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The World's First 3D-Printed Gun

Posted by timothy on from the ok-ok-you've-got-my-order-now dept.

MrSeb writes "An American gunsmith has become the first person to construct and shoot a pistol partly made out of plastic, 3D-printed parts. The creator, who goes by the name HaveBlue and is an AR-15/M16 enthusiast, has reportedly fired 200 rounds with his part-plastic pistol without any sign of wear and tear. HaveBlue's custom creation is a .22-caliber pistol, formed from a 3D-printed AR-15 (M16) lower receiver, and a normal, commercial upper. In other words, the main body of the gun is plastic, while the chamber — where the bullets are actually struck — is solid metal. ... While this pistol obviously wasn't created from scratch using a 3D printer, the interesting thing is that the lower receiver — in a legal sense at least — is what actually constitutes a firearm. This means that people without gun licenses — or people who have had their licenses revoked — could print their own lower receiver and build a complete, off-the-books gun." Here come the illegal shapes. Note that the legal fiction of receiver-as-firearm is true in the U.S., but may not be in other jurisdictions, and that no gun license is required in most of the U.S. to purchase or possess a semi-automatic weapon.

11 of 846 comments (clear)

  1. But ... by oPless · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who will they blame when some nut-job goes postal with one of these illegal shapes?

    Will they ban 3D Printers?

    1. Re:But ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Which constitutes only 1.37% of the population...

      Beware the tyranny of the minority.

    2. Re:But ... by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You could probably apply this "tyrrany of the minority" rhetoric to the ACLU and the EFF.

      So that's a pretty dangerous bit of propaganda to push there.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    3. Re:But ... by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nothing short of a Soviet style police state would have stopped him either. That's kind of the whole point of this article. We live in a highly advanced technological society. We have been building our own weapons since before we were an independent nation.

      The idea that we can put the genie back in the bottle is a little absurd.

      If not bullets, then explosives. If not explosives, then chemicals.

      Some of this tech is ancient already. If you can build stuff, you can probably build bad stuff.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    4. Re:But ... by BronsCon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Laws preventing the government from stepping on rights are not tyranical, nor are they alarming. What's alarming is that people who want these laws are the minority.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    5. Re:But ... by B1oodAnge1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Body armor does a great job of keeping you alive, and a shit job of keeping you comfortable. It's incredibly hard to continue whatever you're doing while you're being punched repetitively in the center of mass. If a "John Wayne wannabe" would have knocked the breath out of, or even just distracted, the shooter, then there would have been an opportunity for him to be attacked. Your assumption that there is nothing that can be done about an armored attacker with a gun is most likely the product of your unfamiliarity with guns and does not reflect reality.

      Furthermore, your ignorance of the subject is showing, the Colorado shooter had no automatic weapons. You were probably confused by the term "assault rifle" which is commonly assumed to mean an automatic weapon, but in fact (in the US) is legally defined as a weapon that has a detachable magazine and at least two of several cosmetic features such as a forward grip or a barrel shroud. This is why assault weapon bans are commonly ridiculed as bans on scary looking guns.

      Ultimately, of course, this is all just a bunch of people being brave in hindsight. We know that guns are effective at deterring normal crimes, however an insane shooter obviously offers a different problem. At some point a shooter is going to run up against an armed citizen, and then we'll find out for sure just how effective they will be. Hopefully that armed citizen is responsible and capable of using their weapon effectively and are not just carrying around a gun to feel safe.

      --
      RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
    6. Re:But ... by CanHasDIY · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So, if the barrel shroud and forward grip are purely cosmetic, why are they so popular?

      Same reason 20" rims and body kits are popular on cars, even though they do nothing to help performance (and in some cases, diminish it).

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    7. Re:But ... by flyingsquid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It'll just add to the political football match we've had for decades. Nutjobs will still kill people with weapons bought legally, with ammo bought leagally and nothing illegal done until they day they act.

      I'm waiting for the first 3D printed bomb

      That's entirely true, as long as there are human beings, people will go insane and kill people. But when certain classes of weapons become illegal or are made more difficult to obtain, the outcome of these events would be rather different. The most recent headlines would probably read something like "man goes on insane rampage, kills six with bolt-action hunting rifle", as opposed to a dozen. The NRA likes to say, guns don't kill people, people kill people. Which is true. But guns are tools people use to do a job, and when you can't get the right tools for the job (in this case, murdering people), then you can't do your job as well. Canada, for instance, places restrictions on the size of the magazine (5 rounds for rifles, 10 for handguns) are requires that you take a test and get a license called a Possession and Acquisition License before you can buy a handgun. Their rate of firearms-related deaths (4.78 per 100,000 people) is about half that of the United States (10.27 per 100,000 people). The U.K. has effectively banned semiautomatic rifles and handguns and has an even lower rate of firearm related deaths (.46 per 10,000). All else being equal, the more restrictions are placed on handguns, the fewer deaths there are. Obviously, people can and will resort to other tools, but it's a lot less efficient to stab, poison, strangle or bludgeon people to death. Canada still has a lower murder rate (1.7 murders per 100,000 people) than the U.S. (4.7 per 100,000) and the U.K. is even lower (1.23 per 100,000). These stats are all off Wikipedia, incidentally.

      Think of it this way. We already have gun control; you can't buy a fully automatic assault rifle. What if there wasn't any restriction on what you could buy? If you could buy anything you wanted, you wouldn't conduct a massacre with a semiautomatic AR-15, you'd buy a fully automatic AK-47. For one thing, on automatic an AK can fire 600 rounds per minute. The other thing is that they're simple, rugged and reliable, designed for use by untrained peasants fighting in the hills. The AR-15/M-16 was notorious for being finicky and jamming at the wrong moment, particularly when the rifle was first fielded in Viet Nam. It's better these days, but the fact that the AR-15 used in the Colorado killing jammed is the only reason more people didn't die. The bottom line is here, gun control (as limited as it is) saved lives during this massacre, more gun control would save more lives.

    8. Re:But ... by IceNinjaNine · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You could probably apply this "tyrrany of the minority" rhetoric to the ACLU and the EFF. So that's a pretty dangerous bit of propaganda to push there.

      Indeed!

      What gets me is that I work with educated people who cannot understand how I can be a member of the ACLU, the EFF, and the NRA.

      It's called trying to keep the government in line!

    9. Re:But ... by flyingsquid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because taking away legal firearm ownership clearly reduces the chances of getting shot... (That was sarcasm for the slow among us)

      Here are the stats on gun deaths for the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., from Wikipedia:

      • United States: 10.27 per 100,000 people
        • Canada: 4.78 per 100,000 people
          • England: .46 per 10,0000 people.

          The United States, obviously, has the least gun control. Canada has more regulation. Rifles are limited to 5 round magazines, pistols to 10 rounds; licenses required for pistols. The U.K. has effectively outlawed semiautomatic weapons and pistols. Overall homicide rates follow these patterns, so it's not the case that people will just find other ways to commit murder. Making guns more available and making rapid-fire weapons more available makes murder easier, and therefore more common. I've shot assault rifles and .50 caliber sniper rifles, and yeah, they're pretty awesome. But personally, I'd be willing to have stricter licensing requirements, gun registration, background checks, and limits on clip size to save tens of thousands of lives a year.

  2. Re:"Military Grade" is a political fiction by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The NRA opposes (in part) an assault rifle ban because they understand the functional definition of a rifle like the AR-15 (detachable magazine, semi-automatic, ...) would apply to many hunting rifles as well."

    That is NOT the only reason, or even the main reason.

    The 2nd Amendment was put in place specifically to give people the right to own "military-grade" firearms, so they could protect themselves from a potentially tyrannical government. Hunting actually has little or nothing to do with that. It's just one more reason.