Like everything in the United States, it’s actually gun manufacturers that want to clamp down on this cottage industry which threatens their profits. I don’t buy for a second that this is some gun control attempt.
I have 0 reason to believe this.
That is some pretty wild speculation, and a terribly risky proposition for any company because they would instantly get blackballed by the 2a community.
It isn’t. It’s a group of people, some of whom are country-music-loving Republicans who hate them black folk, but who also include a lot of them black folk, a lot of Democrats, and a lot of people who hate country music. It is a group that has decided that one issue is more important than anything else to them. And they vote. For you, if you are for them, but for your opponent, if you are not. They will primary you. They do not care if D or R is next to your name. In fact they love pro-gun D politicians, because it’s a chance to pull that party into respecting all constitutional rights.
The NRA is massively successful because of this. They do one thing, and everyone in it knows that. They don’t have to agree on anything else, because if you can’t have guns, the rest of the politics is irrelevant.
A company that made the slightest anti-2A movement would be dead by sunset the next day. No store would carry their product. No consumer in the know would buy their product.
Which is, in itself, a manipulation. They largely aren’t 13- and 14-year-old innocents; they are 17, 18, and 19-year-olds who are engaged in criminal enterprises.
The murder rate in the US is far too high, but if you have no contact with the illegal drug trade your chances of being murdered plummet.
> It isn’t. It’s a group of people, some of whom are country-music-loving Republicans who hate them black folk, but who also include a lot of them black folk, a lot of Democrats, and a lot of people who hate country music.
But... that is what most political opinions are like.
They learned discipline the hard way. They may not vote for the other guy, but they aren’t showing up for you. Very few blocs work that way, that strongly. The ACLU is a great example of a group that was captured and turned to things that really have nothing to do with the core mission of protecting civil liberties. They protect the ones that a certain class of folk deem worthy. They sometimes defend a Nazi to show that they are balanced, I guess. They promote diversity - which is a fine opinion, but isn’t the mission. The 2A groups have a laser focus. Nothing else intrudes. So hippies and rednecks and rappers can all get along because they only have to agree on one thing, and the organization does not care about anything else.
This is not true. They currently fund people and policies that are 100% anti-2A without any pushback. It's just a matter of fooling the people into accepting the anti-2A stuff you do support.
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20251027/from-printers-to-pa...
> What I'm saying is that no one is going to build a lower in this manner for a firearm chambered in 7.62 and do anything useful/important with it. Maybe the cartridge size here is a distraction, idk, but this isn't a specification that I would consider common and/or useful for 3D printing a firearm.
The fact that no one was caught using such a weapon is irrelevant. You stated that there are people out there who would use it, so your statement that "no one" would want to is untrue.
Huh? There is no evidence that anyone is using a 3D printed 7.62 weapon system to do crimes. Of the existing evidence, criminals overwhelmingly use conventional firearms. I'm not understanding your point. The would-be and successful assassins in the news the last couple years used standard rifles, ranging from 5.56 to .03-06 in caliber. I think you are assuming that criminals are less sensitive to equipment reliability than they actually are.
Let me put it this way. If 3D printed firearms were such a game changer, they would already be using them at scale. They are not, and these laws are part of a fundamental misunderstanding about how firearms function and how 3D printing technology works.
9mm 3DP guns have hit the news cycle repeatedly, less so for higher power cartridges. IIRC, there's a .50 BMG project well underway.
Range shooting is not what they're trying to legislate though.
Whoever killed that healthcare CEO didn't need a hundred rounds.
This legislation is insanely, horrendously bad and harmful, but "3D printed gun components are useless" isn't a solid argument against it. They're useful enough.
The real arguments, as others said, are:
1. You can achieve much more already without 3D printers
2. The legislation won't achieve its stated objective as any "blueprint detector" DRM will be trivial to circumvent on many levels (hardware, firmware, software)
3. Any semblance of that DRM being required will kill 3D printing as we know it (the text of the law is so broad that merely having a computer without the antigun spyware would be illegal if it means it can drive a 3D printer)
It's the thing gun manufacturers are selling to their customer base though. The theory was they were lobbying for this to prevent competition, but it's not good enough to actually compete with them.
> Whoever killed that healthcare CEO didn't need a hundred rounds.
Luigi Mangione didn't have a criminal record. Given his apparent political alignment, he presumably used 3D printed parts for trolling purposes since there was no actual need for him to do so. He could have bought any firearm from any of the places they're ordinarily sold.
Does anyone actually believe this? Is there any funds for this theory?
Seems to be too far fetched to be even worth sitting.
>Luigi Mangione didn't have a criminal record
That really isn't the point (he still doesn't have a criminal record, by the way).
The point was that the stated danger of 3D printed guns is their use by criminals for criminal purposes, not economic competition to established gun manufacturers.
I guess the counterpoint is that it's not actually useful to criminals either, so there is no incentive for any non-fool to want laws like this and then all incentive arguments are weak because foolishness can be attributed to anyone.
One, you succeed in never being identified or apprehended. Consequently you, rather than the police, have the gun you used, and you can file off the serial number and throw it into the sea or whatever. They don't know who you are so they never come looking for the gun you no longer have and it's just one of millions that were sold to random people that year.
Two, you get caught before you do the murder. Some cop thinks you look too nervous or you get into a car accident on the way there etc. and they find the gun. Having one without a serial number at this point means you're in trouble when you otherwise wouldn't be. It's a disadvantage.
Three, they catch you in the act or figure out who you are because your face got caught on camera somewhere after you took off your mask etc. At this point it's extremely likely you're going to jail. This is even more likely if the weapon is still in your possession because then they can do forensics on it, and it not having a serial number at that point is once again even worse for you. This is apparently the one that actually happened.
Whereas the theory for it allowing you to get caught would have to be something like, they don't know who you are but they have a list of people who bought a gun (which, depending on the state, they might not even have) so they can look on it to find you. But that's like half the US population and doesn't really narrow it down at all.
There is no criminal benefit in doing it so that leaves the remaining options which are either trolling or stupidity.
The gun lobby has a long history of trying to ban low cost market entrants.
But having to bring your own bags limits how much you can buy. If someone has a plan to just use their own bags, they will likely forgo purchases at a higher rate than if the bag is not in the equation for them.
It's not obvious to me that the buying limit effect sales decrease would not outweigh the savings on physical bag purchases. Maybe I'm not following?
The short answer is that bags are a non-trivial cost for the larger chains. Now, they get to charge for them at an astounding markup and no longer have to compete with any grocery store on this point. All grocery stores are affected equally, which means it is disproportionately damaging to mom-and-pop stores and smaller chains.
Also, it’s been awhile but don’t plastic bags make it easier to carry more things at once because the handles are so thin and flexible? And I don’t remember handles ever ripping on plastic grocery bags.
If the math works out in favor of charging for bags it would imply that the margin is incredibly thin in the literal sense of the word incredible. Like the average purchase has so little profit that 10 cents per bag is meaningful? What is the average profit on a bag of items or on an average purchase? Surely more than 10 cents, no? Like I know grocery stores are notoriously low margin, but that’s among businesses it’s not almost 0 in an absolute sense.
In some jurisdictions, a grocery store isn’t allowed to give you a traditional disposable bag at any price. In others, there’s either a bag tax or a minimum price, usually five or ten cents, a store must charge per bag.