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posted by azrael on Monday October 20 2014, @03:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the does-not-pass-go dept.

3ders.org has an article on the conclusion of a trial in Japan of a man for making a 3D printed gun.

Earlier today, a verdict was reached in the infamous 3D printed gun trial that was being held in the Yokohama District Court in Tokyo, Japan. Presiding Judge Koji Inaba found the 28-year-old Yoshitomo Imura, a former teacher at a local college, guilty of violating laws controlling firearms and swords. For printing at least two workable guns using a 3D printer, Imura was sentenced to two years in prison.

Since Imura's arrest in May, a number of Japanese distributors of 3D printing technology have organized a '3D printer Promotion Council' to both educate people about the possibilities of this technology, but also to warn consumers of its dangers. They are currently looking into possibilities to avoid such events in the future, including better cooperation between the industry and the government and a blacklist of design data.

 
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  • (Score: 1) by Mr. Slippery on Tuesday October 21 2014, @03:36AM

    by Mr. Slippery (2812) on Tuesday October 21 2014, @03:36AM (#108080) Homepage

    Those who support gun control don't blame the gun for the criminal activity: If they did, they'd be pushing for putting the gun on trial and locking them up rather than the person who's holding it when he kills someone.

    A prohibition law -- be it for guns, booze, or other drugs -- by definition makes the object itself the crime.

    What they think is that "person with criminal intent" is less dangerous than "person with criminal intent with a gun". Cops, soldiers, martial arts instructors, etc agree on this point

    No, not really. I'd rather have a person with criminal intent and a gun than criminal intent and a can of gasoline. Choosy mass-murderers choose fire and explosions to kill lots of people. In close quarters I'd rather face someone with a long gun than a knife, it's a lot easier to wrestle a shotgun or rifle away from someone than a knife. (I would rather, of course, face someone seeking to overcome me with friendship by buying me a beer.) It is simply not that hard to kill someone without a gun: despite the easy availability of firearms in the U.S., 30% of our homicides already are perpetrated by stabbing, clubbing, beating, and other non-firearms means.

    Also, you've neglected the fact that a defender with a gun -- and the training and will to use it -- is safer than a defender without a gun. Americans defend themselves with firearms at a rate estimated between 64,000 and 2,500,000 times a year (yes, those are huge error bars, my best guess is on the order of 100,000).

    I'm not against citizens having guns, but I am interested in reducing the rates of murder and armed robbery, and other countries' experiences suggest that some degree of gun control will help in accomplishing that.

    No, actually, they don't. Gun prohibition laws have very little effect on crime, because they keep guns away from bad guys about as well as drug control laws keep heroin away from junkies. In Baltimore City, in 2011 90% of those arrested for murder had criminal records [baltimoresun.com] and so were legally banned from owning guns, but Maryland's string gun control laws didn't stop them from killing. A cross-state comparison of homicide rates [unreasonable.org] shows no effect of "gun control" laws on homicide, nor does a cross-country historical analysis [harvard.edu].

    If you want to reduce violent crime (which, BTW, has fallen about 50% since its peak in the early 90s), stop wasting time and perpetrating violence by locking up people for owning the tools of self-defense. Work on fixing our legacy of racism, our economic injustice, our broken mental health and criminal "justice" systems.

  • (Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday October 21 2014, @06:14AM

    by dry (223) on Tuesday October 21 2014, @06:14AM (#108115) Journal

    And yet if you compare murder rates between Canada and the US, once you subtract gun deaths, they're pretty close. As well it is a lot easier to accidentally kill someone with a gun then a knife.
    Of course at this point in time, talking about gun control in America is useless as so many guns are in circulation whereas somewhere like Japan gun control is possible.