idiotic you bet, as are the first two comments to the 3D pistol print non-threat
I agree completely. After 30 YEARS of development no one has even come close to using a printer type technology to make high strength, high temperature materials sufficient to sustain even a poor ball bearing or a gun barrel.
Never say never, but do say WHY. Why with perfectly good systems for machining high grade materials like steel, scandium-aluminum, titanium, ceramics and other materials all capable of making high performance weapons would any but the brain dead waste a lifetime trying to make a rabbit into bear.
So we are left with the likelihood that these little minds are afraid of real and suitable material.
Now for the first two comments:
EddieD says they just started WRONG! Apparently he just heard about it. Over 30 year history this isn't the first try to make a high force bearing, close tolerance object. They are a long ways away from achieving that goal.
Next up is JDX who thinks that a machine like the 3D printer with an accuracy and resolution of (at best) .003 inch can match a simple lathe bored and threaded (which is what rifling is) steel tube easily accurate to better then .001 (such accuracy has been available everywhere in the world for centuries).
And in a final act of ignorance this fellow JDX states that a 3D printer will be building up the ultimate high strength material diamond! Perhaps he means diamond in a thermoplastic matrix- essentially worthless for this purpose or he means a contiguous diamond structure. Diamond can be grown to conform to any shape at 900 C the temperature of molten lava. JDX please hold your breath until these miracles arrive.
I'll leave the other idiot comments to rational and knowledgeable folk.
Finally like many English and Aussies with little regard for the USA's Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights, the basic desire to obtain and hold weapons for all freemen seems unreasonable. The author of this piece tells us that weapons will be easily confiscated. He fails to understand that when doing improper acts the police and military are subject to the justice of the people and are as likely to revolt against tyranny as obey their leaders.
As long as we see visual and aural proof on CNN (in Boston recently) that squads of police armed with machine guns can freely move through a major city and begin firing in peaceful neighborhoods with out regard to public safety even though no fire of any kind was directed to them. The police chief lied about the action for days.
We saw for ourselves that over reaction and improper acts by government are very possible in our society.