From the moment Cody Wilson unveiled his Liberator 3D-printed pistol, any hope for gun control actually working was over. While the hope might have been forlorn before, it was absolutely lost once it was clear that people could make their own guns with something they bought from Amazon.
But some people just have to keep trying. Unfortunately, even far more gun-controlled countries are finding it impossible to stop.
For example, let's take Australia. A lot of people including former President Obama, think we should go with an Australian style of gun control. They think that's the path America should take.
But that's not going to work like those people think.
When Luigi Mangione allegedly shot dead healthcare executive Brian Thompson in the middle of a New York street, police say he used a 3D-printed gun with a 3D-printed silencer attached to it.
Closer to home, police investigating the attempted murder of a man on Queensland's Fraser Coast earlier this month allegedly uncovered a 3D-printed gun linked to the shooting.
There are concerns over the alarming rise of homemade guns, also known as ghost guns, which don't have serial numbers and are hard to trace.
Detective Inspector Brad Phelps from Queensland's Crime and Intelligence Command Drug Squad said privately made firearms, or 3D-printed guns, are cheap and easy to make.
They've even seen the weapons advertised for sale on Facebook Marketplace.
"We no longer regard privately made firearms as an emerging issue in Australia — they are here — so we now have to work out how we can combat the risk that they pose," Detective Inspector Phelps said.
Now, in fairness, the piece doesn't give anyone any actual numbers. It seems the Australian media is just as incurious as our own when it comes to something like this--either that or they didn't think the increase was dramatic enough and decided to omit it from their report.
However, Australia has far more extensive gun control laws than the United States does. It has far more extensive laws than most Americans would be willing to tolerate, truth be told.
If they can't prevent this, then how would we manage to pass some kind of legislation to make these guns just disappear?
The answer, of course, is that you can't. As it stands, criminals here aren't using them in any significant numbers, but part of that is there are sufficient traditionally made firearms on the black market to meet demand, for the most part. Making these takes work and most crooks aren't really interested in anything that resembles work.
But if we could somehow swoop up every black market gun out there and somehow ban firearms entirely, they'd still make guns. They'd still find a way to get firearms and use them to commit violent crimes.
Keep in mind that if they're not dissuaded from killing someone by the potential penalties for murder--which includes the death penalty in a lot of states--then why would anyone think the penalties for illegally possessing a firearm would do any good?
They won't.
Australia has strict gun control laws that don't even really stop people from using traditionally made guns illegally, but now they're having a problem with privately made firearms, apparently.
Folks, the days of gun control possibly working are long over. It was never going to work, really, but there was a reason many held out hope. Now, there is no chance of it happening.
That means we'd do better to refocus our efforts on how to create an environment where people don't think blasting away at a crowd of people because someone in that crowd said something they didn't like. You're not going to take the guns away, so why not look at reshaping the environment that makes those guns attractive to the wrong sort of people in the first place?
Basically, make it where the wrong sort of people aren't the wrong sort anymore.
I'm not saying it would work, but it couldn't fail as badly as gun control.
