With the advent of 3D printing, it was only a matter of time before it started being applied to firearms. Cody Wilson did just that with his Liberator pistol, a design that only has metal in it because of federal law. Since then, numerous other designs have cropped up, including the notorious FCG-9.

It marked the end of any hope gun control had of keeping people disarmed.

But that doesn't stop some media outlets from trying to raise alarms over them. 

If you can really think of the Good Men Project as anything but unintentional satire.

For example, we have this:

Police investigating the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Dec. 4, 2024, have announced that the suspected assailant had used a 3D-printed gun. Several high-profile crimes in recent years have involved this kind of homemade, or partially homemade, weapon.

Often called “ghost guns” because they can be hard to trace, these firearms can be either partially or completely made with components that have been produced in metal or plastic on commercially available 3D printers. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering the legality of current federal restrictions on these firearms.

The first known criminal case involving a 3D-printed gun resulted in the arrest of a U.K. man in 2013. But since then, police worldwide have reported finding increasing numbers of these weapons.

My research focuses on the economic and social effects of advanced digital technologies, including 3D printing. I see that the use of 3D-printed guns in criminal and violent activities is likely to continue to increase. And it will likely prove ever harder for governments and police to regulate these firearms.

Here's the thing, though. That's a good thing.

Think about the tyrannical government in China. They have long oppressed the Chinese people, outright massacring them for simply wanting some reform. Now, they're being introduced to 3D-printed guns, meaning people there will at least understand they have options.

That's a beautiful thing in my book.

But the alarmism of the "growing threat" of privately made firearms, or PMFs, is almost hilarious. Why? Because we actually know how many of these guns have actually been used over a given span of time. I talked about it earlier this week, actually. From 2016 to 2021, PMFs were used in 692 murders or attempted murders. That's a span of six years.

Looking up murders over that time, I figured that we assume every single one of those 692 were actually murders, we're looking at 0.62 percent of all murders involving PMFs. Except they're not just murders.

Now, they claim the threat is growing, which suggests that we're seeing more and more of these weapons used in things like homicides. How big is the issue now? If every one of the murders with ghost guns happened in 2021, then it accounted for just 2.78 percent of all murders the CDC said happened that year.

It's not an issue, folks.

Plus, as the author accidentally noted, laws against these things don't actually stop criminals from doing it. That UK arrest in 2013 was a violation of the law, meaning it was already illegal and the guy did it anyway.

So yeah, all the hysteria over privately made firearms, what's really happening is that the issue is being overstated by people who really don't like the idea of people being able to have guns without asking the government, "Mother, may I?"

They should get used to disappointment.