Supporters of the bill say it's necessary to thwart convicted felons who use 3D printers to develop untraceable "ghost guns."
I understand the intent, but feel that there are so many other loopholes that put much worse weapons on the street than a printer. Besides, my prints can barely sustain normal use, much less a bullet being fired from them. I would think that this is more of a risk to the person holding the gun than who it's pointing at.
I think some people would say the ability to print a gun is more deadly then a knife.
But I kind of agree with you.
If we start licensing people to own stuff that has the potential to do harm, then eventually you are going to run into a never ending list of household items and laws of natural physics:
Of course they do, but the serialized part that is run through NICs is printable, the rest you can order online or get at home depot.
Of course plastic, extruded or otherwise, is less strong than metal. That wasn't the question. You can get a good few thousand rounds out of those before they crack and when they do, they crack along a layer and are not "more dangerous for the user" by any stretch of the imagination.
The understandable difference being that a gun has but one purpose: Kill people.
Whereas everything else I have mentioned, including 3d printers are multi-purpose. Not intended to kill, but to serve multiple roles.
Though, it is a good point that few devices could be cobbled together to make infinite guns so long as you had material. So I am not saying it isn't a class of it's own, just where does the logic end with that point?
Is it only legal for a company to print guns? How does a license alone protect people? I don't think that is something I could answer.
It doesn't start before guns, with things like high explosives, despite them being arguably "arms" and inarguably more useful in a tyrant-overthrowing war.
And it doesn't start after guns with knives and all the other things you're sure they're going to take, even though they could have taken them at any point in the past 20 years.
Nope, the slippery slope starts exactly at the point it cuts into the profits of the gun lobby and the convenience of reactionaries, the moment they "grab guns" by introducing things like "licenses issued at the completion of a background check, safety and operation test and demonstrated ability to store safely".
The pro-gun community sure hit the jackpot there.
Edit: Oh also, it was the modified rifle that was considered a "machine gun", or the specific device made from a shoelace designed to convert it to full auto. This is so fuckwits can't circumvent laws against fully automatic weapons, carrying and selling devices to illegally modify the weapon and then claiming "but its not on the gun so it doesn't count!".
That entire linked blog post could be completely undermined by adding the word "part" to the initial letter.
People dismiss the slippery slope as a logical fallacy, but I think that's a mistake. If there are enough people fighting for whatever is at the bottom of the slope, I think it's a valid argument. Was repealing Roe the end of the abortion rights debate?
They dismiss it because it's bullshit. Every stop on the slope is not inevitable.
In this particular case, why is the pro-gun community able to prevent changes to gun laws -- despite those laws being deeply flawed and with only a minority of Americans supporting them -- but somehow unable to prevent the floodgates after that?
The response the gun lobby wants to hear is "they gubbermint won't do it because they're scared we'll shoot them!" but it's pure bravado. Grossly negligent gun laws haven't prevented the American government from doing things to its citizens that would make China blush and the pro-gun crowd didn't even change their vote, let alone sacrifice their lives to prevent it.
Because everything is a bullshit slippery slope to them. "Oh you want to get rid of the second amendment? What's next? The first amendment? The fourth?"
Nope. Just the second. It's repealing an amendment, not dabbling with heroin. They're not going to say "oh why not, maybe one more".
Making the "responsible" part of "responsible gun owner" mandatory is not going to cause the collapse of civilisation.