YouTube may be full of people failing with with CNC equipment but there’s also a large number of people doing incredible stuff. As well as a number of videos of people handcrafting high quality firearms. The barrier of entry for a 3D printer is much lower and you can print an entire gun bar the firing pin.

I wasn’t aware we were just legislating to only control the unskilled. There’s no guarantee in the future that the danger will be from a lone wolf. It could equally be from a group resourced to build their own arms factory. Or the factory might be built by an already cash rich group with a desire for firearms for protection and sale to the unscrupulous.

But you’re right Moz, it may well be easier to import firearms. It’s estimated that there are over 200 million AK47s in the world, and that they sell for as low as US$60 in some places. You never know we might get some of the firearms that Ross Meurant bought up in the last great buy back (and sold to Africa) trickling back.

We need better gun control legislation and we need legislation that deals with the fact that you can download gun blueprints. From sites that advertise “No prior CNC experience required” and “Legally manufacture unserialized rifles and pistols in the comfort and privacy of home”.

Or we can just bury our heads in the sand, and pretend yes people have sold back their AR15s (and not stripped, greased and wrapped them in polythene and buried them under the shed).

Given that 3D printers and CNC metal working equipment can make fully automatic weapons based on plans that are legal in other jurisdictions focusing on the removing the legal right to purchase semi-automatic weapons seems awfully short sighted.

Legally purchasing a weapon offers an opportunity to inspect who has a weapon. The experience of the last few centuries has shown us that prohibition rarely removes the prohibited goods from circulation it just creates a black market. unregulated and largely invisible.

Whether legally purchased weapons or illegally manufactured, firearms need ammunition. Ammunition is not so easily manufactured, and involves a bit more than steel and plastic. The controls put in place to monitor the sale of pharmaceuticals to prevent the manufacture of home-bake seem to have been successful to some extent. We should be looking at similar controls for ammunition.

And we should keep in mind that the weapon of choice for attacks in Europe has been trucks and vans driven into crowds.

Fetishing the AR15 because it's based on the M16 offers us no safety.