I know it's a tired old saying, but the honest truth is that guns do not kill people, people kill people. Once you realize that, you realize that 3D printable guns are not a danger justifying "extreme prison terms".
More handguns = more dead people, period. The only people rooting for a society awash in easily obtainable handguns are criminals and delusional libertarians with adolescent Minute Man fantasies.
Like I said before, violent crime has been falling steadily for the past 20 years despite the rise in availability of handguns. This is in direct conflict with your assertion that more handguns = more dead people.
It is a more delusional viewpoint in my opinion to think that simply reducing the availability of weapons would eliminate the criminal impulses to use them.
You've probably read that the UK is significantly more violent than the US, but the difference comes entirely from different categorizations of crime. For instance, UK violent crime stats as typically reported include such things as harassment, 'causing public fear, alarm, or distress', or 'possession of an article with a blade or point'.
Depending on how judicious you are with the categories, the UK is either safer than the US or slightly more violent, but it's very close. Combine that with 1/4 the murder rate, and I think it's clear which is performing better.
EDIT: But in better news, we are getting less violent, which is good.
Another example is Russia. Their overal murder rate is twice that of the United States even though they have strict gun laws and a gun ownership rate that is 10% that of the US (8.9 per 100k vs 88.9 per 100).
One could look at a country like the UK where there are strict gun laws and far less gun crime in the US. However, gun crime was never as high in the UK as it was in the US, even when the UK had gun laws as loose as those in the US.
Long story short, crime is driven largely by socioeconomic factors, the criminal justice system, and culture. The availability of guns plays a part, but not a large part. Otherwise Wyoming would have the highest murder rate in the US, as it has the highest gun ownership rate.
Mexico has one legal gun store in a country of 115 million people: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12...
Crime in general has plummeted across the West, the increase in firearms in the USA is not a causative factor.
Keynes made the point that it is better to be austere in a time of plenty. The time to introduce gun control is when crime is falling, not try and introduce it when crime is rising and people feel like they might want to have weapons for self defence.
If you really wanted to end the crime in Mexico reevaluating prohibition would be a good start.
[1]http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110209-mexicos-gun-supply-a... [2] http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/ [3]http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/02/myth-percent-smal...
Use the example of abstinence education: It's better to accept that guns will be made and use education and light regulation to minimize the damage than to try to squash them out completely.
My concern is that a printed gun is disposable and untraceable. Without ballistics, its certainly a tempting option.
Also going through metal detectors is a huge deal over security measures.
It looks like a game changer to me.
Unless you seriously want to claim that the number of murders and easy access to firearms are merely a matter of accidental correlation.
You're correct if you're talking premeditated killing. But most killings aren't.
How about reasonable prison terms?
That could end up being no time at all.