Recently, the United States New York Council Member Lewis Fidler introduced a new bill to regulate 3-D printed guns in New York. This would make it illegal to use a 3-D printer to create any part of a gun unless the person is a licensed gunsmith. This leads to the debate on whether 3-D printing should be regulated.
The regulation of 3-D printing stifles the creative energies of people and thwarts the efforts of innovators everywhere. The main issue with 3-D printing, and the issue that concerns people who want to regulate 3-D printing, is 3-D printed guns. Even if 3-D printing was regulated to stop 3-D printing guns, there are other weapons that can be made out of household items. Things like pipe guns, pipe bombs, pipe weapons, pipes used as clubs, and just mixing bleach and ammonia. These are obviously things that no one should do, but there is not much that anyone can do to prevent it from happening. So many weapons can be made from pipes that we might just as usefully regulate the use of pipes. In fact, this article has just become pro-regulation of pipes. Pipes should be regulated; there are so many violent ways in which pipes can be used. If we do not regulate pipes, people will go around making guns out of pipes and bombs out of pipes and clubs out of pipes. Pipes are dangerous, #pipes2014.
Now that this new media has been invented, artists and inventors have a new dimension to use to create and make their ideas and dreams a reality. By regulating and preventing certain usages of the 3-D printing, we only end up prevent amazing new ideas from appear. When the photocopier was invented, people thought that would be the end of the publishing industry, as people could just photocopy whatever they wanted. This also happened with tape recorders (you young’uns, ask your parents) and downloading things from the Internet (you parents, ask your young’uns).
The cost of buying a 3-D printer alone, just to print a gun, would range from $1500 to $8000. After being able to buy a 3-D printer, one would need to find a plastic that could withstand the forces when the gun is fired. Finding the appropriate materials would be difficult, and the material would cost even more. With all the costs associated with using a 3-D printer to print a gun, it would be more economically sound to simple buy one illegally. So, if you get anything from this article, please remember, buy your guns illegally, do not print them. Do not ruin the 3-D printing experience for everyone else.
People are also afraid of copyright violations: pirates creating things that are used by large companies such as McDonalds or Beats Headphones. Imagine if you could print your own Beats headphones- well, you can’t, because anything you print would have better sound quality than Beats. Anything that is copyright can be faked; to regulate 3D printing would just cause unnecessary trouble for people trying to create art. Copyright laws ban people from making their own Coach handbags or Nike shoes, but that does not prevent Chinese sweatshops from making fakes. Using 3-D printers to make fakes would not encourage people to make counterfeits but to print out new and original things, such as cool designs, jewelry, and statues of things that are not appropriate for Point-Counterpoints.
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