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DoomUK

3D printed gun

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Since they only printed the stock and maybe parts of a clip, and not some of the metallurgically important parts (bolt, barrel,receive), it's really no worse than doing your own woodcarved stock.

Edit: NM, I had a (slightly) older article in mind in which they only printed the aforementioned parts as spares for existing gun designs. This is more like those all-plastic "spy guns" meant to pass through airport controls. Well, it's no big news that you can make a plastic gun. It is technically possible, albeit with limitations on power/calibre. OK, so not it can also be 3D-printed rather than CNC-machined or molded (BTW, those methods would give superior products).

As to fears/ethical issues: how many people own a 3D printer? Plus, someone determined to use one for an assassination or in a scenario where almost total stealth would be a prerequisite, is likely to be a legit government agent (a black ops one, at worst), and have access to the real deal anyway.

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My friend said her work has a 3D printer and they tested out a few printer guns and the heat of firing them made the barrel warp so it can't be reloaded after the first few shots. But I guess if you're there to kill 1 person it wouldn't matter.

Watching the video that's probably why he only fired it once instead of reloading it again and again. Wow they're calling this the world's first printer gun? When my friend told me her work did this it was 2 years ago.

I've never actually seen a printer gun. Wow that thing is big.

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The kind of 3D printers available to the general public at the moment (RepRap, Makerbot, etc.) are interesting demos of the technology but ultimately just rather crude toys. I suspect this is going to be a much bigger thing in the near future. I suspect this kind of problem is going to become a lot bigger in the near future.

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fraggle said:

I suspect this kind of problem is going to become a lot bigger in the near future.


I'm not convinced. It's never going to be economically viable for everyone to own and operate their own 3D printer, even after the start-up costs. Mass-producing products at factories is always going to be more cost-effective, and only a tiny fraction of the material possessions we use in daily life could be satisfactorily replaced by printed objects. I'm looking around me as I type this, at the books, the electronics and appliances, the furniture, the glassware, and the only things I'd be willing to have replaced by a hunk of plastic are a couple of salt shakers. A few criminal organizations might end up using 3D printers to make guns or other contraband but then they would also have the resources to get that stuff the old fashioned way.

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A plot device in some 90s spy/triller movie was precisely a mysterious killer openly threatening to infiltrate a formal event where the president would be present, and said killer has a custom-made all-plastic gun. Plus, anyone operating a CNC/drill/lathe can fashion a much superior weapon using real gun materials.

It's also no big news that there are a lot of "quasi guns" (e.g. gas operated air pistols, but also certain toys) which are made of strong enough materials to withstand modification and gain the ability to fire a few shots or even become full-fledged firearms. E.g. there's very little difference between a .177 air rifle's barrel and a .22 barrel, or a .22 round with a .177 bullet...

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Lawmakers attempt to step up legislation to ban 3D printer users from making guns

WOODBURY - Lawmakers say they want to step up legislation that would ban 3D printer users from using the devices to make guns.

According to officials, users input a digital blueprint and then the weapon is printed with molded plastic.

Huntington Congressman Steve Israel and Sen. Chuck Schumer plan to introduce legislation to extend a ban on plastic weapons

That didn't take long.

And the congressman's name is Israel...

Here is a more detailed interview with said congressman.

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I'm not sure how one could enforce that ban, short of banning 3D printers themselves.

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Gez said:

I'm not sure how one could enforce that ban, short of banning 3D printers themselves.

obligatory shape recognition watchdog programs running onn the printers, sending alerts to FBI?

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You can make a usable and safe 12 gauge shotgun with less money and effort, using readily-avalible materials and regular hand tools. A British gentlemen wrote several books on how to construct working and safe submachineguns in 9mm Luger, he also wrote books on how to make shotgun ammunition and pistol ammunition from hardware-store components and how to make gunpowder. This curiosity is merely symbolic, it is clearly designed to be an "insurgent weapon" in the same vein as the original Liberator or the CIA "Deer Gun" pistol.

obligatory shape recognition watchdog programs running onn the printers, sending alerts to FBI?


Not only is that creepily Orwellian, people making their own guns aren't breaking the law, Federally at least, in the United States. State laws vary, but almost all states allow you to make a firearm if you can legally possess it in said state. People could simply replace the PCB with a "clean" version that has no FBI bullshit on it and print whatever the hell they wanted. Also, wouldn't that require the printer to be connected to the Internet in some fashion? Or does it have a cellphone built in?

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Naked Snake said:

[less] effort

Less effort than downloading a file and then pressing a button?

I find DIY gunsmithing quite interesting, but this has worrying implications (even if it's not an immediate concern). It requires no skill or talent at all to construct a gun this way, and in principle everyone has access to one. Even if the blueprints are somehow strictly regulated, how long do you think it will be before they show up on torrent networks or whatever?

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DoomUK said:

Less effort than downloading a file and then pressing a button?

I find DIY gunsmithing quite interesting, but this has worrying implications (even if it's not an immediate concern). It requires no skill or talent at all to construct a gun this way, and in principle everyone has access to one. Even if the blueprints are somehow strictly regulated, how long do you think it will be before they show up on torrent networks or whatever?


The amount of effort (work) involved in acquiring the $9,000+ for a 3d printer is greather than the amount of effort (work) involved in acquiring the $4 in materials you need to make a tube shotgun.

That is the entire point, levelling the playing field, removing "skill" or even questions of legality out of the equation. Some, such as myself, are of the belief that laws that disarm the law-abiding are illegal and immoral and therefore breaking said laws is not immoral. It is not illegal in the US to openly provide blueprints for firearms, and this is already on a torrent network, that's what DefDist is.

Any machinist with access to a hobbyist-level shop or greater can make a firearm of varying quality. These guys for example, build all sorts of guns, usually from scratch.

People already make guns, if you boil them down to their essentials, they are quite simple machines.

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Naked Snake said:

laws that disarm the law-abiding are illegal and immoral

Weren't you that guy who reported some illegal firearms and/or illegal ownership of firearms to the authorities?

Presumably, you take a stance against the not-so-law-abiding. Wouldn't you prefer it if criminals didn't have yet another way of procuring firearms? What's going to happen when 3D printers inevitably become as mundane as cellphones, in the not-too-distant future?

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dew said:

obligatory shape recognition watchdog programs running onn the printers, sending alerts to FBI?

Shape recognition seems iffy. It wouldn't distinguish easily between toys that cannot be converted into a functional firearm and functional gun parts. Also it couldn't identify a heavily-greebled functional gun part.

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DoomUK said:

Weren't you that guy who reported some illegal firearms and/or illegal ownership of firearms to the authorities?

Presumably, you take a stance against the not-so-law-abiding. Wouldn't you prefer it if criminals didn't have yet another way of procuring firearms? What's going to happen when 3D printers inevitably become as mundane as cellphones, in the not-too-distant future?


Eh, if he wasn't acting like a lunatic, me and those dudes wouldn't have gathered the info on him.

Plenty of legitimate things have criminal uses, you can make a bong out of almost anything, you can use a car to escape a bank robbery, you can use a camera to make pornography in a country where it is illegal. Criminals already have plenty of means of procuring weapons, this allows people who are disarmed and have no reasonable way of getting a firearm legally to get around that. Obviously this makes them "criminals" where this is illegal, but that doesn't bother me. As we say in the US, "I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6."

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dew said:

obligatory shape recognition watchdog programs running onn the printers, sending alerts to FBI?


Guess what, somthing like this is already built=in scanners, printers, and DIP software.

Of course, if someone models some odd-looking weapon, or even prints one piece at a time, it wouldn't be practical to do anymore.

In any case, the problem here is more political, than anything: someone claimed that out of the blue, "anyone" can "make firearms at home" with this "new" technology, and so ofc the legislator tries to appear cool and all by already having drafted a piece of paper "banning" the whole thing, so you can keep sleeping safely, while the police cars are running to respond to just another ghetto drug shooting three alleys away from where you live (and with no 3D printers involved, ever).

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This is a good thing. I'm a technology-at-any-cost sort of a person. Yes, some more people will kill each other. This is a price you pay for having a society that generally lets individuals do what they want (play with unlimited technology in this case). Standard restrictions on carrying weapons and killing people with them still apply of course; this just democratizes unsolvable murders a bit so organized crime can't have a monopoly.

As for the money thing, the imaging software restrictions are completely ridiculous, especially in countries that use more advanced banknotes than the USA. Now I wonder what a scanner will do with my "THIS IS NOT LEGAL TENDER" million-dollar bill. Might have to try that out this week. Even without that message the bill wouldn't pass examination by anyone with a functioning brain. It uses the wrong kind of paper.

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Aliotroph? said:

This is a good thing. I'm a technology-at-any-cost sort of a person. Yes, some more people will kill each other. This is a price you pay for having a society that generally lets individuals do what they want (play with unlimited technology in this case). Standard restrictions on carrying weapons and killing people with them still apply of course; this just democratizes unsolvable murders a bit so organized crime can't have a monopoly.

As for the money thing, the imaging software restrictions are completely ridiculous, especially in countries that use more advanced banknotes than the USA. Now I wonder what a scanner will do with my "THIS IS NOT LEGAL TENDER" million-dollar bill. Might have to try that out this week. Even without that message the bill wouldn't pass examination by anyone with a functioning brain. It uses the wrong kind of paper.


Another way to look at is that it is equivalent to decrying milling machines, lathes and wood duplicators, all of which make any variety of products, including guns. Harbor Freight can get you set up with all the shop tools you'd need to produce guns or gun parts, aside from barrels. There are quite a few barrel makers, large and small, in the US, people have tons of barrel blanks ready to be countoured and threaded already.

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Creaphis said:

I'm not convinced. It's never going to be economically viable for everyone to own and operate their own 3D printer, even after the start-up costs. Mass-producing products at factories is always going to be more cost-effective, and only a tiny fraction of the material possessions we use in daily life could be satisfactorily replaced by printed objects. I'm looking around me as I type this, at the books, the electronics and appliances, the furniture, the glassware, and the only things I'd be willing to have replaced by a hunk of plastic are a couple of salt shakers. A few criminal organizations might end up using 3D printers to make guns or other contraband but then they would also have the resources to get that stuff the old fashioned way.


Way to miss the point.

Once consumer 3d printers reach this point (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_metal_laser_sintering) in around the next 10-15 years, you'll be able to print pretty much anything.

And what about recursive 3d printers?

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darknation said:

good luck printing the bullets.


What about making ceramic bullets? They would not set off a metal detector. And a plastic hammer that hits a sort of plastic cap with powder in it that goes through a thin hole to the chamber. Like a black powder gun. No metal parts... An undetectable assassination weapon.

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Guess it was going to happen.

Shame they didn't put as much effort into making something more useful with this technology.

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neubejiita said:

What about making ceramic bullets? They would not set off a metal detector. And a plastic hammer that hits a sort of plastic cap with powder in it that goes through a thin hole to the chamber. Like a black powder gun. No metal parts... An undetectable assassination weapon.


The reliability, precision and power of such a "weapon" would be so low as to make a plastic blade more practical, if you really were so desperate to carry out an assassination using such a plastic contraption. It would really be no better than a Bulgarian keychain gun: good only as a "weapon" of last resort, with no intimidation value nor any serious stopping power.

Since it would have to be used practicaly at close contact with the target, and chances of executing a clean hit plus an undetectable escape would be zilch, then why not make sure that it actually penetrates and does real damage to some vital organ? Ask any inmate about what deadly weapons can be fashioned out of pointed wood/lathed plexiglass etc.

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Would you let a maniac drive a Skoda 120? Or does a car in the wrong hands only become dangerous if it's a 200mph Lamborghini?

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The maniac can get dozens, if not hundreds of real guns for the price of a single 3D printer plus materials, just like real-life spree shooter often do.

The only reason to go with a plastic weapon would be if absolute stealth was a consideration, but then again that would require goals, skills, material means and determination well beyond what you'd consider typical of a "maniac". If you watch an exhibit about Cold War spy weapons and devices, you'll know what I mean.

Zip guns can also be quite sophisticated. And don't forget that Afghan gunsmiths are able to produce AK-47s using nothing more than hand tools and pedal-operated lathes in caves.

And don't even get me started on the NINJA POISONS ;-)

INGREDIENTS:
  HORSE SHIT (EXTRACTED)
  HUMAN BLOOD (TYPE DEPENDS ON VICTIM)
 
YOU CAN GET HORSE SHIT FROM MOST ANYWHERE NOWADAYS SINCE THERE ARE COPS WITH
HORSES NOWADAYS.  JUST WALK AROUND WHERE YOU KNOW HORSES PASS BY, AND GET A
SMALL QUANTITY OF HORSE SHIT.  DON'T GET A LOT CAUSE THAT SHIT STINKS.

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The amount of effort (work) involved in acquiring the $9,000+ for a 3d printer is greather than the amount of effort (work) involved in acquiring the $4 in materials you need to make a tube shotgun.


To you. Not to everyone.

There is no reason to ever buy a house as opposed to building it yourself if you only look at the materials, either.

Time and skill are valued differently for each individual.

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Just think.....with a good imagination you could create some amazing things!

For instance I could fabricate my self a plastic fork, possibly even a knife for a picnic!

Sweet!

Will never able to afford one though :( *sigh*

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I dunno. Plastic guns sound pretty cool, but I can't see anyone going out of their way to buy a printer solely for making plastic weapons.

If anything though, they'll find a university to break into. I think my High School has one of these printers though... And by that anyone of those kids could be a maniac... They could make a plstic gun... OH SHIT QUICK BAN 3D PRINTERS! But wait no, it's the High School that has the weapon builder... Ban High Schools! But a kid made it! BAN CHILDREN!

Anywho...

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Creaphis said:

Great, so now I can make hunks of metal as well of hunks of plastic? That still makes up less than 1% of the objects I use in a day.

What, do you like in a cave? Are your tools made from wood and bone? Everything is made from plastic and metal these days, especially plastic.

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