The ability of people to make their own guns without government permission destroys the possibility of universal gun registration.
Writer Andy Greenberg at Wired.com has replicated the 3D-printed pistol and silencer used to assassinate UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City. The task took him several days and thousands of dollars worth of time, machinery, and parts. Greenberg does a credible job of explaining the process and the lengths he had to go through to do so legally.
With personal advice from an acknowledged 3D gun printing expert, a serious budget from Wired, and a licensed silencer manufacturer, Greenberg succeeded in the State of Louisiana. The action took place in Louisiana because much would have been illegal under New York State law. Taking the gun back to New York State would also have been illegal. Greenburg turned in the finished frames to the police in Louisiana. From wired.com:
All of that meant that the only real legal hurdle to my experiment in 3D printing a Glock-style ghost gun was a flight from New York to New Orleans, where a gun range on the east edge of the city had agreed to host me and my WIRED video colleagues as we built and test-fired the weapon. James Reeves, the owner of that range as well as a lawyer and gun-focused YouTuber, assured me that it would all be fully above board, so long as I was only making my ghost gun for my own use and not selling it or transferring it to anyone else. “It’s a free country down here in the great state of Louisiana,” Reeves said.
By Dean Weingarten
