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Have you heard of 3D printing? Well, it could be the future of almost everything.

Basically, engineers have managed to take the concept of two-dimensional printing, in which ink is vertically layered on horizontal paper, to the next level. A computer design enables a printer to weave together plastic polymers from the bottom up to create any object you could possibly want.

Give that ability to the human race and leave it to us to mess it up: it was only a matter of time before we found out (a la the Vice documentary) that 3D printing was obviously being used to create illegal guns and drugs.

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FlickrJunkie via Compfight cc

Today, GOP mayoral hopeful John Catsimatidis released a radio ad touting his support for "pro-active police work" and blasting foes of the NYPD's controversial practice of stop and frisk. The ad followed on the heels of a new report out from the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene showing that firearm deaths per capita in New York City plummeted by 32 percent between 2000 and 2012. The report itself noted the state's tight gun laws and permit review process, while Mayor Bloomberg also highlighted "proactive policing" as a factor in a Sunday address.

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Deborah Farley, a 53-year-old mother in Queens, was arrested today, a day after her second-grade son was caught in school with a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol, a flare gun, and live ammunition in his backpack.

Update:
Glory to God, Alex Jones uploaded a video after his interview on Piers Morgan Tonight, and dare we say that it might've outdone his original rant, which led to him trending nationally on Twitter. Jones was back in his hotel room after the taping, and he claimed to fear for his life.

Before yesterday, Jones was best known for his conspiracy theories, and in his video he recalled being cased after the show by shady, intimidating police officers in advance of a possible NYPD/Mafia murder plot. Jones broke it down: "The way this will work is, 'Oh see, they're here protesting gun grabs. Oh, some crack dealers shot 'em.' And if you don't know that Bloomberg's total Mafia, you're not living on Planet Earth and reality."

He ended what he suspected might be his last ever recorded video with this possibly eternal line: "We've got Goodfellas climbing out our butts right now. Alex Jones signing off for infowars.com. I love you."

Update 2: Alex Jones is still alive.

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The argument against gun control should've gone out the window the moment 20-year-old Adam Lanza walked up to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and with completely legal firearms he plucked from his mother sometime before shooting her multiple times in the head, blew through a wall of glass, walked inside, and began slaughtering young children and the staff who protected them.

By the time he was finished, mercifully ending the onslaught with a shot to his own head, 20 children were dead, none older than seven years old, along with six adults who gave their lives protecting their doomed students. It was the worst day in America since, well, a few months ago, when James Eagan Holmes walked into a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and sprayed bullets, like raindrops, into the seats and limbs and torsos and heads of moviegoers, killing 12 and injuring 58.

We're all healing, as we've had to do too many times this year alone, and everyone's faced with the question of what to do now. This is America, after all, one of the greatest nations on earth and, more than a few people will tell you, a country whose lands and citizens are handpicked and protected by God Himself. This can't happen. Our children are not livestock.

If any good can come out of so many lives senselessly lost, it's that America would maybe, as John Surico wrote, seize the day to act on guns, so that what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School would never happen on our shores ever again.

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WNYC's Ailsa Chang and the wizards at the station's Data News Team have the story this morning you must read if you're interested in gun safety and/or stop-and-frisk.

Mayor Bloomberg has been on a roll defending stop-and-frisk lately, trying desperately to get people to embrace his controversial policing practices a decade into his administration. One tactic has been trying to convince New York liberals (who generally like the idea of gun control) that illegal guns are coming off the streets because of stop-and-frisk (the policy of searching hundreds of thousands of innocent black and brown folks a year which liberals generally don't like).

But, as Chang and the WNYC Data Team show, it looks like there is little correlation between where illegal guns are seized and where stops and frisks occur. At all. Whatsoever.

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Sam Levin

Mayor Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion talking to reporters yesterday.

New Yorkers who don't like stop-and-frisk can go live in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. and see how they like the murder rates there!

This is what a pretty braggy Mike Bloomberg said yesterday in response to a question from the Voice about the logic behind his repeated defense of the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy -- that it saves thousands of lives.

We were interested in the argument of Michael Powell at the Times, who recently questioned the go-to response of the mayor and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly that stop-and-frisk has played an important role over the past decade in saving 5,600 lives.

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Sam Levin

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio at an immigration event earlier this year.

The debate over the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy is in full swing this week with a proposal from the public advocate prompting a badmouthing match between the mayor and the elected official who hopes to replace him in 2013.

Yesterday, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, an expected mayoral candidate, launched a campaign to reform stop-and-frisk, urging Mayor Bloomberg to dramatically reduce the number of unwarranted stops. That led Bloomberg, via a statement from his deputy mayor, to criticize de Blasio and dismiss his ideas as out of touch with the realities of crime in the city. De Blasio kept the momentum going this morning with a conference call with reporters to, well, respond to the mayor's response to him.

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Sam Levin

City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez with family members of John Collado who was killed last year.

A day after thousands marched in Union Square for Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old who was shot in Florida, the family members of the late John Collado gathered in a small law office yesterday afternoon to call for a federal investigation into the Inwood father of five's shooting death at the hands of a plainclothes cop.

Collado was shot last September by a detective with the NYPD, who was carrying out a drug bust. The family members and their lawyer claim that the officer's shooting of Collado, who was not a target in the sting operation, was unwarranted and that the officer didn't reveal that he was with the NYPD and should have had backup with him. Officials claim that Collado had the detective in a chokehold as the officer was attempting to arrest Collado's neighbor.

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