Guns in space are cool when it comes to Han Solo, Captain Kirk, or Ellen Ripley, but otherwise, most people agree that space should be kept weapon-free. That was a big focus of John F. Kennedy’s moonshot speech, as he intimated over and over that the USSR might use space as a “terrifying theater of war.” Space technologies have militaristic uses and connotations, even if they’re not designed for anything of the sort, which was why Russia’s successful launch of Sputnik in 1957 kicked the Space Race into high gear. The U.S. knew that if they had a rocket powerful enough to launch a satellite, they could also launch nukes. Plus, satellites can be used to spy. That’s part of why the U.N. and other countries approved the Outer Space Treaty, which, among other things, restricts the use of weapons of mass destruction in space, as well as using space for military bases or weapons testing (“The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes”). Despite all this, it used to be common practice for cosmonauts to have access to a gun in the emergency kit of all Soyuz capsules.

Apparently, this all started in 1965 when a return Soyuz flight landed off-course, prompting survival stories that boasted bears, wolves, and other dangerous Siberian wildlife that warranted protection. Though the cosmonauts never actually had to fight anyone or anything and were quickly rescued, the idea had been born that certain situations astronauts encounter could be dangerous enough to warrant a gun. Even after the formation of the ISS, the practice continued.

Police in the UK recovered a 3D-printed gun and what they believe is a 3D-printed magazine for bullets during a raid in Manchester yesterday. Next to the gun was a high-tech 3D printer, which police fear might have been part of a bigger scheme to churn out a new type of firearm.

This isn’t the first such gun ever made or found—that honor belongs to the Liberator, designed by Defense Distributed. The single-shot gun has sixteen functional parts, fifteen of which are made from plastic, including the springs. The only non-plastic part is a nail that functions as the firing pin. A 3D printer can produce the body of the gun overnight, and printing a new barrel takes only a matter of few hours.

Every once in a while on this site, I get moronic enough to insert my personal opinion about national concerns into my stories, and so doing a story about a crowd-funded gun seems like the very story I would run away from. But this is something that I’d have to think the majority of people can agree is a step in the right direction as far as “gun control” is concerned. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be getting the attention it deserves.

Safe Gun Technology, Inc. (SGTi) wants to make gun owners more like James Bond than ever before, though it sadly has less to do with martinis and girls than some might hope. The company is trying to fund an assault rifle prototype that would use biometric fingerprint recognition to directly link the gun to its owner like never before. In 2008, the team was able to successfully retrofit a Remington 870 shotgun with the technology, and now they’re upping their game with the assault style rifle. In case you wondered what makes this a Bond weapon, his Walther PPK was equipped with a biometric pistol grip for last year’s Skyfall.