Re:The guy making it easy to 3D print yourself a real gun
by tjradcliffe on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @10:04PM
(#9188822)
He's almost like a performance artist, making manifest the potential of nascent technologies. It's perfectly true that anyone has been able to build a sort-of-OK firearm for a century or so out of stuff you can buy at a hardware store, but soon anyone will be able to 3D print (via laser sintering) a really effective firearm.
I'm not a big fan of American gun culture, but the reality is that we are headed toward a world where anyone will be able print a decent weapon, and nothing is going to hold back that tide because the economic advantages of 3D printing are too large even now to regulate it out of existence. Wilson's antics--and they really do look like antics to me--are forcing people to face that far earlier than they would have to do otherwise.
I'm not a big fan of American gun culture, but the reality is that we are headed toward a world where anyone will be able print a decent weapon, and nothing is going to hold back that tide because the economic advantages of 3D printing are too large even now to regulate it out of existence. Wilson's antics--and they really do look like antics to me--are forcing people to face that far earlier than they would have to do otherwise.