President Trump makes a pretty good target, and it is not hard to gin up artificial controversies about him. Here’s one of the latest: There has been quite a bit of outrage over the technology for 3-D printed plastic firearms. The top echelon of the Democrats in the US Senate are hoping that this is the issue that will topple the President, so they are yammering and hammering away as if Mr. Trump himself developed the technology and did so for the purpose of allowing terrorists to manufacture “undetectable” firearms. They, desperate to score some political points, call for bans on publication of instructions on the process used, prohibition from the internet, etc., and some federal judges have complied.
Putting aside the probability that an “all-plastic” gun would likely as not blow up in the users face; likely would be usable for one shot; likely would be very inaccurate if it fired at all, and would be much more difficult and expensive to procure than a more traditional weapon, let’s recall that it would still be illegal to make or possess. Considering that every gun crime that is committed in America is done so in violation of one, several or (more likely) many gun laws; we doubt that the illegality of an undetectable gun would forestall a criminal from trying to use one; still, there are easier ways to commit mayhem; and nasty folks have been making zip guns and other types of lethal firearms for a good long time. Also illegal, by the way. But the current outrage is not over the plastic firearm – it is over President Trump, and is merely one more (if you’ll pardon the expression) piece of ammunition to use against him.
One of the definitions of the word "plastic" connotes artificiality, and that is especially fitting for this controversy.