3D-Printing Guns: Future or Failure?
Taylor Deaton, Assistant editor
Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com
The views and opinions expressed on in this article are solely those of the original author. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Vision NGU or North Greenville University.
Gun control is a controversially debated topic in America, and with the newest idea of 3D-printing guns being added into the mix, opinions are being thrown around in public.
The public was first made aware of 3D-printed guns by Cody Wilson, a gun-rights activist who founded Defense Distributed, a non-profit organization based in Texas. Wilson created the first code detailing how to produce a handgun through use of a 3D-printer. The website Wilson created to share the details on how to develop these guns, defcad.com, has since been shut down by a federal judge.
Wilson’s code was originally taken down after being downloaded over 100,000 times in 2013. When Wilson began talk of reposting the code for his handgun onto his website, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik stopped Wilson from publishing this code online with a restraining order against the State Department. In the following days, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal issued a cease and desist order against Wilson, and Los Angeles City Attorney Michael Feuer issued a statement trying to block the release of codes enabling the production of 3D-printed guns.
As of right now, the Defense Distributed website features a message on the homepage which reads, “Defense Distributed, after legally committing its files to the public domain through a license from the U.S. Department of State, has been ordered to shut down its DEFCAD file repository by a federal judge in the Western District of Washington.”
Despite the fact that Wilson’s codes are currently being blocked, the battle is still on-going, and the fight between the safety of the public and Wilson’s First Amendment rights are currently being debated.
There are different views on whether Wilson should be allowed to publish his codes for 3D-printing guns or not, and the selling of 3D-printing gun codes is a prevalent topic of discussion.
Josh Byram, a marketing major at North Greenville University, believes that the topic of gun control is a difficult topic because “the founding fathers didn’t necessarily go into too much detail in the Second Amendment, so the debate can get a little confusing on what is constitutional or not.”
In reference to the production of 3D-printed guns, Byram remarked that people have been making their own guns for years using various different metals, so he doesn’t know where to draw the line right now between our individual freedoms and a gun restriction.
“I think there should be some regulations enforced for the safety of people.” Byram said. “There are some basic things we can all agree on, whether that is a universal background check or even more security in public places.”
When speaking of gun control, Byram says, “We cannot let the government restrict our Second Amendment right so much that we effectively lose it all together,” and “There is a fine line between taking the necessary measures to protect people and restricting people from buying, selling, and using guns.”
NGU student Abigail Hansen, psychology major, says that “printing 3D guns is like giving a knife to a five-year-old child; it is just plain carelessness.”
Hansen take on gun control is that “We don’t need any more gun control than we already [have] because it doesn’t seem to be benefitting us at all.”
“No matter how tight the gun control laws get the gun violence just gets worse,” she remarked.
