I understand the intent, but feel that there are so many other loopholes that put much worse weapons on the street than a printer. Besides, my prints can barely sustain normal use, much less a bullet being fired from them. I would think that this is more of a risk to the person holding the gun than who it’s pointing at.
There’s a community that builds 3d printed guns, and those don’t last very long either. They’re not printing barrels, they’re just printing the trigger housing and grip. They go out and buy the dangerous bits.
This is all a bit pointless.
Even more pointless when you consider that once you have a 3d printer, you can make a lot of the components for a second 3d printer, and go out and buy the other parts, without ever buying a 3d printer. Now you have two ghost gun machines!! Oh the horror.
A self replicating 3D printer? I like it.
The reprap movement was exactly that. A self replicating rapid prototyper. While it never reached true replication, it got close enough to cause an explosive growth of the community. That, in turn led to the huge number of low cost suppliers and designs we have now.