Guns are weird because to be effective they typically need to be rifled. You can obviously make a shotgun with some home depot pipe but the pressure bearing components of a gun can't be 3D printed. Even with 3D metal printing, you still need to machine the parts to final tolerances and your average garage setup is not remotely capable of rifling a barrel. Hence, when you hear about people 3D printing an AR, they're making the lower receiver which is both a trivially simple part, largely non load bearing, and also due to US law, the legal "gun" part of the gun. In most other countries the pressure bearing parts are the controlled items as those are the hardest to manufacture. In the US you can just buy an upper with the bolt, barrel, and chamber without a background check and manufacture the controlled lower however you want to obtain a complete rifle.
I guess this is all a long winded way of saying the 3D printing panic is both right and wrong but neither side is looking at it in a factual way.
I guess this is all a long winded way of saying the 3D printing panic is both right and wrong but neither side is looking at it in a factual way.