3D Printed Guns May Not Be So Untraceable

By Tom Knighton

One of the biggest knocks anti-gunners keep throwing out against 3D printed firearms is that they’re virtually untraceable. While that same caveat applies to all homebuilt firearms, for some reason, 3D printed guns are especially terrifying, and part of that stems from that supposedly untraceable manner.

After all, the guns lack serial numbers and never show up in ATF paperwork.

But they might not be as untraceable as many have thought.

From Popular Mechanics:

Guns assembled from digital files come without traditional safeguards like serial numbers (just like perfectly legal home-built firearms), but a researcher from the University of Buffalo claims to have developed a new method for tracing the weapons.

Wenyao Xu, a professor in the University of Buffalo’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, calls the technology “PrinTracker.” Xu’s research pertains to 3D-printing, rather than the minutiae of 3D-printed guns. In a press release, he explains that even devoid of a serial number, identifying markers are already embedded in the firearms similar to birthmarks left from the 3D-printing process.

3D-printers layer plastic or other filaments on top of each other, fashioning a gun or much more ambitious projects like a military barracks. But every printer …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms