Re: Why bother with 3D printing
Try to imagine a society, where for every 50,000 people there are a few who hold illegal weapons. Most of these weapons are ones that were not handed in during an amnesty or are "deactivated" guns that can be re-activated. A much smaller number are illegally imported guns. Anyone who has one of these knows that if they use it, the Police will put all their effort into tracking them down. Once they are arrested, the courts will come down on them like a ton of bricks and they will spend a considerable amount of time in the big house. On top of these few people who use illegal weapons, there are another small percentage who legally hold weapons (farmers who need a shotgun for vermin control, feral pig hunter, etc). They have to go through a stringent check to get their license and it has to be renewed annually. Their license has a lot of measures to ensure they store and use their weapons correctly (in a gun safe, ammunition stored separately) and the Police have the right to randomly inspect that they follow these measures. The vast bulk of the rest of the population (90%+) have no need for firearms, or any real desire to own them. When Police stop someone, they are extremely unlikely to be armed, so they will treat them accordingly.
Now imagine another society, where in the same 50,000 people, half of them are probably armed. Some legally, some not. The legally armed pass paper thin background checks, assuming they need to do any checks at all. Where the illegally armed will use their weapons with little regard for the consequences as the Police are stretched so thin with other weapons offences they are unlikely to be caught. Where the Police are likely to assume that anyone they stop is armed so are much more likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
Which do you think has daily shootings and which has almost no gun violence whatsoever? Which would you rather live in?
The NRA keep insisting that the answer to gun violence is more guns. "Arm the teachers, Arm the traffic wardens, fuck it, just arm everyone!". Yet, as the number of guns increases, the number of shootings keeps going up. It is almost as if the number of guns in society has some sort of strange correlation to the number of gun related deaths. Who would have thought!
