AZERATE wrote:I have no intentions of boiling blood and apologize if I ever had.
My bloods not boiling, -I'm not American, so have no second amendment rights, I do see the pro's and cons...
AZERATE wrote:danny wrote:
you have a free right to keep an bear arms, the discussion is over the manufacture of arms.
you do not have a constitutional right to manufacture arms at all...
Due to media coverage of how a 3D printer "could" make a gun (some are radically biased, one even shocking from a Utah publication), it unfortunately is a touch deeper than manufacturing itself. The 2nd Ammendment (sorry to bring it up again) is different in each state, county, city, neighborhood. The laws in Jacksonville, Fl are far and away different than those of Morton Grove, Il, which became the first town in the country to ban handguns...an unthinkable ruling compared to Florida, even though they are both the same country. Which is why consulting with legal professionals in your local area before moving ahead with printing is the best idea.
The modifications to the second amendment are possibly symptomatic of the problem...
I.e a bit of paper says this, and lawyers from any group with a vested interest, (be it those who want or those who don't want guns will argue a point.) and thus you have a very paired down and exacting definition of what that 2nd amendment means, (the right to bear arms as a part of a well organised militia.)
so you have situations where it's not unreasonable to say that handguns may not be the correct tool of a militia, certainly as far as I know handguns are not issued to every soldier? but at the same time full automatic weapons ARE issued to every soldier, and thus by definition of what a regular army does, and what a militia does in standing in for a regular army at a local level, you'd argue that you should ban all handguns, (side arms are not critical to a well run militia, but at the same time all a lot "bigger and scarier" guns.
for what it's worth, I would argue the following... (I did write this last time but deleted it because I wasn't sure if getting into the second amendment was either on or off topic.)
The constitution was written near enough directly after the war of independence,
the colonial government was not fit for purpose, nor representative.
In order to gain freedom from colonial rule loads of people fought and died.
there is no doubt in my mind that the first and second amendments at the time are more about allowing people to live in a free country.
that is to say that you must be allowed free speech of any kind, (so that you can freely say that something is wrong) and you must be allowed to keep arms either to form a militia for the purpose of defence of your land against in conjunction with a domestic military, (i.e fighting invading forces) or fighting against an established governing power. -the same as the people who wrote the constitution had just done.
in order to form an unofficial and revolutionary army, you *must* be allowed to gather keep and use arms, fundamentally you must be able to make arms, AND those arms should be as high tech and undetectable as possible.
it's pretty clear in my mind what the second amendment is meant to mean (given the history at the time of it's writing). however it doesn't explicitly say all of that.
it says that you're allowed to keep arms and form militia without any express indication of what for.
thus if you form militia to overthrow government (exactly the same as the founding fathers did you're guilty of a crime).
because you can keep arms for the purpose of forming militia, you can argue that handguns are not covered by the second amendment, - they certainly are not issued to every member of the regular army. -however in saying that -and drawing that comparison you therefore MUST allow all arms of the military in civilian ownership. after all how do you form an effective militia without good weapons?
you see the problem here? if you look at a historical context you can argue that the manufacture of arms, (especially hard to detect composite construction arms that you can make at home) not only are covered but are the EXACT kind of arms that a bunch of people who just overthrew an established government army would be thinking of when they wrote the document!. (i.e you have a right to freedom, and you have a right to fight for that freedom exactly as they just had -because they were clever enough to realise that future governments might be corrupt and perhaps need to be overthrown? -I'm pretty sure that the government of the few colonies on the east coast didn't start off corrupt, but by the time the whole of the us was colonized, the government was far from representative. if not outright corrupt.
but in the real world, we only have to work with what was written,
nothing was written about a right to manufacture arms.
you have no constitutional right to manufacture arms.
it's not a second amendment issue.
as for the media coverage...
it's sad that when telling people that you own a 3d printer the first thing that they think of is printing handguns, and not stories like how medical supplies -umbilical cord clips have been printed (in Haiti) or how it has allowed rapid prototyping of products at home.
how it's allowed people to print replacement parts (like this week I printed a ratchet strap for a roller skate as the previous one broke and the manufacturer refuses (I did ask) to provide spare parts. and thus reduced landfill waste.
to be honest (aside from talking to my dad -who seems to have a constant list of things he needs to make) just about every conversation I have seems to centre around me assuring people that I'm not making guns...
of course what I don't say is if I were to make a gun it'd be the ignorant fools like you (as in the people who keep asking if 3d printers are for making guns ignoring all other possibilities) that I'd come after first...
since it's been a long post I'll surmise.
defence distributed, just ruined kids games, made toy guns the kind of thing you could get gunned down for having. and frankly looked like tools whilst they were doing it.
gun manufacture -"I" don't believe is a second amendment issue, because, legally you don't argue about the intent of the law you argue about the written part of the law.
-the same as I feel fine like I could drive after a few beers with good reactions, so should I drive? my friend is drunk after 1 beer and would crash if they drove. when stopped by the police I'd be arrested, they'd be allowed to carry on and crash.
the intent of DUI laws is to stop people driving whilst having slowed reactions due to the influence of alcohol.
however, the police can only act on the words, hence my feeling drunk but under 30mg/ml friend gets to go drive into a child whilst my other, over the limit but actually pretty fit to drive friend finds himself in court.
I understand why people want to make it a second amendment issue -I believe it should be. but I also believe that in a legal sense the argument won't get very far.
Making guns with a fused filament printer is pretty much asking for trouble. -see my earlier comments about gun barrel proofing, and historically, those countries that did not test gun barrels often found that more of their own soldiers died than the oppositions.
An exploding barrel will hurt you and anyone around you.
Plastic is not a good gun material. -simple material science shows us that it expands and contracts too much with heat for precision parts. it suffers fatigue very poorly and becomes brittle with age and exposure to sunlight.
Basically there is a reason than that they make gun parts from metal, and it's not so it requires mad skills, (a desktop metal CNC machine could make a gun in a "download design and press go" situation also.)
and for me... that's the real issue...
I'd be much more interested in designing a gun if there was a realistic chance of it becoming a real (and safe) object.
i.e if we were all owners of metal mills rather than plastic printers it would be fun to group design a gun -I've no interest in owning said gun, but figuring out the parts would be interesting, and I could see them working via videos of those who did make the thing.
the big problem is, (and I think that it's likely more than just me who thinks this) there's very little skill in designing grips, -boring, and very little point in designing a gun or gun parts, because that video that's being made is not so much fun when exerts are being played on the news showing the gun breaking up and getting cut right before it kills you on the evening news...
) If its just an exercise in challenging the mind and mechanical engineering mojo - there is a list a mile long of complicated things that need solving for the greater good long before we get new and interesting ways to make 'bang sticks'... and then there's the whole basis now how the 'passion' about 'needing' to 3D Print guns has really upset the apple cart for everyone else. If I had a $1 for every time I got asked now about 3D printed Guns... I'd own Stratsys already and have transferred all their patents to the public domain and still have money left over 
