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Comment by Niksko | Hacker News Reader

This kind of worries me. Not because I'm worried about 3D printed guns killing me or other people. If somebody wants to kill other people, they're probably going to do it. This doesn't really make it much easier.

What worries me is that this will be used to regulate 3D printing. As somebody with a 3D printer, and as somebody who is excited about the potential of 3D printers, this terrifies me. It's exactly things like this that could be used to incite mass hysteria and banning of 3D printing, especially since 3D printing doesn't yet have wide consumer adoption or appeal.

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Did you know that when they erected a suicide barrier at a bridge in Washington, suicides in the state dropped? People lacking the means didn't just turn to other methods. They quit altogether. Why do we pretend that the ease of doing something has no effect on the likelihood of it being carried out?

Over the past 20 years gun regulations have been eased and the number of weapons sold has skyrocketed. However in that time the violent crime has gone down.

The number of weapons sold has skyrocketed, but the percent of households owning guns has fallen by about a third, from 45% to 30% over the last twenty years. (The per capita firearm homicides seem to have fallen by about half.)

There are three times as many deaths by suicide from firearms than violent crimes. Those rates have remained fairly steady over the past 20 years.

Also, while there have been more guns sold, household ownership has been decreasing - it's largely individual collectors that drive up sales.

Correlation != causation

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the common thought would be that more guns = more crime. But according to the latest FBI study thats not the case. The cause of the dropping crime is due to many factors, but it definitely has not gone up even though there is greater access to firearms.

It's an interesting data point.

That suicide prevention barrier on the George Washington Bridge was completed in 2011. Suicides had been gradually falling for ~25 years at that point, and hit a low in 2005/2006, and have increased since then even with the suicide barrier. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that I can find that it reduced the overall suicide rate.

In fact, the rate appears to have climbed since the barrier went up:

http://www.intheforefront.org/media/stats

> In fact, the rate appears to have climbed since the barrier went up

Very informative comment. Perhaps an unfortunate choice of words; barrier, climb, suicide.

Did you know that the number of active pirates is proportional to the average global temperature?

Well, there are open source solutions for 3D printing. Its not like they can keep some lone wolf or gang from making their own 3D printer.

http://www.appropedia.org/Open-source_metal_3-D_printer

The bullet is still metal though, and not 3D printed, all they have to do is regulate the bullet instead of the gun.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107206/

There was a period of time in the last decade (due to war and politics I presume) where getting primers was somewhat difficult. I can get lead and cast bullets at home from tire balancing and fishing weights.

Maybe the NRA will ride to the rescue?

> they're probably going to do it

you probably forgot the "not" there?

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