Orange Tips<\/p>\n
They called it the \u201creplicator\u201d on Star Trek.\u00a0 It was the device they went to for food and drink, and for spare parts for the ship.\u00a0It was a box in the wall, and all you had to do was say \u201cSaurian Brandy\u201d and a glass with the liquid appeared.\u00a0Mr. Scott was pleased.<\/p>\n
Back then it was in some distant future.\u00a0 Now you can buy one on Amazon, ranging in price from a couple hundred to several thousand dollars.\u00a0 3D printers that can \u201creplicate\u201d devices in a plastic form are here (though we haven\u2019t gotten to Saurian Brandy yet.)\u00a0 At first it was a \u201cmodel\u201d builder:\u00a0 turning two-dimensional architectural plans into full models.<\/p>\n
Like every item \u201cof the future\u201d it has both positives and negatives. \u00a0\u00a0The cell phone, only thirty years ago a big box, is now our life in our pocket.\u00a0 It\u2019s a computer, camera, social life, calendar, email, pulse recorder, entertainment, text contact; and oh yeah, the way to call someone.\u00a0 It\u2019s made our life more convenient, and mobile, and made it incredibly difficult to \u201cdisconnect\u201d from the rest of the world, or be \u201cin the moment.\u201d\u00a0 3D Printers have similar ups and downs.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s crisis, buried under all the Russiagate noise made by the President, is about 3D printers.\u00a0 They make whatever a computer \u201cblueprint\u201d can be designed to make, and this week we found that Cody Walker and his company in Texas have designed blueprints for multiple styles of guns:\u00a0 from hand guns to fully automatic assault weapons (they don\u2019t claim the fully automatic part, but in their videos they show one.) \u00a0The entire gun is made from plastic, piece by piece created by a 3D printer.<\/p>\n
In 1988, President Reagan and Congress passed a law requiring any \u201cplastic\u201d gun to have identifiable metallic pieces in the structure, in order to be detectable to security scanners.\u00a0 The new \u201c3D\u201d guns have those pieces as well, but they are simply non-functional additions specifically to meet the laws requirements.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need the metal parts to fire the gun.<\/p>\n
So we now are arguing whether the company should be allowed to market their blueprints on the internet, downloadable for immediate gun making use.\u00a0 These guns will be untraceable (no serial numbers) and undetectable by any security device other than actual hand or visual searches.\u00a0 Every part of the gun is plastic, including the magazine.\u00a0 The only metal needed:\u00a0 the bullets.<\/p>\n
The NRA has tacitly given its blessing to this, which struck me as strange.\u00a0 The NRA is widely supported by the gun making industry; at first glance the 3D guns would seem to be competition they don\u2019t need.\u00a0 But a statement by Cody Wilson, the blueprint developer, revealed the NRA\u2019s reasoning.\u00a0 Wilson said that; \u201cgun control is undead.\u201d\u00a0 With the publication of his blueprints, everyone can now have a gun, undetectable or traceable.\u00a0 He, and I suspect the NRA, believe they have fundamentally changed the argument.<\/p>\n
Wilson believes that his blueprints resolve the gun control debate, making it \u201cdead.\u201d\u00a0 In an interview on CBS This Morning, <\/em>he stated:<\/p>\n \u201cWhat’s going to make me comfortable… is when people stop coming into this office and acting like there’s a debate about it. The debate is over,<\/em>” Wilson said, adding, “The guns are downloadable. The files are in the public domain. You cannot take them back. You can adjust your politics to this reality. You will not ask me to adjust mine.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n A Federal judge has blocked further publication of the blueprints, but the files are out there.\u00a0 And the Trump Administration, who settled a federal lawsuit that was blocking the blueprint release, are sitting on their hands.<\/p>\n So the future is here.\u00a0 Cody Wilson has made the decision for all of us.\u00a0 And while the Federal Courts and the State Attorney Generals will fight a rear-guard action to try to put the \u201cgenie back in the bottle,\u201d the reality is that plastic guns that fire real lead bullets are with us.\u00a0 Security will now have to find a new way to detect guns \u2013 maybe full body searches at the airport will be standard.\u00a0 Or maybe, like the toy guns they resemble, we can legislate that real plastic guns need orange tips.\u00a0 That way we can tell.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"