I've long heralded the rise of the 3D printer as the end of gun control. While regulating firearms was never really a viable strategy for most things beyond oppressing people, the idea of building your own firearm with easily obtained materials in the comfort of your own home. The technology opens up a ton of possibilities.

But printers are hardware. They don't really run by themselves. They need software in order to work, and according to a piece by our friends at The Truth About Guns, that's where we're now going to run into a problem.

Software makers have solidified their place as useful idiots for the anti-Second Amendment agenda by leading the charge when it comes to the development of programs that detect gun parts being made by 3D printers, block those prints and in some cases, automatically notify the authorities. Claiming that these advances are aimed at curbing the illegal printing of firearms and firearms parts, these companies have donned their brown shirts a bit too quickly and have not the first clue regarding the tradition and constitutionality of homemade guns in America.  

Cloud-based 3D printing management platform 3DPrinterOS has partnered with Montclair State University to develop an algorithm that identifies the 3D printing of firearm parts, but they are not the first. Print&Go recently launched a software system designed to block 3D-printed production of firearms called 3D GUN’T. What this software does not offer before it invades your privacy and tells you what you can and can’t do in your home on the equipment you paid hard-earned money for is detect whether or not you are a prohibited individual, that is a person who’s record prohibits them from legally purchasing or possessing a firearm.

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Print&Go claims 3D GUN’T is designed to prevent the illegal manufacture of firearms via 3D printers, however, if a law-abiding citizen in a free state (actual America) chooses to manufacture a gun at home using their 3D printer, how does 3D GUN’T distinguish between this user and a criminal? It doesn’t. The software treats all Americans as criminals, deploying advanced algorithms to analyze CAD files, sent remotely or loaded via USB, and detect components that resemble firearm designs, immediately blocking print jobs that match these items in its extensive database. Additional use of artificial intelligence (AI) recognizes new or modified gun designs, keeping the software adaptive to emerging freedom and helping to stifle it.

3D GUN'T also logs details of the prints and creates an "audit trail" as well as apparently takes pictures of what's being printed.

But, as noted, this is billed as a way to prevent the illegal printing of firearms, but it doesn't do background checks and there's no indication that it even pays any attention to what state someone is in.

There's another problem, though, and that's in the fact that there's no restriction to this technology being sold abroad.

Right now, we have the right to keep and bear arms. We can buy traditionally manufactured guns and can still buy kits and make them ourselves if we so desire. Those who use 3D printers are doing it just because they like it.

Not everywhere is like that.

3D printers allow people to manufacture firearms that can be used to overthrow tyrants. It allows regular people access to arms that they can then use to resist oppressive regimes, and these turdnuggets just created software that will likely be used to prevent just that.

And then we have the idea that our own printers won't print what we tell them to print because some Silicon Valley wanker decided guns were too scary to build.

If there's an upside, it's that there's going to be someone to offer an alternative software that won't do any of this. That's what you use and relegate this crap to the dustbin of history.