Headlines again... 3D printing guns, a passion?

Headlines again: 3D printing yet another part of a gun. So what?

Please Cody, yes, you the guy with big stainless-steel thermoplastic bollocks, please, now I want new stuff, like 3D printing bazookas, ammo or landmines!

I already tackled the subject it in this older post but telling that a 3D printer is probably not the best tool to use is not even my point here. Using a 3D printer to print more guns is no surprise, but I wish headlines focus more on noble usage like e-NABLE prosthetics. It is an excellent project, where volunteers 3D print free upper-limb prosthetics, like artificial hands for others. If your printer is idle, you should go and read about them!

E-NABLE: is this not a better use for 3D printing, according to you?

This way we have people printing tools that may harm people, while other people do repair them. Nice absurd world.

Here is my point for once: why do the words gun and freedom have to be put in the same sentence almost each time pro-gunners start to argue? What the heck?



Say, I never felt my freedom is harmed by the lack of firearms in the hands of citizens around me, including in my own hands. Europe has a long tradition on relying exclusively on the authorities to ensure both the freedom and protection of citizens. And any personal bypassing of the law is ... well, illegal.

But that is just my own opinion: guns are physically linked to violence, one way or another.

I expect better arguments from pro-gunners when they want me to change my mind!

Let me re-state it: why do zealots feel the urgent need to justify themselves and feel like I say that all gun owners are stupid? I only consider stupid the law that allows any one to own a gun and to carry it in public. I never said the opinions of others are wrong, and it includes those of gun owners or lovers. Now what happens at home is just personal business and a matter of education.

What really bugs me hard are the wrong arguments that are too often put forward. I like to argue, and I can be wrong, or fail to understand. But I need proofs, actual real statistics, science, sociology. No low-level bullshit motivated by some passion.

Education is harder than passion. Guts and feelings are just not enough (Calvin & Hobbes of course)

My biggest complaint are falsified arguments used to "counteract" gun-skeptics, or out-of-scope arguments like "cars are killing more". Hey, life kills at 100% rate - so what? By the way, even that argument seems to be wrong. Check, e.g. The Economist: "A gun is now more likely to kill you than a car is". Well... in the USA of course!

Most often people revert to individual cases where a gun would have "avoided" a problem (usually a shooting, how ironic!). It may be true indeed, but I believe in more scientific methods such as statistics. Individual counter-examples do not make the rule. They lead nowhere and sterilize the debate. Headlines are crap. Real studies rules.

Inductive reasoning is to make broad generalizations from specific observations, and it may be plain wrong: "Harold is a grandfather. Harold is bald. Therefore, all grandfathers are bald." (from livescience, a nice read on the scientific method).

But more than half of the population keep on using such individual statements to argue, never to try and get a bigger non-passionate picture.

See, when a raper is caught, nobody asks for all men to be sterilized! But that's as much as a scientific reasoning for me as the NRA saying that there should be armed guards in schools to shoot down armed students (i.e. "save lives"?). Actually, they would better close schools then, and bingo, 100% guaranteed no more homicide at school!

So? A weapon is a weapon. And a weapon adds surrouding danger.

Of course, there are fundamentally different views at play here. But once again, it did not say that shooting cans is not funny. And I can play paintball or laser quest games to fire at each other and have fun (I did).

But a real weapon is a real weapon. I would keep saying what I say, even for people that print knives with their 3D printer: not that interesting at best once done, and in any case dangerous when they they are carried in public. Who decides who may carry a gun? Who is the "good guy" and who is the "bad guy"? Seriously, if bad guys carry guns as much as good guys do, nothing gets solved, but "collateral damage" occurs invariably. Oh, what a funky name to say "innocent people deaths".

Is world is safer without guns in the public. I do think so, but...

As for me, I am still glad and I feel safer that no one but hunters own a gun here in France (and most of Europe). Unsurprisingly, the latter do account for so many "accidents" in the south of France, namely 16 deaths in 2014 (which is sounds so many, how stupid).

Technically and factually, a gun is a dangerous tool that allows any small kid or idiot to kill someone, and it happens just more often where guns are legal to carry in public, and to some extent also when owning a gun is made easy (see below for my moderation). A weapon may kill. No weapon cannot kill, period. More weapons around is more deaths, be it guns, knives or fists. The more you know there are many weapons around, the more you get nervous and you are prone to be aggressive with your own.

Carrying guns in public creates a risky social environment, to the point the police often fires and kills suspects and innocents way too easily and without solving anything in the long term. Compare to EU countries, like England where the police fired 3 rounds in 2012 (killing no-one). British citizens are around 100 times less likely to be shot by a police officer than Americans!

Sorry but I do not buy it when a two century old rule that initially was meant to allow citizens to protect the state against foreign "hostile" countries is now considered to be a private affair by so many.

Free education beats free guns!

Back to Europe: and still, Great Britain is even considered more dangerous than the northern European countries.

Anyhow, there are countries where it may be somehow easy to own a gun, but it is simply forbidden to carry it in public. Beside some psychopath who kills a lot once in a decade the average casualty is very small. Why? Because people are just well educated and laws prevent them from carrying guns everywhere (which in turn makes everyone want to carry and use one for self-defense: how ridiculous!).
Say, when Switzerland is probably ranked first for gun ownership because of their special constitution, there are only 5 deaths for 1M people, while there are 30 in the USA (check the stats here).

I was hoping that by the time we arrived here, we would have stopped trying to prevent things being banned, & moved to actually preventing people wanting to kill. You know, through being sensible and rational. But I guess I was wrong. - Nigel tolley in the original post.

Once again it all boils down to a better, good and free education for everyone in my opinion. It always works better than any gun or knife in the long term and even laws related to weapon ownership. A person who needs to fight to make his point is a psychopath to me, and gun owners are often tempted by the same kind of argument: better kill your neighbor before he kills you.
Sorry, I just feel better when the risk that anyone kills someone is simply negligible simply because there are no such weapons all everywhere. Just try peace for once, and it works better than casting war everywhere.

Now for sure, printing gun parts is going to be a lot more dangerous in countries were the remaining parts are readily available, or where you can buy ammo in a supermarket, and this is where laws are important. I feel glad to be in a place where it is illegal. Both the freedom and the safety it warranties for me each day is a joy :)

You can check and compare your country policy regarding firearms on this wikipedia page.
There I learnt that I could get a 5-year jail term in Germany just because I own a nunchaku. And I definitely would not have bet that Poland had the lowest rate of gun onwership in Europe!

Facts, not fiction nor passion. Do not get me wrong.