I've come to believe the current RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIVVEEESSS!!!! freak-out over 3D guns isn't about any of the stuff they're saying it's about. So much is so transparently dumb and/or untrue (i.e. the Ghost Gunner actually mills guns from metal), there's something deeper there...
I think what that deeper thing is, is that the easy home fabrication of guns -- even it's expensive & rare -- finally gives the lie to the myth that we can "control" guns without a blanket ban.
At this point anyone paying close attention to this issue knows it's true: "controlling" them by make/model/feature is classic security theater. It doesn't do anything except make some people feel safer.
As @StephenGutowski and many others have been pointing out, the DOJ ruling changes nothing as a practical matter. These files were all over the internet anyway, & the Ghost Gunner was on sale, etc. But it's high-profile & public & changes perceptions of what is & isn't possible.
And that changing the public's perceptions of the space of possibilities here, that's the real danger. Because the kind of 80's style gun control on offer was never possible in the era of modern modular weapons, but gun controllers were invested in the fiction that it was.
And now that fiction is being ripped from them, and they're just melting down and thrashing about.
The only gun control that's left as a practical, enforceable matter is large, blanket bans & confiscations. That's really it. Everything else, the white market works around & the black market ignores. But you can't have "gun control" as a political issue if that's widely known.
Because these massive, blanket bans are unpopular, despite confusing poll questions that conflate "assault weapon" bans (popular) with bans on the majority of guns sold (== semi-autos, & not popular). So that's not "gun control" you can raise money on & campaign on.
So the revelation, in public, that home gun fabrication is a practical reality, is nothing less than pulling back the curtain on a giant scam. Politicians & activists have developed a franchise centered around what is mostly a fantasy, like free ponies & border walls.
And now the scam's time has run out, just like real actual gun control's time ran out when weapons became modular and hackable with simple tools & no specialized expertise.
