[TheRealThing]

So, instructions for printing 3-D guns can be available to the public as early as tomorrow.

What do you guys think about that ability?

Does the 2nd amendment cover this situation?

Not that you have suggested making a 3-D gun is an easy task. Making one is in fact very expensive, and a 3-D printer capable of making one is extremely expensive, (one company makes printed guns that sell/sold for $11,000) But the argument being made about plastic guns is just being used as a political football. The gun control crowd are always on-point, waiting for any reason to scream gun control.

Each part (which must be later assembled), for a 3-D gun comes out of the printer mounted on a plastic scaffold or pedestal, that must be painstakingly removed to be used, much like a plastic car model. But in this case the tolerances would be way more critical. And as I understand it, firing a 3-D gun is a very dicey one-time proposition, which would almost certainly cause it to explode. And, any 3-D gun would be easily traceable to whatever printer had produced it.

I don't believe the 2nd Amendment deals with the materials or process used to produce firearms. And the right to own and bear arms would include people who make homemade firearms. For example, I have a friend who can make Kentucky long rifles from raw materials. But in the case of plastic guns, many experts insist that some metal parts would still be required for them to function reliably, which renders them useless the purpose of getting past metal detectors and other screening methods.