“A new gun scourge faces us – semiautomatic weapons made on 3D printers with exotic materials that are apparently effectively deadly, undetectable to metal detectors, and untraceable because they have no serial numbers.” Those aren’t the words of New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone, that’s the lede to a news report from WCBS New York. They report, they decide.
Anyway, the distinguished Congressman has a fix for this whole 3D guns kerfuffle:
“The State Department under President Trump reached a settlement with Defense Distributed, which publishes, or wants to publish the designs for people to create these 3D guns. So that means as of August 1, next week, people – they could actually hand out or, you know, give out the designs, and people could start doing this if they have a 3D machine, and as you say, it’s largely untraceable, and you know, they’re making them at home or in the business, and you know, no one’s going to know what they are,” Pallone said.
And that’s different than the current state of affairs with homemade guns…how, Congressman?
Someone could take one of the 3D-printed guns on a plane, and someone who wanted to do evil things would have an incentive to get the 3D printer and the instructions, Pallone said.
“I never doubt the ability of people that want to, you know, murder people or cause injury to find a way if it’s not traceable, frankly,” he said.
Yes, because firearms’ “traceability” has long been known to stop crimes before they’re actually committed.
This is just the latest blood-in-the-streets — and in the skies — hysteria as we get closer to Defense Distributed loosing their CAD files on the world. How does Rep. Palone see his proposed law working?
“I think we’re going to have to ban the design as well as the production of them, you know, on a machine. We might also have something about warnings, you know, that says that, you know, it’s illegal under federal law to use this machine for that purpose, so various things that we’re thinking up. But basically, it would be banned, yes,” he said.
He officially owes us a new keyboard. Will you tell him or or should we?