Exactly, because obviously 3d printed objects are not, in fact, physical objects that require physical ammunition and that can be treated like any other physical object, right? Right?!
You know that the majority of stuff you see on CSI is total crap... There are three identifying marks on spent shell casings:
Fingerprints: easily avoided.
Production facility/year: not really useful for criminal investigations.
Toolmarks from firing pin and extractor: oversold television crap, toolmark analysis is quickly sinking to the same level of reputation as bitemark analysis in the real world.
None of that matters for anything that doesn't eject spent shells, but nobody would choose to print a more easily produced revolver, derringer, liberator, muzzle loader - right? Right?!
I don't know what you are arguing here. A gun is a physical item, as is ammunition. You can stop somebody, search them, and find out if they have a gun and/or ammunition. You cannot do any such thing with encryption, as it is not a physical entity. Whether your gun is a regular gun, 3d printed or made of candy cane does not change the fact that it is a physical item. I don't care where it comes from or how you built it, as a physical item, it still follows a very different logic than virtual entities.
Ah, given the context my mind went right to ammunition microstamping.
Encryption software and 3d printed guns are simply implementations of ideas, both physically interact with the world and both can be observed. ABS plastic stock is to blank hard drive as printed gun is to c:/pgp.exe.
