While the shooting of Thompson in New York last week may be the most high-profile case involving a 3D-printed gun, previous cases have indicated a growing prevalence of the weapons among gangs and domestic terrorists. At the start of this year, Ryan Scott Bradford was sentenced to 57 months in prison on gun possession charges after investigators found he was arming himself and others to potentially target the Jewish population. According to his plea agreement, when his 3D printers were seized, one was emblazoned with Nazi swastikas.
The problem will likely get worse before it gets better. New technologies are lowering the barrier to entry into the homemade ghost gun game. AI chatbots can even provide assistance to novices, even if they won’t help directly. Ask Microsoft’s Copilot to tell you how to build a 3D printed gun, and it’ll say it can’t because “creating 3D printed firearms involves significant legal and safety risks.” But if you ask Copilot for guides on making 3D-printed firearms, you’ll get a host of links to “comprehensive” online manuals for manufacturing the weapons at home.
While Mangione appears to have a technical background as a games coder and data engineer at Truecar, the level of knowledge needed to create a deadly weapon is getting lower.
— Thomas Brewster in The UnitedHealthcare CEO Killing And America’s 3D Printed Gun Problem
A data file on a USB stick and a stintered-metal 3-D laser printer and some metal powder is all one needs to make a fully-functional silencer…
or a couple of things from a well known on-line retailer that’s not a gun place, and a 20 minute browse in the hardware store, and a place on line that sells grading filters for a specific machine and it turns out that work just like a certain suppressor company baffles. Mix with some hand tools. And voila` a decent rifle or pistol suppressor in about two hours with ~23 dB suppression for about ~$150.00.
if only i was able to fill in the blanks. i’m behind enema lines but have confidence that deep within large private properties it would be undiscoverable. especially for .22…
Things generally arent a concern for TPTB as long as only wealthy, credentialed and appropriately educated individuals are the only ones participating.
Once the filthy unwashed masses start participating however it becomes a big problem for TPTB.
The end of mainstream media gatekeeping is a good example. Homemade firearms is another.
They want you dumb. Accessible knowledge is the real crime. Remember that when sending your kid off to school.