3D printing of ammunition magazines threatens U.S. gun regulation plans

Unlike printing guns, which doesn't work, printing ammunition magazines doesn't face any practical problems.  Of course, people could always make the magazines using simple tools in any machine shop (after all they are just metal boxes with a spring), but my guess is that these 3D printers will capture attention in a way that the old machine shops didn't.  This article is from Metro News:

After the tragedies of Sandy Hook and Aurora, the U.S. government is preparing to introduce stricter guidelines on gun ownership. But supporters of the second amendment could get around them by printing their own firearms at home.
The technology is still developing but 2012 saw the first shots fired from guns with printed parts. ‘Gun hacking’ is a growth community in online forums and has become serious business.
“I have five people now making AK-47 magazines – they’re incredibly easy to reproduce”, Cody Wilson, CEO of the Defense Distributed company in Texas, told Metro. A firm believer in the right to bear arms, Wilson is deliberately producing parts for assault weapons likely to be banned by new controls.
“(U.S. Vice-President) Joe Biden’s group are using the assumption that if you control the channel you control the product – but that is not the case any more”, says Wilson. His company have made open-source code for over 30 gun parts available online, and claims they have been receiving thousands of downloads a day. . . .

As Peter K, the person who sent me the link to this information, noted these printing machines are everywhere: "my brother in law owns a couple of these type of machines for his jewelry business. you can make just about anything with them."