The Regulatory Review on regulating 3D-printed firearms

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Regulating Ghost Guns
3D-printed firearms—also known as “ghost guns”—pose unique threats to public safety, according to law enforcement agents. For instance, 3D printing allows individuals to procure a weapon by printing it at home even if they would not pass a background check. In addition, unlike firearms produced using traditional methods, a 3D-printed plastic gun may be difficult to track and could avoid setting off metal detectors, circumventing the federal Undetectable Firearms Act.
  • First Amendment questions about restricting schematics for 3D-printed guns can be avoided by using copyright law, R Street Institute’s Charles Duan argues in Lawfare. Because the plastic gun digital schematic receives a copyright, he posits that the government could take ownership of that copyright under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which allows the government to exercise its sovereign right to acquire private property for the public interest. Duan outlines a scheme where the government, or a nonprofit organization to which the government transfers the copyright, could then sue the creator of the 3D-printer gun schematics to prevent them from distributing their own design. “Whether or not the government can stop distribution of the schematic directly, it likely can do so using copyright without violating the First Amendment,” he claims. Duan cautions against this approach, however, acknowledging a government could turn copyright into a “general-purpose censorship tool.”
  • Regulations governing the traditional processes of manufacturing guns, or gunsmithing, are ill-suited to manage 3D printers, New York University School of Law’s James B. Jacobs and Winston and Strawn’s Alex Haberman argue. In an article published in Law and Contemporary Problems, Jacobs and Haberman point to four existing regulations that limit traditional gunsmithing but may be less effective at governing 3D-printer gunsmithing: metal detectors that control where one can carry a gun, background checks that restrict who can purchase a gun, serial numbers that trace a “gun’s first purchaser,” and laws that ban automatic-fire weapons. 3D-printer gunsmithing could undermine these restrictions by giving “firearms-ineligible individuals” the ability to make a gun at home, for example. Considering these regulatory shortcomings, Jacobs and Haberman advocate experimenting “with new regulatory controls” before 3D-printer gunsmithing simplifies and decentralizes gun manufacturing.

Re: The Regulatory Review on regulating 3D-printed firearms

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NegativeApproach wrote: Sun Oct 25, 2020 9:48 am "undetectable firearms" were also said to be a threat by law enforcement in the 80s and 90s...

Those guns (Glocks) where not "undetectable" and neither are these.

File under: "B" for Bullshit.
Agreed. This is more fodder to alienate gun owners and hinder gun ownership without addressing any underlying root cause of violence.
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"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

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