This week marks the 65th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, and the 20th anniversary of the Korean War Veterans Memorial. Service members and families gathered at the memorial over the weekend to hear the names read of the fallen soldiers. The Korean War Veterans Memorial Foundation is currently pushing legislation that would allow them to build a glass wall around the memorial with these names listed.

In May of 2013, the online organization Defense Distributed publicly released the blueprints for a plastic 3-D printed handgun they designed and built. Within two days, the U.S. Department of Defense ordered the group to remove this information, but it was too late. By then, over 100,000 people had downloaded the plans for the single-shot pistol, dubbed the Liberator.

The process of 3-D printing involves the layering of an additive, such as plastic, to create a model based on a digital file. This technology has the potential to revolutionize several industries and sectors, including manufacturing, medical implantation and art, but some are fearing the dangerous implications of 3-D printed firearms.

Last year, Illinois State Senator Ira Silverstein (D-Chicago) and Illinois State Representative Elgie Sims (D-Chicago) proposed respective bills in the Illinois Senate and House that would ban the production of 3-D printed firearms without a Federal Firearms License. Both proposals are active in the Illinois General Assembly.

The current federal law, the Undetectable Firearms Act, outlaws firearms that could go unnoticed by a metal detector. That means a gun must have at least a 3.7-ounce metal component.

However, gun control advocates argue that 3-D printed firearms can be built with a purely superficial metal piece that can be removed and still yield the gun operable. Furthermore, the guns tend to have a short shelf life, making them particularly dangerous.

“They’re not reliable,” said Mark Walsh, program director for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. “There are only a certain number of opportunities to fire a bullet before the weapon malfunctions and has the potential to injure the person using it or someone else.”

The Liberator, a plastic 3-D printed gun, disassembled. (Photo: Justin Pickard)

Julie Friedman Steele, founder and CEO of the 3-D Printer Experience, a Chicago facility that manufactures 3-D printed objects, disagrees with restrictions placed on the technology.

“The first human innovation was fire, you could either use it for good or you could be an arsonist,” Friedman Steele said. “No matter what innovation it is, you’re going to find people using it for good or using it for bad, but if you take away the ability to use it, then there is so much innovation for good that we won’t be able to access.”

Back in 2013, Philadelphia became the first U.S. city to ban the production of 3-D printed firearms. That same year, the United Kingdom passed strict legislation banning all 3-D printed guns or gun components. Violators in Great Britain could face up to 10 years in prison.

In a city like Chicago that’s no stranger to gun violence, gun control advocates are hoping for similar legislation.

(Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on Medill Reports: Chicago.)

Marking the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Vietnam War, a new exhibit allows visitors to take a retrospective look at the war’s legacy through the lens of American journalists.

It opened Friday at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

“With the exhibit,” said Curator Carrie Christoffersen, “we really hope that people will gain the better understanding of how and why journalists did what they did, how they brought coverage of the Vietnam War to a divided nation.”

The exhibit, called “Reporting Vietnam,” showcases historic photos, news footage, newspapers and magazines, evocative music and more than 90 artifacts that characterized the war era.

Challenging perceptions of America’s first televised war, it considers the question, “Did the press lose the war?”

The answer was “no” for Neil Lakdawala, a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

“The media was not always just trying to portrait what the government wants,” he said. “I think they did a good deal of work to bring the truth to the light.”

For both Lakdawala and Christoffersen, the highlight of the exhibit was the collection of Larry Burrows, an English photographer known for his pictures of the war.

On display is a helmet found at the site of the 1971 helicopter crash in Laos that killed Burrows and three counterparts.

There also are iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning pictures that symbolized the brutality of the war, such as “Napalm Girl,” which triggered worldwide controversy over the image of a nude, screaming South Vietnamese girl whose clothes and flesh were burned off by napalm.

“What’s a better way to learn about Vietnam and the war than by people who were actually in the war,” Lakdawala said.

The exhibit, accompanied by the screening of an original documentary chronicling the war’s key moments, continues through mid-September.

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