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With each day that passes, Congress' efforts to curb automatic weapons and high capacity magazines becomes more irrelevant — and maybe not so much because of politics as technology.

In December, shortly after the Newtown shooting, attention turned to Defense Distributed, a libertarian group aiming to provide blueprints for firearms that could be created with 3D printers in the comfort of one's own home. The first reviews were poor; a video posted by the group suggested that its plastic-printed lower receiver for an AR-15 rifle could only fire a half dozen bullets before crumbling.

That was in December. And when President Obama in his State of the Union speech last month said 3D printing had the power to "revolutionize" manufacturing, he probably didn't mean like this. Within weeks, Defense Distributed released designs for a high-capacity magazine, derisively named the "Cuomo" in honor of gun control legislation championed by New York's governor. And yesterday, an update to the lower receiver:

After hundreds of rounds, it remains intact.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to begin consideration of a number of measures aimed at limiting access to firearms. Among them, according to multiple reports: universal background checks for gun purchases, a ban on high-capacity magazines, and even that impossible new ban on assault weapons. On the House side, Rep. Steve Israel called for a ban on 3D-printed guns, to which Defense Distributed replied, "Good luck." (This is a slight, family-friendly edit of the group's original response.)