For those in the US with a combined interest in 3D-Printers, intersections of the 1st and 2nd Amendments, and legal precedents; Cody Wilson has been fighting the US Government for half a decade.
Short version: after Wilson uploaded his 3D pistol plans to his site, over 100,000 people downloaded it - this drew the attention of the US authorities, who tried to use the International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR) to force a take-down.
The authorities argued that by posting the 3D printer plans for a firearm, Mr. Wilson was effectively exporting firearms, and subject to federal regulation. Eventually the Department of Justice dropped the case, paving the way for DIY'ers to publish such things freely.
The article cites 'promises' made by DoJ to move the regulations to another department.
Wired's article: A Landmark Legal Shift Opens Pandora's Box for DIY Guns (archive)
Related: The $1,200 Machine That Lets Anyone Make a Metal Gun at Home
Japanese Gun Printer Goes to Jail
Suspected 3D-Printed Gun Parts and Plastic Knuckles Seized in Australia
FedEx Refuses to Ship Defense Distributed's Ghost Gunner CNC Mill
Man Who Used CNC Mill to Manufacture AR-15 "Lowers" Sentenced to 41 Months
Ghost Gunner Software Update Allows the Milling of an M1911 Handgun
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Friday July 13 2018, @03:33AM (1 child)
AR lowers, which are the part that's legally a firearm, don't need to hold much force at all. Industry standards are aluminum or fiberglass filled plastic. It's the barrel and bolt that need strength, and those can be mail ordered.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday July 13 2018, @04:45AM
That is true now. The idea behind 3d printed guns is that outlawing them becomes pointless. If they outlawed them you couldn't order those off the shelf mass produced parts and would be forced to use whatever you could print or repurpose other metal bits into being components of a weapon. Look at the current nightmare of regulation of "precursors" in the War On Some Drugs to see how crazy that could get before 3d printing got good enough to make the entire thing from raw feed stock.