...when pressure-bearing components are made from thermoplastics, which has never been argued to be a well-suited use. When parts are printed from metal alloys... the game changes.

And for what it's worth, there is a Canadian inventor (who is remaining anonymous) who has successfully printed and fired a single-shot rifle.

3D printing is destroying the separation between idea or data, and fabrication, and it's doing it on an affordable, individual level. Gun control from a regulatory and political standpoint has always depended on tight control over firearm's entry points to commerce (manufacturers and importers), and compliance by intimidation of everyone else. If everybody can be a manufacturer, and it doesn't require machinist skills to make something of workable quality, centralized control is impossible.

Watch - the response is going to be to try and make possessing 3D data or plans a criminal offense. Thought crime.

A few more decades like this, and you won't be able to tell this nation ever had flesh-and-blood inhabitants just from looking at our statutes and caselaw!

I'm assuming they had this thing called a "battery". Most computers with built in speakers AND microphones are laptops of some kind.

...it'd also be stupid simple to detect. All you need is a sound meter.

Or, a dog.

I'm okay with getting rid of The Scarlett Letter.

I'd actually pay good money for the left hand-half of this so I could use it like a thumbstick and have variable movement direction / speed input instead of just four discrete keys like the usual WASD config.

Being able to sneak slowly in juuuust the right direction in Deus Ex or Splinter Cell, or steer more naturally in World of Tanks would be great. I'm sick of only having the choice of four directions, and either not moving or going full speed.

You'd also get the ability to do away with dedicated walk and sprint buttons, all you'd maybe need is crouch or use the other touch pad to control height of stance.

...was I spent the next few hours playing and replaying Papers Please.

The BSA is the official boy's youth program for the Mormon church (as selected by the Mormons, not the BSA). Salt Lake City has a disproportionate and unhealthy influence on BSA national policy as a result.

Basically, when the Boy Scouts were on the verge of disappearing into history a few decades back, the Mormons stepped in and said "we'll give you a big shot in the arm but we get the reins". And the BSA said "sure, anything, where do I sign? Right here under where it says 'consent for transference of soul?'"

Is to be as cute and memorable as possible to increase your own chances of continued existence.

(Sometimes referred to as the "WALL*E Rule")

What, they'll build Australia 2: Outback Harder?

These are the kinds of warnings WE used to give about RUSSIAN satellite nations.

This is all turning into a bad dream...

...bring on the Kaiju, ultimate dutch rudder, we need a young priest and an old priest... ...did I miss any obvious ones?

The NRA is a gun OWNERS advocacy group.

Firearms manufacturers have the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

The NRA is obviously going to stand in the way of something that makes it extremely difficult or impossible for common citizens to legally acquire firearms and ammunition.

Well, considering the ATF - in its infinite malice - has banned solid copper and brass hunting projectiles as "armor piercing" even though they work EXTREMELY well as hunting bullets, that leaves us with nothing but options that are less effective and vastly less humane.

The attack on lead ammo is about gun control, not lead abatement. Period. Which is why the EPA's jurisdiction was explicitly drawn up short of regulating ammunition.

...aren't so amazing when you look at the track record of Russian manufacturing.