Effective Gun Control

If you have a drill, a hacksaw, and $30-$40 of hardware, you can make a single shot pistol. It doesn't even require any specialized knowledge. For additional $20-$30 and a moderate amount of knowledge, you can make an (admittedly low quality) open bolt SMG.
And of course, this is buying that hardware in US stores. In Brazil or the Philippines, there are entire illicit industries devoted to making firearms of varying quality.
In the end, implementing effective gun requires two things:
1. Killing off everyone who has enough knowledge to make a gun on their own.
and
2. Destroying all the tooling and hardware usable for making a gun.
And then, after we've returned to the stone age because we destroyed all our industry and killed everyone who had the knowledge to rebuild, we'll finally be free of the firearms menace.

National (or Universal) Injunctions and Free Speech

A Washington District Judge has issued a Nationwide Temporary Restraining Order (TRO, also known as universal injunctions) to prevent DEFDIST from distributing the DEFCAD files. Given that at least one SCOTUS justice has commented on such injunctions in a fairly derogatory fashion (see Justice Thomas' concurrence, starting on pg 47 of the PDF), it seems likely that such injunctions are on thin ice... But since the TRO only mentions DEFDIST, and pretty much all the other interested parties are happily distributing the files (See codeisfreespeech.com and fosscad.org, among other places, and note that some of these places only provide links to Magnet URIs for torrents or links to an external download mirror), it's not likely going to have much effect, even if SCOTUS doesn't decide to slap it down ASAP. Especially since at least a few are going to respond to any such TRO with "Make me" at which point the judge either finds out just how little power he has, or the case gets fast tracked to SCOTUS.  The Streisand effect is in full force.
Links to the magnet URIs for the original DEFDIST mega pack (the one that predates the State Department cease and desist, the settling of which set off the current to do), and the current FOSSCAD mega pack can be found on the Gun Related Downloads tab. As Mr. Universe said, "You can't stop the signal."

3D Printed Guns Aren't the Boogieman

The response to the settlement between Cody Wilson’s DEFDIST and the State Department has been nothing short of excessive, for a variety of reasons. If you listen to the right broadcasts, and read the right articles, no one could blame you for thinking that there will be blood in the streets. A district judge in Washington state has issued a temporary restraining order to keep DEFDIST from distributing their files through the DEFCAD portal. Leaving aside the obvious technical problems in his reasoning (the cat is well out of the bag, and trying to stuff it back in just invokes the Streisand Effect), and potential legal issues (at least one SCOTUS justices is less than equitably inclined towards universal injunctions issued by lower courts, not to mention that this WILL get challenged on first amendment grounds), there is absolutely no reason for preventing the distribution of the DEFCAD files.

There are two ways to make a gun with a 3D printer. The first is to 3D print the entire gun. The type example of this is Cody Wilson’s Liberator pistol (named after the WWII era gun). As with it’s namesake, it is a single shot pistol with limited uses, albeit in a smaller (and not terribly adequate) caliber. It is useful mostly for causing freakouts by people who don’t realize how useless it is. Most of the freaking out seems to be due to the the fact that it’s plastic, and the chunk of metal included in the design isn’t structural and can be removed (illegally) without adversely affecting the gun, making a weapon that could theoretically slip past a metal detector. Just what someone is going to do with only one or two rounds of ammunition and a single shot handgun I’m not sure, but it isn’t going go well for them. I’d be more concerned by all the Swiss Army knives , actual useful guns and high explosives the TSA keeps missing. There’s no point in getting all worked up over a single shot, single (assuming you want to keep your fingers) use pistol when it seems like pretty much everything else already gets past the TSA.

The second method of making a gun involves making a receiver (or lower receiver, depending on the gun), which, in a factory produced gun would be the serialized (with exceptions, home made firearms aren’t required to be serialized) and controlled part. AR-15s are quite popular for this, due to the ease of assembly and a multitude of interchangeable options. Of course, most of those parts are metal, so your homebuilt AR isn’t going through any metal detectors. It is, however a useful gun… but people have been building them in their garages for decades, using everything from plastic, to wood, to the traditional aluminum, and even steel, using various tools and techniques, some of which wouldn’t be out of place in the late 19th century.

In fact, 3D printed firearms should be very far down anyone’s list of priorities, and that includes people who want to get rid of guns. Slamfire pipe shotguns are significantly easier, have a lower entry point, have a very minimal cost per build, and require no specialized knowledge to produce. Open bolt submachine guns have been produced using common tools and materials purchased from a hardware store, and there are a multitude of how to manuals that make it so you need only minimal knowledge for production. There are even a couple that are aimed at mass production, as opposed to small and individual scale production. This particular brouhaha is about sixty years out of date.

On Gun Laws and Tragedy

I have some notes for any anti-gun individuals who might read this post, and a couple for the people on my side.

For the Anti-gun folks:

1. Police were called to the Parkland shooter's (I refuse to learn the names of these assholes) home MULTIPLE times. As in 39. He posted credible threats on the internet UNDER HIS OWN NAME. People called the FBI twice about him. The armed school resource officer, rather than do his job, decided to sit the shooting out. For all intents and purposes, Law Enforcement at every level failed to do their jobs. These are the same people who'd be enforcing any new gun laws that get passed. What makes you think that they're competent do do that?
2. If you read the Second Amendment, the operative clause says, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." There's a distinct lack of "unless it'll make people safer" or "unless it saves one child."
3. Even if the Second Amendment did allow for that, the problem isn't guns. Here are some data points:
1. 19 dead in a knife attack in Japan
2. 33 Dead in a mass stabbing at a Chinese train station
3. 22 stabbed outside a school (according to this article, knife attacks are apparently not uncommon in China)
4. 334 dead in the Beslan School Siege
5. 87 Dead in Happy Land arson
6. 168 dead in the Oklahoma City Bombing.
7.   
   
8.  If guns were the problem, our murder rate would make Honduras' look like kindergarten play. In fact, if there is a correlation between guns and homicide, it's a negative one.
9. If you refuse to accept Honduras' homicide rate as relevant, you're admitting that it's more complicated than "Guns cause crime".
4. Bump stocks aren't the problem either. They've been used once for a mass killing - mass killings are more likely to involve arson, explosives or trucks, than they are to involve a bump-fire stock. And yet people are getting all worked up about a piece of plastic that any chump with a 3d printer (and, if you're willing to do the assembly yourself, 3d printers are surprisingly affordable) can push out by the dozens or hundreds, depending on how committed he is. And you don't actually need a bump-fire stock to bump fire - it just makes it more comfortable.
5. Do you really want to give Trump more power?
6. Luty, Metral, Sten, Uru. Do you know what all those names have in common? They're all submachine guns that can be built with minimal tools and hardware store components. The Luty SMG was actually designed with that in mind. Variants of all those guns (except, AFAIK, the Luty) get mass produced by illegal arms factories in various nations and sold to criminals. most of these nations have very strict gun control. 
7. Gun control is not the answer, not even a part of it. There is, in fact, no simple answer. Allowing qualified teachers to carry, and putting armed LEOs in as many schools as possible is a start, but it isn't a complete answer in and of itself.

For my side:

1. Specifically for those who voted Trump in the primaries: now that Trump is advocating a useless ban on bump-fire stocks and raising the buying age of guns to 21, do you feel stupid? I hope you do. Just because someone says they're on your side doesn't mean that they actually are.
   EDIT: I'm not blaming anyone for voting for Trump in the General Election. Maximilien Robespierre is a more attractive choice than Hillary.
2. For the NRA - You quisling fuckweasels. I hope you're happy with yourselves for proposing a ban on a piece of plastic. The president apparently agrees with you.

No, You don't Need a Factory To make Firearms

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The original AR-15 design is 58 years old (it's precursor design, the AR-10 is 60), the original AK design is 68 years old. The 1911, one of the definitive semi-auto pistol designs, dates from, you guessed it, 1911, with precursor designs and prototypes from the late 1890s. Machine guns predate the 20th century, and rapid fire crank weapons predate the American Civil War. Sniper rifles with effective ranges in excess of 800 yards were used to great effect in the aforementioned American Civil War, and current top-line sniper rifles are generally bolt action, which predates smokeless powder and metallic cartridges. Since all of these inventions, manufacturing technology has done nothing but improve. Basic machine tools, available to everyone, can be used to produce professional quality firearms. New developments, such as desktop CNC mills and 3-d printers simply reduce the amount of space and skill required.

So it should come as now surprise when criminals circumvent the law with homemade firearms.