After every major shooting incident, people call for the right to bear arms to be amended but sets the firearms lobbyists to worrying: if the government takes away your weapons, how can you stop them taking away other rights too?
To be one step ahead of the people who want to get rid of guns, the Defense Distributed company put the first model of a printable pistol online. It included one metal part, mainly to set off metal detector gates. At the moment, a printed pistol is an inaccurate piece of plastic piping that could explode in your hand, and you will still need a much more solid device than your average 3D printer to make one. If you really want to fire something, it would be better and cheaper to buy a real gun.
"Of course you can acquire a gun if you really want to", says Van den Berg. "But it is still more difficult than downloading a design and pressing ‘print’. We have asked sociologist Gert van Vugt to focus on the whole debate on plastic weapons. The extreme right’s fear of gun control suddenly has gained support from left-wing advocates of the freedom of information, which has completely polarised opinions."