This animation didn't go so well. Besides the obvious lighting glitches, I made a severe blunder which makes this scene almost incomprehensible. There is supposed to be an energy beam leading from the glowing green jewel thingy to the funky headgear being worn by the mooner priestess. When our thieving protagonist snatches the artifact, he breaks the beam, which causes the priestess' head to explode. Without that visual indicator that the priestess is mentally linked to the device, it's not quite so easy to figure out what happened and why. Sorry bout dat. I'd go back and fix it, but that would take a lot of doing… so I won't.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
It just keeps going from bad to worse. With the captain out of the fight, it's now up to poor Avram to stop the hijackers' nefarious plan. Is he up to it? Probably not, but even so, it'll be fun watching him fail. In the meantime, we'll be swinging back to the control room as Panzer initiates the last phase of the mooners' plot. Hopefully, Benny and her crew can figure out what's going on before it's too late.
3d printed guns have been in the news a lot lately, with Defense Distributed gearing up to release blueprints for 3d printed guns to the general public. When that happens, anyone with access to a 3d printer who pays to download their blueprints can print a fully functioning firearm, without going through any kind of background checks. So, is this something we need to be worried about?
I don't think so. This is not new technology, though this seems to be the first time it's been done in such a highly publicized manner. I've personally seen plenty of blueprints online for 3d printable firearms going back many years. The so-called Liberator pistol being marketed by Defense Distributed is not all that impressive; it's a single shot small caliber snubnose that looks like a toy.
While this may be a bigger deal overseas, I don't see a lot criminals in the U.S. using these Lego guns to commit crimes. The main reason criminals use guns to commit crimes is actually not because they want to shoot people, but because they want to intimidate them. The Liberator is not intimidating at all, and many potential victims won't even believe it's a real gun. Given that there are already plenty of real guns out on the black market, that actually hold more than one bullet, most criminals in this country will probably just go that route. 3D guns are less robust and less reliable than a typical milled metal firearm; the only reason I can see a criminal choosing to use one is because they're relatively cheap to produce. The printing cost of a typical 3D gun is about $12.
But of course, the Liberator is only the tip of an enormous iceberg. 3d printed AR-15 lower receivers have been around for a long time. Those of you who are not “gun people” may be wondering what a lower receiver is. The answer to that question ties in with a more important question:
What is a firearm?
When you hear that the federal government requires a background check to purchase a firearm… that doesn't apply to every component of a firearm. You don't need a background check to purchase a gun barrel, or a grip, or a handguard. It's only certain parts of the device which are regulated. For an AR-15, the only part you can't buy without a background check is the lower receiver, which is where the trigger and stock and upper receiver attach.
So yes, you can 3d print that one part of an AR-15 and then just order all the rest of the rifle online and slap together a functioning AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. It won't last like a metal lower receiver, but it'll do in a pinch. Of course, there are plenty of other ways to make a working lower which don't involve 3D printing, and there are also very expensive 3D printers which can mill one out of metal for you… but if you can afford that, you can afford to just buy one.
The point I was trying to get at, is that the ability for people to make firearms at home is nothing new. 3D printed guns are the latest technology for achieving this, but even that's been around for a while now. And we've had the ability to make much more effective weapons than the Liberator for a very long time. So there's no reason to panic about some company selling blueprints for a goofy looking single shot Lego gun.
As time goes on, 3D printing technology will become more capable and less expensive, and more people will have 3D printers in their homes and workplaces. We will eventually live in a world where anyone at any time can print a deadly weapon on demand with the push of a button. This is something I've been telling people for over ten years now. The idea that we can make our society safer by legislating away people's access to firearms is delusional. It always has been, and it will only become moreso as technology marches on. I don't necessarily know what the solution is, as far as how we're supposed to adapt, but we need to get smarter about how we address these issues as a society.
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