I don't often talk about it, but I'm a strong supporter of the second amendment. For that matter, I support all the amendments. What I don't believe, though, is that the government in some way has granted us those rights. I believe we are born to those rights, and the government has simply codified our liberties into law, preventing tyranny from holding sway.
But that's not what today's post is about. Today's post is about the hopelessness of the cause of those who naively believe either that they can somehow eliminate the 'gun problem' or those who are lashing out of fear and pain and making terminally stupid statements like 'your rights are not limitless.' Which, my former friend, of my rights would you limit? My right to life? to liberty, to the pursuit of happiness? I happen to feel strongly about my right to defend not only myself, but my family. And I am very, very aware that in the dead of night when peril falls on us, a cell phone is nearly useless to hold it off until police arrives (to use another stupid example a different former friend used to advocate for the limits he wanted to put on what guns I can own). All this aside: criminals will find a way to commit crimes. If not guns, they will use knives, bombs, baseball bats, hammers, their own fists... Pandora's box is flung wide open. Closing the lid isn't going to put all the pain back inside. Blindness to the nature of criminals and utter ignorance of criminology is no excuse for irrational panic about guns. I empathize with the fear and pain. I abhor the ignorance and inability to think logically about the issue.
But never forget that at the bottom of Pandora's box was one last thing. Hope. Closing the box only traps hope because the guns are not going back in. No matter how much you think it's not so, your feelings do not outweigh the facts. Feeling that it ought to be this way...
I'm digressing. One of the things that flew out of Pandora's gun safe when it was opened (by the Chinese, by the by, when they first developed black powder. Sorry, it's been so many centuries you can't possibly wipe that level of knowledge off the face of the earth) was the Liberator. The what? The 3D printed plans of a gun. Not even a gun. Just files that could be made into a gun by anyone with a 3D printer and a computer. Internet access to get the files, maybe, or maybe a thumbdrive delivered to someone in a country without freedom of internet and information. With only one metallic component - the firing pin, which is described in this paper about the forensics of detecting the use of a 3D printed gun as a metal nail. The remainder of the weapon is polymer. It's not easy to make, I gather. You need a stronger filament than normal, but that's not hard to find. You need really diligent quality control, which frankly most criminals aren't capable of. But it can be done. And given that we are turning libraries into Makerspaces with free access to 3D printers, you could even do it just for the cost of the filament. Maybe make some parts in one place, some in another, and assemble at home. I don't know. I don't plan to make one. But it's enough to know that it could be done readily.
Forensically speaking, the weapon leaves traces and it can be determined what was used by those traces, on the bullet, and debris from the friable barrel as the bullet was fired. Even if it's a single-shot weapon, which it sounds like it is, it's not big nor heavy. We could hark back to the days of dueling pistols which were carried in pairs so if one didn't fire, the other one probably would. Even if the gun misfired, the wound would still be significant - the paper describes a 'splinter' wound but 14 cm is a long way when you are measuring into the human body. I think it might be difficult to trace the fired bullet back to a specific weapon (which we can do with a traditional gun) as it also sounds like many of the Liberators they test fired couldn't be fired a second time. Disposable guns. The scientists conducting the study on the Liberator sound a bit surprised at their conclusions, but me? I think it was inevitable.
First, the experiments proved that it is possible to discharge a Liberator, though important damages are sometimes caused to the weapon itself. Secondly, the projectile can reach its target despite its lack of precision, causing wounds in line with those of fragments. As a third point, polymer fragments and pieces of the weapons are ejected in the environment when discharging a 3D-printed Liberator.
Pandora's gun is out there. We can brace ourselves against what we already know of crime and criminals, and stand ready to defend our homes against it. Or we can bury our heads in the sand and slam shut the nearly-empty box.