i.e. buying a 3D printer plus material and sending a blueprint file to it is an order of magnitude simpler than acquiring and learning to use a milling machine.
But it's not hard for the terrorist to make a single-use gun now. You could probably make a pretty lethal and reliable single-use gun from $20 dollars in parts from your local hardware store.
What? I'm finding it hard to believe that an odd-looking 3d-printed single-use gun would be useful to terrorists (or criminals in general, actually). What you need as a mugger, for example, is a recognizable threat. The gun doesn't necessarily need to work but it does need to look like a gun. Terrorists have it even worse, as they're generally looking to threaten a whole lobby full of people; what they're waving around had better look really automatic. And had probably better work. I can't imagine that a single-shot weapon that looked unrecognizable would suit their needs.
A single-shot gun might be useful to a murderer, but hardly an ideal choice (what if you miss)? And it might be useful in a self-defense scenario, but the same caveat applies.
In fact, they actually make single-shot guns. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derringer) And they aren't used by terrorists! They're used by pirates in movies. And in real life, generally, women carry them in purses.
Which, to come full circle, means I would support the availability of 3D-printed guns, since I perceive the most likely use would be in a self-defense scenario as a "well, it's better than nothing" option.
It's very unlikely that it will be possible to make a safe, practical, reusable gun from a 3D printer in the foreseeable future.
I'm sorry if I came off as aggressive in my criticism. It just struck me as silly that terrorists -- you know, the guys that buy military hardware from shady international arms dealers and have their own supply and manufacturing chains for explosives -- would be significantly enabled by crappy 3D-printed handguns.
My second point was an attempt to point out that it's probably cheaper and easier to create a single-use weapon now without the use of the 3D printer.
How do you figure that?
They should - anybody trying something out of the AC is likely to kill themselves in the process:
But surely there is a range of things a terrorist could print that we couldn't even begin to conceive of right now, things that would enable terrorism to be carried out more efficiently, covertly, or what have you. But then again, those same things could probably be constructed out of analogous parts from a hardware store anyways, similar to how anyone with access to a machine shop could fabricate their own firearms - so maybe it's not as dire an issue as it sounds.
>...patent holder Intellectual Ventures, has managed to get an expansive patent on 3D printing DRM.
What exactly does that mean? IV has patented a method for performing DRM on printed objects? That is a long way from mandating DRM on all objects. The 3D printing community, and open source hardware community in general has been preparing for this. The Institute for Emerging Innovation at Public Knowledge is an organization at DC that is helping to increase awareness of 3D printing openness and is working with congress people to make sure things like 3D printing DRM cannot happen. Unlike the P2P file sharing fight, we are ready for this one.
Also a quick note about guns since this article, and many about 3D printing now mention it. Yes, there is a group of people working on building 3D printed guns. However, to call this violent and providing new access is baseless and borderline ignorant. People have been able to make real, un regulated weapons out of actual metal for a long time. It's called a CNC mill and they have been around for a lot longer than 3D printers. A friend of mine goes to a trade school where you learn how to work on CNC mills and the first project he ever did was to build a working .45. People being able to build guns is nothing new, and anybody that thinks a plastic gun is going to be so much worse is just fear mongering.