guns is to me very disingenuous. If someone used a plastic gun made on a 3d printer I think it would be far easier to trace than any other gun (how many people have these printers? check the computer record, did they download the plans, did the printer print one of these). A zip gun is a real "ghost" gun and the US has no way to make them illegal. Therefore if I was the US govt I would prefer a criminal to use a 3d gun over a zip gun. So then is there any reason why a criminal would want one of these toy guns? I can't think why. How about an assassin or terrorist? Maybe the underwear bomber who had an IQ of 80, but can't think of anyone else.
On the flip side censoring the internet and searching everyones computers and flash drives seems an incredibly high price to pay to keep these out of the US, and even if you did that it wouldn't work.
And it is wrong to say that we cannot enforce laws against murder and theft.