Slashdot Mirror
Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing), Gun Control, and Patent Law
retroworks writes "J.D. Tuccille of the conservative think tank Reason Foundation discusses last week's news about the first working 3D-printed gun. According to the original article, the partly plastic '.22-caliber pistol, formed from a 3D-printed AR-15 (M16) lower receiver, and a normal, commercial upper' fired 200 rounds without any sign of wear and tear. Tuccille takes the discovery in the direction of politically topical gun control. '...the development makes it clear that a wide range of bans, restrictions and prohibitions are becoming increasingly unenforcable.' But in my mind, this example of additive-manufacturing technology raises even more questions about patent law enforcement. Will 3D printing be to the Anti-gray-market-alliance what online porn became to neighborhood blue laws?"
This fight is already happening. What do ya think the whole war over software patents boils down to? Is it a patentable machine or a copyrightable expression in code? Well soon it will be everything is downloadable and where is the line? That is the heart of this argument in a nutshell.
Democrat delenda est
As guns are far more strictly controlled over here, and as such you can't obtain the parts that you can't home make, this doesn't really apply to the UK or other countries that don't have everybody armed to the teeth.
...but its only a matter of time really. I actually like gun control laws, but I can't see any way they can be enforced, long term, in light of this kind of technology - without banning the technology outright, which would be like banning home computers in the 1970s. Obviously, the people who have a stake in selling people stuff they may be able to manufacture themselves in the near future are going to love this. Moral panics are always useful for promoting a ruthless, rent seeking economic agenda, as the debate over digital rights has shown.
What wide range of bans, restrictions and prohibitions? It is a demonstrated fact that any kook can get an assault rifle with a hundred round magazine to shoot up a senator, movie theater, etc. And of course tens of thousands of US weapons flood into Mexico for their drug war every year purchased by people who are curiously buying dozens of weapons every month but oh well, they must be collectors. This is a situation we as a society have apparently decided to accept, and I see no movement away from it. So again, what burdensome restrictions are we actually talking about?
As someone pointed out in the previous article about this, a functioning lower has been succesfully built out of paper-mâché in the past. Using a 3d printer is merely application of a different construction method. When there's a way to 3d print the upper or bolt and barrel then you can panic.
I actually like gun control laws, but I can't see any way they can be enforced
Why would you LIKE a law that is not enforceable, or wildly ignored?
The effect of such a law is to reduce respect for all laws. When so many laws make so little sense why not simply ignore laws altogether? If you're a criminal all the time why not act like it?
At this post most western countries are at the only real laws remaining are people's own moral compasses, and tax collection laws which are strictly enforced.
Meanwhile governments use the fact that all are criminals to selectively harass those who are against whoever is in power.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For a few hundred dollars I can make a CNC mill and craft a gun out of a block of metal. Frankly, I can do much the same with a metal file. Same goes for patent infringement. Add in a 3D scanner and I can duplicate just about anything. There is nothing intrinsically special about 3D printers VS other methods of manufacturing. Its just an evolution of mass production.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
How can that clown be taken seriously on any subject?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Reason is libertarian.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Making your own gun can be described as creativity, expressing yourself and freedom of speech follows under the first amendment. Creating your own gun is expressing yourself through your design of the firearm. The second amendment also states the right to bear arms and never mentioned where you must purchase or buy the arms.... I'm pretty sure this action of creating a firearm can be guaranteed under the first ammendment. An individual might have to Engrave their name on the firearm for it to truly be expressing oneself, just that action alone is customizing. And customizing is part of expressing oneself.
You misspelled "libertarian". There is a significant difference.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I am trying to remember the exact citation, but I remember it is legal to make any item or use any process that's been patented as long as it's not shared and for personal use only. The question is then, does the shape file describing an object legal? I presume so, as long as one doesn't sell or share the object in question.
For a few hundred dollars I can make a CNC mill and craft a gun out of a block of metal. Frankly, I can do much the same with a metal file. Same goes for patent infringement. Add in a 3D scanner and I can duplicate just about anything. There is nothing intrinsically special about 3D printers VS other methods of manufacturing. Its just an evolution of mass production.
Actually, there's something very different between what you're suggesting and 3D printing -- what you say you could do requires time, effort, and skill. 3D printing a gun could become no more difficult than cleaning a gun.
Except it goes from being the domain of a skilled hobbyist to that of anyone with a credit card and a "print" button. To be honest, we're not quite there yet, but we'll be at that point soon enough.
Um, those assault weapons that flood into Mexico for their drug war are being sent there by our very own ATF for the purpose of ???(they claim it was in order to track them to the bigwigs with the drug cartels, but, since they weren't actually tracking them, that is not very believable).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
So many of our laws, regulatory frameworks and economic system are based around the idea that manufacturing is capital intensive and requires centralization. Once this stops being true, even a little, it throws everything into complete disarray. Seriously. As a random example, how can the FDA regulate drugs if you can easily manufacture arbitrary molecules at home?
The idea that manufacturing isn't capital intensive requires a radical rethinking of the structure of our society.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
The inherent difference is the skill level requirement.
3D Printers lower the skill requirement to "Ctrl-P".
This is exactly why I hope that wanker's gun backfires in his face or groin. The 3D printer is a wonderful invention. Don't ruin it by the usual gun-horny Yankee idiot routine!
that anyone can do it. It doesn't require skills in operating a lathe, mill, grinder or other machine or hand tools. Anyone that can download a 3D file can then just press print and they will have an object. A sharp pointy object or printed parts that might be assembled into a firearm.
This the point people tend to miss when they compare 3D printing to a home workshop. The workshop requires skills developed over time and practice to fabricate something as complex as a firearm. Not everyone is capable of doing this. Unfortunately it is a minority these days. A 3D printer in the near future on the other hand will only require the operator to master downloading a 3D model and pressing the print button.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Your average citizen cannot purchase an assault rifle. You can purchase a semi-automatic rifle that *looks* like an assault rifle. This is, basically, a hunting rifle with a different stock and a flash suppressor, neither of which increases it's lethality, but is sure does look scary.
The extra-large capacity magazines are garbage, and jam more often than not. The military doesn't use them.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
As a machinists son and myself a software engineer, what is happening is with self-fabrication (CNC/file) you have to engineer the piece yourself, within the right tolerences. With 3D printing, you can download a model where all of that is already done for you, and just hit the print button. Maybe you can get the CAD file but you also have to get your hands on the machine, the space, the material and the software and know how to operate it all. The 3D printing in process isn't much different except all of that except for the material, everything is free or substantially lower in cost.
Also note a milling machine has limited axises. A 3D printer has no need for the concept, but instead has minimum detail and minimum wall thickness.
In short the old way is a lto mroe expensive and complicated than 'download, print'.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
This problem has existed for years. The issue is that the cost to design/research/etc is significantly higher than the cost to manufacture/copy which in some cases can be free. Many business simply don't support a model that can handle this reality and thus have to find ways to artificially limit or control how the manufacturing/copying is done. This can be seen with eBooks or mp3s which are completely free to copy and nearly free to distribute but the price is driven up artificially due to legality issues or other controls.
3D printers have a long way to go, but what we're more likely to see would be completely automated fabrication shops. Warehouses that are manned with a skeleton crew and several computer driven mills, presses, molds etc that are capable of producing nearly anything and can be completely controlled via a web store such that anyone w/ a cad file can produce the object they desire.
Ultimately, we will either have a large change in business strategies or these businesses will just lock the system down using litigation.
I don't get the article.
I don't get the article either. Making a gun using 3-D printing would have no more patent implication than making anything else using 3-D printing. The article is just attached to the gun article to make a bigger bang.
But, they didn't print a gun using 3-D printing. They made all of the parts of the gun except the parts that actually fire bullets. According to some idiotic regulation they found somewhere, apparently the part that the bullet shoots out of isn't defined as the "gun," but nevertheless, in no reasonable use of the word did they actually print a gun.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Gun control is to the second amendment what censorship is to the first. These are authoritarian push-backs against the Bill of Rights giving people "too much" freedom. The Internet has shown what happens to such restrictive efforts once an enabling technology is introduced to the masses.
3D printing a gun could become no more difficult than cleaning a gun.
But will a gun accidentally discharge while printing it?
You can make a lower in steel on a mill right now. You could make one from wood, heck even cheap plywood.
This is not a highly stressed part, nor one that needs to be machined to very high tolerances.
It will be news when they can 3d print a barrel.
Please, the really creative thinkers will find much better things to do with additive manufacturing. Yes, you *could* employ your 3D printer creating objects that the established powers-that-be know how to defend against. But that's a futile exercise. The brighter lights will understand that asymmetrical warfare (if they're so inclined) is the way to go, and they will design accordingly.
The time is not far off when someone bright within the 99% will figure out that they can enable a quantum leap in human progress by designing something that disintermediates the entirety of the 1%.
Those times are terrifying. They're also terrifically exciting. And they're waiting for you in 6 months.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
This raises a very good question: With it becoming easier to manufacture arbitrary goods with a general purpose 'fab-in-a-box', what kinds of goods/materials will be trivially produced at home - whether there are laws against it or not. There are even metal 3d printers, so I really don't see a limit on what can be 3D printed.
I can't help but wonder if this is yet another case of Technology rendering laws obsolete - what good is a gun control law that requires serial numbers & bans automatic weapons when you can just print your own untraceable automatic gun at home?
Banning 3D printing because it "could" be used to make illegal goods is overreaching; it's just too useful to ban because it might be used to make something illegal.
Are we seeing the last days of being able to legislate scarcity of goods?
To pick a politically hot topic: Are gun control laws about to become as obsolete as banning cryptography, where the genie is out of the bottle & can't be stuffed back in?
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Two years, tops before all the 3D printer companies are sued into oblivion by IP trolls and greedy corporations. Even open source projects in this relm will have to hosted in more elightened countries (if any still exist by then).
Well, only if you print it loaded
There's only a risk of that if you print it with one in the chamber.
So again, what burdensome restrictions are we actually talking about?
None, actually -- most responsible gun owners are not upset about being unable to buy automatic weapons or artillery. There are idiots out there who think that having their own machine gun is cool, and they make illegal modifications to a semiautomatic gun, often with dangerous results, like receivers that fall apart. The only people who think that gun control laws in most of America are overly restrictive are people who think they are going to save the neighborhood from criminals and terrorists (and many gun owners, myself included, think that the restrictions are fine or should be amended in sensible ways, like requiring guns to be stored safely).
Palm trees and 8
This is bullshit.
First, copyright doesn't cover useful objects. Most of the "grey market" stuff is about brand labels, not the device itself. If you want a mechanical duplicate of a Rolex watch that doesn't say "Rolex", you can buy one legally. (You can even get the same movement made in the same Swiss factory. That's outsourced.) There's a whole third-party auto parts industry, after all.
Second, stereolithography machines are a slow way to make copies of something. Manufacturing techniques for making stamped and molded parts are faster, cheaper, and more accurate. You only bother with stereolithography or machine shop work if you can't buy the thing.
Third, a CNC mill can do most of the things a stereolithography machine can do, and to a much wider range of materials. There are little desktop CNC mills. Laser cutters, though, can turn out flat parts quickly and cheaply. This is why, at TechShop locations, the laser cutters are constantly busy while the stereolithography machines mostly just sit there.
Most of the clueless enthusiasm for stereolithography comes from people who don't do machine shop work.
Overly simplistic view is potatoed. printing a picture -vs- drawing a picture. anyone can print a picture, not everyone can draw one.
1. People have been making their own ar15 lowers for a loong time. There are sites with CAD files and everything needed to fabricate your own from a block of metal. Mfg's also sell what's called an 85% lower, which just needs some holes drilled to make it complete (does not require a 4473).
2. The 3d printer is more expensive than the tools needed to finish off an 85%.
I would have no idea about how to do what you just wrote. I don't even know what a CNC mill is. If 3D printers were common it would take minimal effort to make a gun. So that's a big difference.
How is that going to ruin it?
Also if you knew anything about guns you would know that even if the lower totally fails there is zero chance of the gun harming him in that way.
Careful about getting all excited about this. Lawmakers will probably make the printers illegal, in fact, could ban all manufacturing, just to be sure. I hope we can dissuade them from doing that. :-(
Wrong, the ATF didn't send any weapons to Mexico. What they did was try to track a few of the hundreds of thousands of guns purchased every year by individuals with suspicious purchasing patterns. They couldn't track all of them, and some of them in fact ended up being smuggled to mexico or were otherwise used in crimes. That is the "scandal." There would be no scandal if they hadn't bothered trying to track the guns in the first place. It's hard to imagine what an individual who is not a dealer might be doing purchasing hundreds of guns per year, yet that is perfectly legal (just as the NRA likes it) until/unless you later commit a crime with them. Now that the interdiction has become a political football, the flow of guns to Mexico continues as before with, at best, low-level individual purchasers being caught.
"See, I told you they'd listen to Reason," Fisheye says, shutting down the whirling gun.
Now Hiro sees a nameplate tacked onto the control panel.
REASON
version 1.0B7
Gatling-type 3mm hypervelocity railgun system
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION -- NOT FOR FIELD USE
DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
- ULTIMA RATIO REGUM -
The article is alarmist and inflated. Doing this would require access to a 3D printer which alone would cost far more than the what your trying to make. While 3D printer are great for making small one off parts, they are far from practical for equipping an army. In the real world it would be far cheaper to go out and buy all of your guns than to start making your own in your garage with a 3D printer.
Even if you had a 3D printer (say you stole it) you still have logistical issues like manufacturing parts like the barrel (which many gun manufacturers themselves don't do due to the complexities and quality requirements involved). Your parts would have to durable not to explode under stress from the pressures of firing and precise enough to fit together.
Far easier, cheaper and safer for the law abiding or criminal to get a 'real' gun the old fashioned way. Just like any other matter, logistics dictate that certain things are done certain ways. Homebrew is great for beer, but that doesn't mean co-worker that makes a keg of beer once a month is going to be competing with the big boys anytime soon...
Short of a radioactive material and toxins, something sitting around does no harm. It is only when something is used that it can do harm. This revolution in manufacturing shows how untenable the approach of "banning" something is. We have to dispense with the idea that prevention of possession is a crime or even possible, and focus solely on damaging uses. In this way we have all the rights and all the responsibility to exercise freedom.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Under federal law you can own whatever NFA items you want, there is just a $200 tax on each item, and you either need to set up a trust ($0-$250 one time fee) or have a chief law enforcement officer in your area sign off on the purchase.
State laws vary on what is allowed.
The only cost prohibitive thing is automatic weapons since the closure of the registry has driven prices up to ridiculous heights.
Can we please stop with the hyperbole?
In point of fact most Mexican drug cartels are closely connected to one or another Mexican political party. They prefer full auto weapons, which they get from their partners 'the Federallaes' and 'the Mexican Army'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Let me get this straight? You think there should be gun storage inspectors?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Then you deserve that injury more than you claim he does. I will give you some time to figure out why that is true.
The NRA does not represent the second amendment, the NRA uses the second amendment, warps it's real meaning, gets a bunch of idiots in agreement with a lot of one dimensional low iq rhetoric ("guns don't kill people... if guns are outlawed, only..." stupid simpleton propaganda), and keeps the GUN MANUFACTURERS churning them out.
A silly printer will of course appeal to the gun loving second amendment reinterpretters, but not the manufacturers and their profits. So when the NRA stands against 3D printing and initiates the collusion in Washington to make it illegal, watch the idiots go "I don't understand..."
Yeah, you don't understand much, gun loving idiots.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Your average citizen cannot purchase an assault rifle.
Since when? Almost every state allows it.
All you have to do is submit your paperwork and $200 for the tax stamp to the ATF and wait a month or so.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
My point wasn't even to argue whether the (mostly cosmetic) gun control measures taken in the past were effective, or whether effective gun control in America is even workable. Short of a massive swing in public opinion, I think not. Yet for over 4 years now I've been seeing articles about how fear of Obama is driving strong gun sales, and I keep thinking, why? He hasn't done anything. More to the point, Congress isn't even close to doing anything.
Patents last 17 years from date of issue or 20 (or is it 21) years from date of file. Copyrights last forever, or at least are on track to last "the second half of eternity." Add to that, patents, can be "personally expressed", though not sold, while copyrights have become as close to absolute as the MafiAA can afford. (Back on the "personally expressed," elsewhere in this thread I see that you can do so for research, but not for everyday use. Don't know about that, or whether you can call it "life cycle testing" to cover that one.)
Watch for "fuzz" lawsuits on copyright - manufacturers arguing that their part hasn't been changed enough, or that the "essence" is still present in the tweaked 3d-printed part.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Custom fitted dildos on demand. Make love, not war!
Yes. they need to inspect the gun safes as they leave the factory and not allow them to be sold if they are defective. MOST smaller gun safes are easily opened by kids. And there is no industry regulation to stop the scumbag companies from selling that crap.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Printing a plastic widget which holds the metal bits of a gun together is slightly different from printing a gun. Not that it would be hugely impressive to print an entire gun anyway given the thing would probably be destroyed or rendered unusable within a few shots. Doesn't help much either if you can't print the ammunition.
Current printers can't manufacture the chemicals to make the gunpowder & primer. Eventually we might get the Star Trek style printers that can make the chemicals too. But, at that point we'll have a whole range of high explosives to worry about. It seems any printer capable of doing that will likely be regulated by laws & software controls in the future.
For now, it seems regulating the sale of gunpowder is a possible the route authorities may take in countries where guns are banned. In places like the US where only some types of guns are banned, it seems keeping those types of guns unavailable may be quite difficult.
Actually, no.
Requires an FFL to own an assault rifle (note that an AR-15 is NOT an assault rifle, since it is semi-automatic), which is rather harder to get than you might think.
Plus the supply of assault rifles is limited to what existed prior to the requirement for an FFL to own one - so they're pretty damn expensive.
Umm, no. The assault rifles being used in Mexico tend to be bought from Mexican Army supply sergeants.
Plus, of course, the ones the ATF decides the Mexicans need, of course....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Gun control laws do not apply. People have, for years, machined firearms in their basements and garages. I've done so myself. It's completely legal to experiment and build your own stuff. There are gun control laws that govern the sale and purchase of firearms and those would not apply to creating your own. Now, if you built a full auto, that's a bit different. Because owning that weapon requires a permit. But, before anyone starts freaking out that you could "print" the parts to make a full auto... Making a pipe bomb has been as been as simple as buying an iron pipe, 2 end caps and some smokeless powder since the dawn of this country. It's far easier to make, far deadlier, and will remain so. We can't legislate that fact away... ever... For example, we're lucky the dude in Colorado took in an assault rifle rather than a half dozen pipe bombs... I doubt anyone would have walked out of there if he had.
Doing it with a machine shop requires time, skill, and more importantly a machine shop.
It depends on the firearm that is being made. There were some submachine gun designs from WW2 that were quite trivial to make. That was their point. The famous Thompson submachine gun that many US, British and Commonwealth troops carried was complicated and expensive to manufacture. The British Sten and the US M3 "Grease Gun" were designed as low cost and easy to manufacture alternatives. They had incredibly few simple to manufacture parts.
So that "machine shop" would only need machinery, tools and techniques that were considered simple in 1942.
There's nothing wrong with this. People forget the most important part of the Second Amendment being "Shall not be infringed". I say wholesale cheap firearms for everyone. Screw government restrictions on the man. The bill of rights is a restriction ON GOVERNMENT!
Umm, no.
The ATF told firearms dealers who reported suspicious purchases to go ahead and sell the guns anyway, so they could "trace them".
Then they didn't bother to trace them.
Note that telling a firearms dealer to go ahead and sell a gun to a criminal is illegal.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
According to an article I read awhile back the ATF agents were actually making a real effort to arrest and prosecute some of these gun mules. They ran into resistance amusingly enough from the Prosecutor that was supposed to be working with them. At first he wasn't happy with the evidence and wanted more, specifically wiretap recordings. So the agents applied for warrants for the wiretaps and the prosecutor then sat on them for weeks if not months. When the warrants finally went through the phones that had been authorized for monitoring were being phased out and they had to start all over again. In one instance they had actually stopped a homeless man who had just purchased a $10,000 50 cal sniper rifle and were instructed by the prosecutor to cut him loose because he didn't want to press charges. The "whistleblower" was a man looking to get revenge on a supervisor that he didn't like/agree with and refused to work in a professional manner with.
I actually agree with the Legislative branch holding the AG in contempt. Although the AG wasn't trying to cover for the ATF, he was actually covering for his own organization of appointees that had failed the ATF team.
It will make governments shit themselves with fear that anyone can create a hand-gun, and then there will be stupid laws, and corporations will see dollar signs and suggest some kind of DRM mechanism in place on "legal" replicators and then we're in the same mess as we are now, only with physical objects. I don't want to have to jailbreak my replicator in the future, or have to reverse-engineer some future closed-spec DRMd object format.
And you're right, I don't know anything about guns. That's kinda the point. I'm living in a country where guns aren't distributed willy-nilly, hence my total ignorance about such weaponry. And I'm quite proud of the fact.
What if your 4 year old could download a gun and print it out, now that is a bit scary.
You would do well to research the 'Fast and Furious' background more before you peddle your ideological tripe. The fact is that gun shop owners are not the unscrupulous enablers or pathetic imbeciles you make them out to be. They were actually reporting this suspicious activity to the BATFE, and they wanted to stop selling guns to certain people, but as part of the 'Fast and Furious' operation, the BATFE instructed them to continue the sales. Several gun sellers were deliberately acting irresponsibly under the advisement of BATFE agents! Some sources.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
You missed an important aspect of their argument. The term assault rifle is not actually used as only those who have the tax stamp can legally own them but instead they like to use assault weapon which makes people think you are talking about assault rifles when you really aren't. Reading through the old assault weapons ban that had previously expired was quite humorous as all of the things described where cosmetic in nature for a semiautomatic rifle. So something like a M1 Garand was not classed as one while something like a SKS is. The biggest differences between them was that round (the Garand fired the more powerful .30-06 while the SKS fires the 7.62x39 which is comparable to a .30-30), the capacity (the Garand holds 8, the SKS 10), and the fact that the SKS has a bayonet lug. They are both semi-automatic military rifles with integral magazines but one was classified as an assault weapon and the other wasn't. Strangely the one was extensively used in various conflicts was not the one classified as an assault weapon while the other one that saw only limited use mostly by irregular or forward scout forces was.
.30-30s of old. They fire a comparably powerful round, have good enough accuracy, and are relatively inexpensive. They also make a great coyote or varmint gun.
The extended mags really do suck when I bought my SKS it had one of the AK style 30 round duckbill mags and it would fail to feed quite regularly so I went out a bought the correct style mag and it now feeds like it should.
To answer those who will question the usefulness of something like a SKS or semi-auto AK, they make wonderful entry level deer guns, much like the
Time to offend someone
I think you and the parent are using different definitions for "Assault Rifles"
Some have defined them as shortbarreled rifles with a pistol grip and a butt stock. Others don't consider the same weapon an assault weapon unless it also has multiple modes of fire, usually including burst and fully automatic.
The first definition is a little silly because anyone can shorten the barrel of a .22 and swap out the regular stock for one that has a pistol grip. The functionality of the weapon that really makes it more dangerous is the extra firing modes. And while it is possible to legally purchase weapons with burst and full auto firing modes in the USA it requires some very expensive and time consuming licensing requirements, I've heard anywhere from 4k to 10k per year to maintain such a license.
Not that it's a strict limitation but the weapon used in CO was a $1,200 gun. Sadly enough that does put it out of the reach of a large section of the population simply from a cost perspective. And the good thing is that the guy was too much of an idiot to realize that a few much cheaper junk quality shotguns would have allowed him to do more damage in that situation.
Class 3 NFA weapons are usually a lot harder to get than that, since I don't know of any jurisdiction where the Federal process is the only one you have to go through. The last place I researched you had to get the chief of police to sign off on each and every one. Not to mention that only weapons manufactured before 1986 are even eligible, and that crimp on supply vs. demand makes them about as expensive as cars. So yeah, the next time I have a chief of police as a golf buddy and a dozen grand just lying around, I'll be sure to pick one up.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Just imagine if this got into Richard Stallman's hands; he could easily arm every single American with a single script, or maybe even a command. Sudo lpr –P GunPrinter –# /america/everyone/Guns ?
PS: He only uses sudo because he's too lazy to modify the bits himself.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
I for one am glad that the means of production are returning to the masses. This will either gat the 3D printing outlawed or it will make capitalism obsolete. And I sincerely hope for the latter.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Sunlight illuminates a room where a curly haired toddler and his father upon whose lap he sits are playfully interacting with a children's website on their home PC, beside which a Cupcake CNC 3D printer sits. The phone rings, and the father hops up to answer, leaving the child in front of the computer, alone. As the child continues clicking unsupervised, another website suddenly appears where images of guns, knives, and torture devices of all types cycle in front of the young child's quizzical face. On the screen, ominous flashing text reading "Now Printing" is displayed as the 3D printing machine kicks to life.
Cut to the father ending the phone call with a "...he's doing fine, honey, we're just playing on the computer. We love you too, and we'll see you soon. Buh-bye." before hanging up and re-entering the room, only to see the the child, now on top of the desk, reaching into the machine to extract his new toy, a perfect quarter scale brushed steel IMI Galil with working laser sight. In extreme slow motion, we see the father's expression turn to horror as he runs toward the child who is giggling while peering down the rifle's barrel. Then, three quick flashes, and the screen cuts to black, followed by a silent fade-in to the sponsor, PASteL, Parents Against Stereo Lithography.
More to the point, however please see the Interim 2011 numbers - http://www.atf.gov/statistics/download/afmer/2011-interim-firearms-manufacturing-export-report.pdf - that shows almost 6.4 million firearms manufactured in the US in 2011. Only 290k were exported.
That means more than 6 million new guns were manufactured and stayed in the US in 2011 (and that doesn't count all of the ones manufactured abroad and imported).
6 million.
A couple of people a few quarts shy of a gallon shoot up a few people, it makes news.
What doesn't make news is the other 6 million NEW firearms NOT used in a crime, or the 270 million other (existing) firearms ALSO not used in a crime.
Seems to me, guns must be pretty safe.
Last I heard CNC mills tend to be pretty expensive. Having one of those made and also getting a gun out of it isn't that bad a deal, especially for a few hundred dollars. Somebody out there might actually take you up on that offer. Much better deal than just getting a gun considering the typical market rates.
The last place I researched you had to get the chief of police to sign off on each and every one
You register them to a trust and there is no signoff.
Like everything else, its about knowing the process. None of this is difficult (for most) to figure out.
I said nothing at all about cost, as I don't see the relevance. You can get several full autos for well under $8k, a sum of money most people have spent considerably more than for their vehicle. In the grand scheme of things, that's not a lot of money. For a weapon? Yes. But it's something most people would be able to put together should they want or need to.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
I'm using the correct definition: an intermediate caliber magazine fed automatic rifle designed for infantry use.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
The fact is that some aren't, and some are.
The parent said the guns "are being sent there by our very own ATF" and that is not true.
At most, the ATF delayed intervening possible mules in order to get higher up the gun smuggling chain. This is not uncommon in law enforcement; it's the only way to get past the lowest-level goons. The larger issue is that it's perfectly legal for an individual to buy any number of guns, until it is proven they tried to do something bad with them, even though their is no conceivable legitimate reason for a person (who is not a dealer) to buy so many. It's incredibly ironic to see the NRA going after the ATF for not hassling people sooner on the basis of buying too many guns.
yea, there are laws against building your own gun-- because when it's done-- you are in POSESSION
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
There were two ATF programs.
Operation Wide Receiver 2006-2007
Operation Wide Receiver was the precursor to Operation Fast and Furious and was an attempt to track weapons from a dealer to the cartels via tracking devices with the help of the Mexican government. The program lost track of approximately one dozen rifles out of two hundred firearms that were involved in the program. The program was axed an in internal investigation was launched. Plus there were a total of nine suspects charged, six sent to jail, one acquitted, and two at large.
Operation Fast and Furious 2009-2011
Over 2000 firearms were purchased through several federally licensed gun dealers via ATF blessed straw purchases and allowed to walk across the border instead of being interdicted by the ATF on their way across the border. Of the 2020 firearms that were sold and allowed to walk 1355 are still unaccounted for, and at least three of the recovered firearms were used in an shoot out that resulted in the death of a US Border Patrol Agent. There is even an instance where an ATF agent purchased and transferred a gun for a known cartel operative and then went on vacation the next day allowing the purchaser to evade arrest and the guns to fall into cartel hands.
What's the Difference?
The first operation resulted in arrests and lost 6% (12) of the firearms it had allowed to be sold to known 'bad guys.' The second operation lost 67% (1355) of the firearms involved, resulted in the death of a US Border Patrol Agent, and a large investigation and ongoing investigation that has resulted in the US Attorney General being held in contempt of a congressional investigation.
If you're going to have an opinion about the ATF Fast and Furious operation you should *AT LEAST* read the Wikipedia article on the subject.
PS: The ATF instructs dealers to use their best discretion when selling firearms and to report suspicious purchases to them. Most dealers I work with have reported individuals who have purchased abnormal amounts of firearms, and straw purchase attempts. Being a Federally Licensed Firearms Dealer is one of the few professions where you can refuse to sell someone a product based on their behavior, demeanor, appearance, and past purchases.
The wait on NFA paperwork is somewhere between 6 and 8 months currently and there is a finite supply of select fire assault weapons available on the market.
The Democratic Party has, in recent history, been anti-gun (think Assault Weapons Ban of 1994) and many individuals in the firearms community believe (believed?) that President Obama and the Democrat party would make a strong push for more gun control legislation.
Laws against possession of objects because of what you "might" do with it. Extrapolates into laws against possession of 3D printers because of what you "might" do with what you "might" print. The concept of an easy to use effective 3D printer quickly undermines object prohibition.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
At least libertarians dont run around waving signs and screaming for little government and then add fifty pages of small print about "except for drugs" "except for porn" "except for war" "except for my pet project" like tea partiers and Republicans.
Their goals may destroy the country, but at least they're not hypocritical about it.
Does any of this make it so an "average citizen" can't buy one?
Answer: no. That was the point of my post.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Obvious troll is obvious.
You're missing the part where the dealers called the ATF to report suspicious purchasing, and wished to deny sales, but were instructed to make the sale anyway. This is something that would obviously have been actually better had the ATF not attempted in the first place. It's also mind boggling that merely being ineffective is considered acceptable, and is the desired framing of this issue by the left.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
When the NRA is saying you gave out guns a bit too freely, that *might* be an indication of a problem with your policies.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of, ever.
You could learn a lot about them without ever touching one.
We don't actually distribute them willy nilly either, but we are allowed to buy them if we are good boys and girls.
Most people who spend that kind of money on a car do so over time through financed loans rather than a lump sum. I'm not aware of any bank that will give out assault-rifle loans.
If you made your widget in Nebraska and the widget is never sold, and never even leaves Nebraska, the federal government will claim the power to control your printing because your widget "could" impact interstate commerce. You making the widget means you don't have to buy one that was engaged in interstate commerce (even if you never intended to buy), so the printing is itself interstate commerce.
The warped thinking of a Supreme Court that wants to put current ideology before actual constitutional principles.
Did I say anything about inspections? You do realize that making something illegal, and going around inspecting people's homes for violations, are two very different things right?
Palm trees and 8
"conservative think tank Reason Foundation"? (emphasis mine)
C'mon Slashdot idiots. Learn something for a change instead of parroting left-wing blog nonsense.
Most people who spend that kind of money on a car do so over time through financed loans rather than a lump sum. I'm not aware of any bank that will give out assault-rifle loans.
What the hell does that have to do with anything relative to "average citizens" having access to them.
Also, someone who finances an $8,000 car has some serious financial issues and probably should not be spending $8k on a car.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
I am speechless and choking. I have absolutely no idea how to sort this out and even where to begin :(
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
Yes, the higher ups, all of which were FBI informants.
The gun store owners informed the ATF that these large purchases seemed suspicious. The ATF told them to complete the sale.
Question: While it is not uncommon in law enforcement to let the item "walk" usually, there's a mechanism in place in advance to track the item. What was the mechanism that the ATF operation was going to use? I've not heard anyone state how they were going to track these weapons (no transmitters, they stopped agents from following them). How was it ever supposed to work?
Step 1: Push gun dealers to complete sales to suspicious individuals
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Intercept and arrest the big shots
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
With the combination of 3D printing and Torrents, almost ANYTHING will be able to be made cheap and at home in private. This will have a huge impact on manufacturing and intelectual property throughout the world, to a point where cheap Chinese imports may become a thing of the past?
Any US Citizen can purchase an automatic rifle (provided they can find one for sale that was created before 1986), for a one time tax of $200 (transfer stamp), and completion of a fairly thorough Federal background check. There is no licensing requriements or anything like that needed to maintain such a weapon. Granted, individual State laws may vary but that's it as far as Federal regulations go.
I believe you might be thinking of a FFL Dealer License (type 1) which is only if you want to become someone who can engage in "business pertaining to the manufacture of firearms and ammunition or interstate or intrastate sale of firearms." If you're wanting to deal in NFA restricted weapons (Class III: automatics, short barrel, supressors, destructive devices, etc) they only have to pay $500/year if their gross revenues do not exceed $500,000 or $1,000/year if their revenues are over that amount. That of course is on top of the regular fees of being a FFL to begin with which change depending on the business type you're in. So unless you're running a business or want to have a really expensive hobby, it's probably not worth becoming a Class III (NFA) FFL dealer, but it's no where near $10k per year.
There's a lot of FUD out there regarding guns and gun laws, that's part of the reason a national discussion on gun control is so difficult.
What they did was tell firearms dealers to sell several thousand guns to various suspicious purchasers that the gun dealers reported to them and were not going to sell to until the ATF told them to do so. The ATF then followed the purchasers until one of two things happened. Option one: the purchaser passed the guns off to someone else, at which time the ATF agents wanted to follow the guns, but were instructed by their superiors to continue following the original purchaser who no longer had the guns. Option two: the guns were transported into Mexico, at which point the ATF could no longer follow them and did not bother to inform Mexican authorities, or even the ATF agents working in Mexico.
Many of the purchasers that the ATF told gun dealers to sell to against the gun dealers judgement were people it was not legal for the gun-dealers to sell to. So, if the ATF had not instructed the gun-dealers to sell to these individuals, they would have been unable to purchase the guns. In addition, there is significant evidence that many of these guns were purchased with money provided to the buyers by other federal agencies. Based on what is known and the attempts at coverup by the Justice Department there is reason to believe that the money was provided to the purchasers for the purpose of buying guns to give to Mexican drug cartels. Quite simply in the matter of Fast & Furious the Justice Department is either criminally negligent through incompetence (there was no plan in place that provided anyone with the least ability to reason to think that the guns could be tracked to high level criminals) or outright criminal (they knew there was no way to track the guns and willingly placed them in the hands of dangerous and violent criminals in the hopes that they would turn up at crime scenes).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The AR15 lower that was printed is of itself not actually a complete fire-arm.
It cannot chamer or fire any rounds on it's own.
Then again, if the entire fire-control group, magazine, upper reciever, bolt and barrel were 3D printed and didn't explode when used, then it would actually be real news.
What fuckstick modded this down? it's 100% correct. In fact slashdot reported it just 3 days ago.
Wow the moderators here on slashdot are just complete morons.
Even with 3D printers, large factories will still be able to produce just about anything for a fraction of what you can do it for in your house.
3d printers will be to manafacturing as computers are to printing presses. Nobody (who isn't plain stupid) prints out NYT best sellers on their laserjets. And verboten 'plans' like printable disposable machineguns? Just like the Anarchist cookbook, some people will try to regulate and control it, but it will still be available.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If you can print guns you can print bulletproof vests as well.
There's a book on this topic: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and it explains why locking down 3D printers isn't going to work in the long term.
The point is that you can avoid paying for the R&D and distribution by printing it off illegally (at least I assume it would be illegal to copy a design without paying for it). Instead of going into the R&D of the company who developed the design your money is going straight into 3D printers and the materials they print with. Companies and/or governments will have to find a way to prevent and/or punish that sort of patent infringement, which is going to be very difficult. The age where personal 3D printers can produce complicated devices (something worth a lot in R&D) may not be here yet, but it is coming.
We don't actually distribute them willy nilly either, but we are allowed to buy them if we are good boys and girls.
And how do you define "good boys and girls"? Do you have to attend a mandatory course on gun safety and stress management? Do you have to pass a test to prove yourself capable of using a gun under considerable stress without incident? No, you only have to be an adult, without a record, and patient enough to wait, what, two weeks or something? This still counts as willy-nilly.
If one had to prove oneself not to be a total boob around guns before being allowed to have one, I would soften a bit on the matter. But the current regulations are ridiculous.
So you want to make another unenforced stupid law that can be arbitrarily enforced? Don't we already have enough? Everybody is a criminal has already been achieved.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It is not unenforceable, and it is not "stupid" -- handguns are common targets for thieves, and those guns are used by criminals. That is a real problem, and one of the ways to mitigate that problem is to store your guns in a safe. Enforcement is not a matter of going door to door and performing checks; it is a matter of what happens if the gun is stolen or used without permission.
Palm trees and 8
This story if false. It's been reputed all over the internet. No one can print a fully-functional gun from plastic. The plastic won't stand up to the forces created by the firing of the bullet.
What WAS printed was the receiver for the gun. It's kind of like a frame for the gun. And in this case, only the lower part of the receiver was printed. On most guns, that's the part that connects the mechanical parts to the stock.
This is really a non-story. I'm surprised so many people were fooled by it when it's so obviously physically impossible. I suppose I could see all this fuss if someone actually could print a gun on some of the stronger carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics. Those can actually be used to build a gun.
But come on people. Printing a gun out of ABS plastic? Please.
Sorry to Canada, Mexico, Guatemala and Panama (arguably) ; it's not you , it's the company you keep.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
You wished death upon a person for using his property in a manner that harmed nobody, because you didn't personally approve of it.
He did nothing wrong, and yet you want him to die. This makes you far more morally bankrupt than you accuse him of being. This is the reason you deserve the death you wished upon him.
This is an absolute fact, and you cannot refute or even disagree with it. You can only lie by pretending to, and that lie will not even fool yourself.
There is no 'non-fooling' -- you miss the point.
The chamber is a 6"inch long tube like thing, that looks nothing like a firearm, and construction or purchase of such might not be controlled under any firearms laws.
The body of the gun (a plastic toy, basically), is what *looks like* a firearm (so much so that toys have to be painted special colors in the the US so cops won't shoot kids carrying toys -- which apparently happened; Cops in many areas are trigger happy... shoot first, file reports later and go on paid leave during investigation, then come back after no evidence of misdeed is found and be more careful...or not...
Anyway, the issue is what makes for a 'gun' under gun control laws?
If the feeder and automatic stuff can be done in plastic and only the chamber needs to be metal, that lowers the bar to producing almost any type of firearm.
From the original article:
Note: Slashdot's HTML is broken. It doesn't accept unicode entities or characters. Lame. The -―-'s above are dashes without minus signs in them, they would be invisible. When will /. join the modern age?....
My first car was a loaded, low mileage, 5spd, leather, $10k Nissan Maxima SE and I financed it. It was a great car. I made ~$36k/yr gross and my insurance was ~$3400/yr. My rent was $12,000/yr. I spent ~$7200 on food and over $2200 on fuel. After tax and everything I would have had to work more then a year to save for that car, but I likely would have made 10k less a year. In its lifetime I spent maybe $2k on maintenance. I later sold the car for $7k, and used the money towards a BMW coupe, meanwhile my insurance has since came down signficantly. Had I bought a cheaper car, I probably would have spent more on maintenance and lost more to depreciation. My insurance would not have come down as much as I couldn't have said "look, I been driving ~200hp vehichles my whole life and have a clean driving record" - had I not financed it, I couldn't afford it. I would not have the credit rating I have now either. I would still be living pay cheque to pay cheque wasting hours trying to get my groceries home.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
We just put together a show at Corcoran's Gallery 31 in Washington DC that really relates to this topic. The exhibit's titled "Manifest: Armed", and a lot of the work deals with issues surrounding American gun culture. The artists involved are Sarah Frost, the collective SmithBeatty, and Julian Oliver.
Check it out if you're interested! It runs August 8-September 2. http://www.corcoran.org/exhibitions/manifest-armed
It shows that most average people don't have the financial means to acquire them. They can buy things of similar cost only because of institutional mechanisms that exist to help them do so, and those mechanisms do not exist in regards to weaponry. Thus, the ability of the average person to access these weapons is severely hampered by his inability to raise the money to buy them.