Gun crime is a big problem in today’s society, and it may be about to get worse. Not just in the U.S., but all over the world people are now using 3D printers to print weapons intended to maim or kill. Earlier this year, British Member of Parliament, Jo Cox, was murdered using a makeshift gun even though there are restrictive gun-control laws in place. And now criminals are turning to the world of 3D printing to manufacture firearms at the touch of a few buttons.
Plans for basic weapons that can be made using a 3D printer can easily be found online and with this sort of technology becoming more readily available to the public, there is a much greater risk of people making even more complex and dangerous weapons such as metal handguns and semi-automatic rifles. The problem lies in how to protect innocent people in all of this.
There are actions being taken, but whether this will be enough, who knows. In 2013, Philadelphia outlawed the possession of 3D printed guns and their components. In 2014, during a conference of an intelligence community and private professionals participants recommended various policies that should be pit in place including, more rigorous intellectual property laws in a bid to combat this unlawful printing of weapons.
This also poses a threat regarding nuclear weapons too. Traditionally, nuclear weapon manufacturing was monitored by watching for sales of components need to make nuclear devices and by placing restrictions on their types of technology that nuclear-capable states are allowed to export. But, now, to get around this problem, countries would just be able to print the weapons themselves without anyone knowing anything.
Suggestions have been made to introduce export restrictions on certain types of printers to try and combat the 3D printing issues, but this will still be a difficult yet necessary problem to try and solve. For now, we can only sit and hope that one day soon there will be sufficient measures in place to protect us innocent people from the dangers of self-manufactured weapons.
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