Over the course of 72 hours, the United States has been struck with multiple cases of gun-related violence that has led to many deaths. It started with the Saugus High School shooting in Santa Clarita, California, which led to two deaths. A couple days later, in Fresno, CA, two gunmen started “shooting at a backyard family gathering over the weekend that left four people dead and six injured.”

And if that weren’t enough, less than 24 hours later, another gunman killed 3 people at a Walmart parking lot in Duncan, Oklahoma. And it could’ve been much worse as witnessed in the El Paso Walmart shooting back in August, resulting in 22 people being killed.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an end to this dark and fatal tunnel that we’re stuck in. Even as gun reform legislation continues picking up support, the future could very well put a dampener to such legislation with the introduction of highly efficient 3D-printed guns. Mind you, there are still easier and less expensive ways of creating guns that don’t involve a 3D printer, but like any technology, as time passes by, efficiency will increase and cost will decline.

Which then raises the question: In a world of proliferated DIY gun-making via advanced 3D printing, how will the general population be able to protect themselves from becoming victims of another gun-related massacre like those seen in California and Oklahoma in the last few days? Below is a list of 5 possible ways we might be able to achieve such a seemingly impossible feat:

1. Emotion and Behavior-Controlled Implants

Known as “wireheading,” despite how it might sound, the idea isn’t as far-fetched nor as dystopian as some would lead you to believe. If you could use cranial implants to either stimulate the pleasure centers of your brain or suppress harmful emotions/behavior, would you? What if we could use those same exact implants to suppress behaviors of which normally lead to committing massacres as witnessed in California?

“Wireheads don’t want to raise baby wireheads.” — David Pearce

Six years ago, in a study published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers revealed that they were able to electrically stimulate the brain using implants to correct misfiring neural circuits. These misfires led to a common psychiatric disorder known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). But when stimulated via the implant, symptoms of the disorder were dampened.

A year later, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a $70 million program that aims to develop brain implants that’ll properly regulate emotions for the mentally ill. Of course, this shouldn’t be deemed as a permanent solution. Indeed, as the philosopher David Pearce argues in The Abolitionist Project, “wireheads…don’t want to raise baby wireheads.” Then again, until we do discover a more permanent solution, we’ll have to rely on only what’s available.

2. Ban Ammunition

Another line of thinking that’s been proposed is to simply ban the manufacturing and purchasing of ammunition. After all, as the thinking goes, it’s impossible for someone to 3D print gunpowder, which is the necessary ingredient for all firearms. 3D printing a gun is one thing, of which has been repeatedly proven to be within the realm of possibility; but to 3D print gunpowder? Not likely.

For the time being, this would be a sensible alternative. In order to purchase ammunition, one would have to solely rely on the black market, of which a single bullet would be incredibly expensive. This alone could help reduce the number of gun-related crimes (even those orchestrated with the use of 3D-printed weaponry)…for now.

The problem, however, is that it’s not a long-term solution. Even if we were to accept that 3D printing gunpowder will forever remain an impossible feat in the future, to solely define “ammunition” as that which is based on gunpowder would be misleading. In the future, we should expect creative and radically different firearms via 3D printing. When keeping this in mind, as logic would dictate, we should then equally expect creative and radically different forms of ammunition — items of which are 3D printed and potentially fatal with the right amount of propulsion.

3. Sousveillance

Now I’ve talked about sousveillance before, but in case you’ve never heard of this term, let me first bring you up to speed. Sousveillance serves in direct contrast from that of surveillance; rather than having a top-down surveillance state where those in power surveil the general population, sousveillance entails more of a bottom-up model, whereby the general population has equal access and the means to surveil those who surveil them. In other words, open-sourcing the surveillance state in favor of open transparency.

By 2020, there’ll be an estimated 1 trillion sensors in operation, from GPS, smart homes, energy harvesting, to biomedical. And by 2022, there’ll be an estimated 45 billion cameras in operation, from smartphones to IP to CCTV. As a result, not only will this empower the general population with the same amount of surveilling power as those up top, it could also potentially allow us to stop crimes (like gun-related massacres) before they’re ever committed.

With the amount of data that would be flowing in from these sensors and cameras, there are some researchers who believe they could formulate an algorithm from that data that predicts terroristic activities. In 2016, a study was published in Science, whereby researchers outlined a method of predicting future terrorist events by studying behavioral patterns (both online and offline) of suspected terrorists. And if this sounds too similar to the dystopian sci-fi film Minority Report, don’t worry, no telepathic human guinea pigs were used in formulating this algorithm.