On Monday, Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer said that if the President doesn’t act (on the 3D printing of guns) that Congress would be the ones to create a law, presumably to ban the guns.

Democrat Congressmen held a presser, a.k.a. scare meeting, to talk about the dangers of “ghost guns” and “undetectable firearms” that would be made possible by 3D printing. These Democrats continue to show their ignorance. Of course, it may also be willful manipulation.

A quick search of “undetectable firearms” came up with this: The Undetectable Firearms Act Of 1988. The legislation, which passed in 1988 without objection from the NRA, has been renewed several times – most recently in 2013 for a 10-year period. This overview is from Wikipedia:

“The general effect of this legislation is a ban on the manufacture, possession and transfer of firearms with less than 3.7 oz (105 g) of metal content. The bill also requires handguns to be in the traditional shape of a handgun. The Act excepts from its prohibitions the federal government and its agencies, and may offer a safe harbor for licensed manufactures testing to determine if their firearms meet the Act’s criteria.” Congress has been debating what to do about the 3D printing issue since 2014. My belief is that they do not understand the long-term ramifications of this new part of the digital age, that they are waiting for a landmark court decision, or both.

I personally do not like the thought of firing a high-pressure projectile through a plastic gun. I would not want to trust my life to a weapon that could break or melt upon firing. Our current law offers protection from undetectable firearms, but what do we do about the future? Most of the 3D guns that have been printed require a metal firing pin and many have metal barrels (metal makes them legal under our current law). In the not too distant future, however, that firing pin will be able to be printed from a thermodynamic plastic that is less prone to melting or breaking. Congress must be very careful with how they deal with this situation. They could go too far and ban all milling (3D printing is essentially a modern milling technique) of plastic or metal items, or they could not go far enough to create a law that can accommodate rapidly changing technology.