The menace of 3-D printed guns has already spread far and it will be 'impossible' to stop the manufacturing of more guns, an intelligence bulletin has revealed.
The Department of Homeland Security has warned that the use and passage of 3-D printed guns are likely to spread beyond regulations and checkpoint restrictions, posing 'public safety risks' to an uncontrollable extent, Fox News reports.
The bulletin compiled by the Joint Regional Intelligence Center said that the 3-D printing capabilities have made much progress and the digital 3D printer files are freely available on the internet by downloading blueprints and molding three-dimensional items from melted plastic, adding that the file sharing from unqualified gun manufacturers will be sufficiently dangerous.
The first-ever plastic handgun made from a 3-D printer was made by a University of Texas law student who started a nonprofit company called Defense Distributed. The blueprint for the gun called 'The Liberator' whose only metal parts are the bullets and a small firing pin was downloaded 100,000 times before May 3 when a branch of the U.S. State Department ordered the website to stop sharing the file.
The three-page bulletin said that limiting access of the gun will not be feasible anymore as magnetometers used to screen weapons will not pick up a 3D-printed gun and the only solution is a 3-D firearm which can again be made without serial numbers or unique identifiers, hindering ballistics testing.
The bulletin further explained that though the proposed legislation to ban 3D printing of weapons may deter the production but it cannot completely stop online distribution of the digital files.
The handgun poses serious threat as future designs may further reduce or eliminate metal entirely allowing unqualified gun seekers to be able to acquire or manufacture their own Liberators with no background checks, the report added.
