World's first 3D printed gun test fired

Varies from state to state and even county to county. In NYC and many other places, if you're caught with bullets for a gun you aren't permitted to possess, you can be charged with felony possession of ammunition. This is particularly used against those with prior arrests and/or convictions on their record.

But, you know... I am not a lawyer.

OK, it was a bit complicated when there were large stocks of military surplus still to be liquidated, the NRA supported both the GCA of '68 but also the later relaxation of imports of military surplus. On the other hand, do you really think the members of the NRA find it damning that one of the Nominating Committee members is "a timber company executive in Alabama" like Mother Jones does??? You think we're a hot bed of hatred towards free enterprise?

Very curious that the NRA put George Kollitides on the Nominating Committee because of his history, but it's hardly out of whack to have one manufacturer and one dealer member each; in fact, that sounds about right.

Your claim that it having 2 out of 9 members from the industry means they "dominate" the NRA leadership does not stand up to examination. Heck, even the Atlantic article you cite says "the corporate-front theory is still probably too simplistic" and "It's very hard to disentagle the interests of the gun industry from the views of gun rights purists."

Indeed: no gun or ammo manufactures rather obviously means no guns and ammo for us to shoot. We've very interested in their health, we're in the same boat, attack them, you attack us. And the NSSF does quite a bit for gun owners in a whole range of areas including the political, although their focus is of course on the industry.

As for "sole purpose", I didn't bother to read the cited article, but do you mean the NRA's gun safety efforts, largely credited with decreasing the absolute number of fatal gun accidents by 1/4 at the same time the population and number of guns owned has increased by 1/2, was solely done to protect "corporate profit"? Sorry, I'm not that cynical.

The newness comes from being able to have an unskilled user setup a 3d printer, buy some ABS plastic to feed into it, download a file from the internet and begin producing guns. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing, but it's something to watch carefully.

I could imagine a future where it's almost like the wild west again, so many people who would harm you have guns that everyone carries one in a holster, and it's just considered normal, like wearing a sword all the time was normal for the samurai. This may end up being a likely future in the USA since the 2nd amendment is impossible to repeal.

Unlike say blue jeans commercials where manly men hang out on their pickup trucks which most people realize is purely for marketing, people really think the NRA and associated marketing is real.

All the purchase of a firearm represents is a very slight decrease in the probability that you and the civilians around you will survive tomorrow. Widespread availability of firearms also enables and promotes the terrorism we regularly see carried out in the US, but of course the probability of being personally victimized by terrorism is exceedingly low.

So no, gun owners and gun industry interests are not "aligned". Gun industry makes enormous profit on the sale of its image. Gun owners get the benefit of believing they are rugged individuals protecting liberty, at the cost of a couple hundred/thousand bucks and living in a modestly more dangerous society.

Could someone who had a printer and the downloaded file skip that part? Yes. But they could possibly be fined and jailed for up to 5 years.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-102/pdf/STATUTE-102-Pg3...