WeaponsMan:New attack on Prototyping Technology falls short

We now know what last month’s ATF videos of exploding Liberators were all about.

In a coordinated strike on Americans’ freedom to use 3D printers and coming additive-manufacturing technologies, several governmental branches and Democrat Party organs began a full-court press for new restrictions on synthetic materials and 3D printers:

In the Cabinet: Eric Holder, whose policy of arming the Sinaloa Cartel through the ATF has killed several American and hundreds of Mexican law officers, outlined a new attack on Americans’ rights to build, develop, and modify their own firearms.

In Congress: anti-gun Representative Steve Israel (D-NY) and anti-gun Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) have worked with ATF lobbyists to expand the “undetectable firearm” ban, to include an explicit ban on private anufacture, to include a ban on plastic parts, and to increase ATF authority to regulate 3D printing. The House has passed a bill allegedly without any of Israel’s and Schumer’s additions; they intend to add them in conference committee.

UPDATE: The Senate passed the extension without the Schumer/Israel language.

In the Executive: ATF officials including Director B. Todd Jones, Assistant Director Richard Marianos, and Firearms Technology Branch head Earl Griffith spoke to the press and lobbied Congress for an “emergency” extension of anti-gun legislation. ATF produced an information page online to support these lobbying efforts.  Reading between the lines of that information page:

• ATF is actively looking at 3D printing;
• ATF identifies its inability, under extant statutes, to regulate manufacturing technology as a deficiency;
• ATF is enthusiastic about enforcing 18 USC §922( p).
• ATF considers itself institutionally aligned with one American political party.

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