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Working Handgun Printed On a Sub-$2,000 3D Printer
Just a few weeks after Cody Wilson and friends successfully fired an instance of their own 3-D printed handgun design, Sparrowvsrevolution writes, "a couple of Wisconsin hobbyist gunsmiths have already managed to adapt Defense Distributed's so-called Liberator firearm and print it on a $1,725 Lulzbot 3D printer, a consumer grade machine that's far cheaper than the industrial quality Stratasys machine Defense Distributed used. They then proceeded to record their cheaper gun (dubbed the 'Lulz Liberator') firing nine .380 rounds without any signs of cracking or melting. Eight of the rounds were fired from a single plastic barrel. (Defense Distributed only fired one through its prototype.) In total, the Lulz Liberator's materials cost around $25 and were printed over just 48 hours."
The Lulz Liberator uses more metal parts than the original Liberator...so at least this would be harder to sneak past a metal detector.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
How long until this design graduates from a single-shot?
Sure, so other than that...
weapon smugglers won't need to smuggle weapons any longer. Just smuggle the printer and the raw materials. What will become more valuable will be the specs for any new weapon design. Welcome to the future....
so it begins
according to the guys they claim the usual home printer abs is stronger than the stratasys abs+.
though it wouldn't be that far fetched to believe the stratasys just uses it so they can keep tighter stranglehold on the consumables..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
In 1994 a friend and I assembled a .22 from hardware store pipe, a hacksaw, a drill, some nails, and springs. It had a hammer and a trigger. We followed no plans...we just knew you needed a barrel, and something to smack the rim of the bullets we had...and we improvised. It worked fine, but you have to unscrew the barrel to to reload its single shot.
Won't be too long before they try to ban 3d printing at this point...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
It may be a fun proof of concept, but about the only things it is good for are generating political hype and drawing attention to the inventors.
People fail to realize that it's much easier and cheaper to make a home made gun using existing tools and materials. Just because someone now made a [not very good] one using a 3D printer, everybody seems to be freaking out.
Further well-grounded and thoughtful discussion on the matter can be found here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/10/oh_no_its_the_plastic_3d_gun/
No way I'd ever trust anything like that in my hand (I only ever get two). Maybe someday there will be a nanometal process that will form strong printed materials. Very rarely is anybody a good shot with a gun they've never fired before. Put 200 practice rounds through it sure, but then the thing is probably toast, so the best one could hope for would be to use it at short range.
Then, $25 isn't much less than a gangbanger would pay for a stolen handgun made of real metal. In order for anybody to want to use one of these things, the reward needs to be much greater than the risk. Who needs slow access to an easily meltable, potentially hazardous, limited-use handgun? A low-rent James Bond? Why do politicians think anybody would want one (aside from being disconnected from reality)?
Does making these for $5 even change the equation?
The main effect of these cheap plastic guns for us Americans is going to be even more draconian gate rape at the airports. Buy stock in Megabus, Boltbus etc. Air travel is going to be used only when it is unavoidable.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It may only cost $25 but even at 10 rounds that is still rather expensive per shot. Still a lot cheaper to find a redneck to weld you some steel tubing together and make a cheap rifle.
Nope. Nothing will change as a result of these poor quality, single shot, plastic 3D printed guns. Not in Africa, not nowhere.
Before piling onto the 3D printed gun hype bandwagon, think about the practical aspects of deplying these toy guns for any purpose, besides messing around in your basement with your 3D printer and CAD software.
But thats illegal!
Making a gun is damn easy, people did it with what we would now consider very simple tools. It is literally not rocket science.
The AK-47 is rather famous for being cheap to and easy to produce. Various other weapons were also designed to be build with simple metal working tools because that was all that was available. Not a crappy plastic shooter but military grade weapons.
Anyone with access to a modern metal working shop can produce a decent weapon. Explosives are harder but again gunpowder is hardly a secret anymore.
And in the US most can buy a gun anyway. So what exactly is the point? That now nerds who can't hold tools can do it too?
What next, 3d printed Molotov cocktails? To show the man he can't deny us our store bought ones?
Everyone is freaking out like before this you needed to be God himself to create a firearm. How long does it take a gunsmith to build a gun from scratch? Compare that to the time it takes to design one in AutoCAD or whatever and then 3D print it and assemble it. It's probably pretty comparable and the metal one doesn't look like a bad sci fi prop. I bet I could design a working rifle that would fire a couple bullets from a trip to the hardware store, or especially a shotgun! You need a barrel, aka steel pipe. Then a handle so solder/glue basically anything on. Then you need an end cap with a semi-sealed firing pin to strike the bullet so a piece of scrap metal and a spring. Tada, gun (at about the same reliability level).
This gun requires you to pound the cartridge out after each round, metal and high strength plastic does serve a purpose that relatively softer plastic can't really do. Not very appealing considering how comically cheap guns are in Africa. Sure the tech will improve and the printers will get cheaper but it's not going to compete well with $20 hand guns and sub-$500 fully auto AK47s.
zipgun
"Joe, who asked that I not reveal his full name..."
"The clip was filmed by Michael Guslick, a fellow Wisconsin engineer who helped Joe"
Hmmmmm, lol.
What the Slashdot front page is telling me is that a printable gun in every household is exciting, and people wearing glasses with built-in displays is creepy.
Until then I am not impressed. So you can print a plastic tube with a handle. Wow. Now for the trip to a "hardware store" to buy some bullets. Oh wait, I am not in USA, there are no bullets for general sale here, unless you are a registered gun owner.
The fundamental tenet of the gun rights advocates is that, armed citizenry will take down tyrannical governments...We will know if it enables them to take down tyrants.
If you're referring to the Arab Spring incidents, many countries indeed had their leaders kicked out due to armed rebellions. Syria is a sticking point because it's a much more complex situation than just "entrenched ruler vs. dissatisfied mobs".
These 3D printed cheap plastic guns are going to flood Africa and other such places with very cheap guns.
Good luck competing against the flood of cheap AK's and WW2 surplus they've had for decades.
Is this a joke? Africa and the former Soviet republics are already awash in cheap AK-47s, and have been for years.
Silly, paranoid people! Why, it's like they believe they live in a country where:
Silly, paranoid gun owners!
Thank God we live in America rather than that paranoid, nightmarish, Orwellian police state!
No, the fundamental tenet of gun rights advocates is that self-defense, which includes the right to own the tools of self-defense, is a basic human right. That fact remains true whether tyrants can survive armed populations or not.
Now it is true as a matter of history that one point the "Founding Fathers" considered was that a nation that relied on a militia (armed and trained body of citizens) for its defense, rather than a standing army, had a built-in defense again its government going tyrannical.
Guns are already cheap and easy to make. That's the whole design philosophy of the AK-47 -- you can already get them for around $50 in some parts of Africa.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Because we all know that Africa and former Soviet republics are teeming with 3D printers.
No, wait, they are teeming with AK47s. AK's, AK's, AK's for days.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
When you can create your own molds of clay / polymer / wax that can be used for casting much higher precision than cheap 3D printing and at a much lower price.
I don't understand the hype around gun printing. Making plastic guns has been possible for decades.
If you are fighting a rebellion, a chemist and physicist would be much more useful that a 3d printer, unless you intend to drop the 3D printer on someone. This is the funny thing about gun people. They seem to think the gun gives them a magic shield that will protect them from everything, even the well armed FBI, or despotic government that is willing to use air strikes against civilians, or Rand Paul who wants to use drones against robbery suspects.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This generation's equivalent of the printing press is being used to construct weapons. How is his helping the human condition? Can't we do something better than this?
In some parts of africa, a full auto AK-47 is cheaper than a goat. These little plastic zip guns are not "cheap".
nocera.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/the-gun-report-may-21-2013/#more-3086
Video author made this real, multi-shot gun out of $10 worth of scrap metal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av0pEqR5KWs Shall we ban metal now as well?
I don't get the obsession with using 3D printing for guns. Other than the fact that it sounds cool and futuristic, it seems inferior to CNC-machining in just about every way. It's not even cheaper; you could buy a pretty decent hobbyist CNC machine for less than the $1725 that this 3D printer cost. And it's unlikely that cost gap will change significantly, since 3D printers need many of the same components (precise linear guidance rails and stepper motors) that CNC machines do.
The truth is that this is just a crappy plastic zip gun. I generally like to give tinkerers and hackers the benefit of the doubt, but it's hard to see what legitimate purpose it could serve. Certainly not self-defense. Even if you're envisioning some future scenario where you fight against tyranny, how is this going to be better than a zip gun made of common metal parts? Do you think the government is going to ban plumbing pipe? The only thing these plastic guns can do that a regular firearm can't is to get past metal detectors. They are weapons only suitable for criminals, assassins, and terrorists. I don't think that is what the people designing them have in mind, but if they are actually used for anything in the real world, that's what it will be.
I think the best commentary on this is a speech by Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park: "I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could [...] Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."
One need only look to present day Syria to see the absurd claims of the pro-gunners are false.
Armed revolution is simply not possible in the modern world where a nation's soldiers fight for almighty cash-money instead of freedom and the ideals of their nation. Even if the entire military broke ranks and joined the revolutionaries, this guarantees a military dictatorship if the revolution is successful by the way, the nation they are fighting against just hires dime a dozen mercenaries from whatever handy poor nations they have sitting near by. In the ensuing war of attrition, no one wins and the war drags on until the revolutionaries see the futility of their efforts and conclude that it's not worth dying to win a prize that is a war ravaged hellscape.
No kidding. I do not think people realize how many of them there are. The ak47 is *the* most produced gun ever. The Soviets (and now the russians) and the Chinese have been cranking them out by the millions for 40+ years. And that is just those 2.
Sub-$500? Well, that is true I guess, I have seen them at $100.
Call me when you start printing plastic ammunition. Until then, this isn't all that much of a threat as far as I can see.
From what I have heard they run about $20 in the markets. One of my cousins was over in that area with the US military and they all received stern warning upon arrival not to acquire one of the cheap AKs as they couldn't bring it home and would end up in a metric ton of trouble with their COs. Being a good person my cousin didn't attempt it even though he probably could have gotten away with it.
Time to offend someone
It's a goatse link. Be glad if it is broken.
Nah, but many operators will make these and sell them cheap. Free market. Prices will fall.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And if you have a AK-47, the goat is actually free.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
3... 2... 1...
Last time I checked ammo couldn't be 3D printed, so how about more control on the sale of ammo instead? Not much you can do with a 3D printed gun if you don't have any ammo.
1. Print single shot gun 2. Use single shot to steal better gun 3. ??????? 4. REVOLUTION
Silence is a state of mime.
..just imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
they threaten business models premised on artificial scarcity...
this just gives them "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" cover...
If you are fighting a rebellion, a chemist and physicist would be much more useful that a 3d printer, unless you intend to drop the 3D printer on someone.
I think the chemist or phisicist would be substantially heavier than most of the budget 3D printers, and would therefore be more devestating to drop on someone.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The AKs are already made, sitting in warehouse.
I bought a Chinese made SKS for $200 that the Chinese government almost certainly starved a citizen to manufacture (the old guns/butter tradeoff). IIRC based on serial# it was made in 1966, right in the middle of one of Mao's famines.
Most of that $200 had to be middleman money. I bet NORICO (the Chinese government arms manufacturer) didn't get $50.
If you wanted to make a plastic gun for cheap you would injection mold it, not 3d print it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Most of those very cheep African AKs are pretty worn out. Still far, far better then a plastic zip gun.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And it's done wonders for their political stability and liberal freedoms.
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
The main effect of typical bureaucratic over-reaction to these cheap plastic guns for us Americans is going to be even more draconian gate rape at the airports.
FTFY.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think people are only months away from making a printable machine gun. These printed guns are improving pretty quickly. And everyone is going to have to scramble to figure out what to do about them.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The low level crime types that like guns would never hire a print techie to keep the thing working for long. Besides, they'd never figure out how to install the drivers anyway. ^^
So here's the deal... some people will no-doubt be screaming that a background check should be required before buying a 3D printer. And we can of course extend the argument and say background checks should be required before going to the hardware store. Etc etc.
At some point, people are going to re-look at the argument that it is people with bad judgement and/or negligence that cause gun violence and gun accidents. The arguments against guns that center on availability of equipment are valid, but there are no practical solutions.
What, take guns away from citizens? Make them harder to buy? These arguments vanish when you realize that the people committing crimes don't follow the rules, and that this country is filled with guns already in private hands. Not to mention the constitution allows for gun ownership. It just won't work.
Ok, so fast-forward to 2013 where you can 'print' your own guns or just go to the hardware store and build one the old-fashioned way.
The only practical way to protect against gun violence and gun negligence is through education. It is through learning about morals, causes and consequences, and gun safety.
Siting in front of a video game all day that awards points for kills is not going to work.
Oh, and I am not saying this is something the government can simply thrust upon people -- this will take decades of careful work from parents and educators alike. There aren't any "turn-key" solutions to gun violence and gun negligence. But the long road is worth the trip.
Terrorists are no doubt happy to hear this as now they don't have to smuggle guns into the US, they can just print them as needed.
Over the past months we've been inundated by "3D printed gun" stories. So much so that a recent poll showed Americans to be (on average) in favor of banning home printing of guns. So congratulation to Cody Wilson and homies, you've succeeded in creating enough noise to make the average American a. aware of your goals, and b. have them oppose you.
The people who'd want to regulate 3D printers are beside themselves with evil delight. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
I was wondering what people think the true motivation behind defense distributed really was. I mean... we see it can be done... great... But are they just doing it for a publicity stunt? Just to push the envelope? Or to just piss off the ATF?
A RepRap is cheaper than a mill, which is one of many tools you would need to make a proper firearm. So I don't buy the "more expensive" assumption.
Right now it is a cheap and dangerous toy. Or another way to state it, an interesting experiment in materials, design and politics.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You can make a working handgun or shotgun in less time and for less money with a hacksaw and a drill. And you get your choice of materials: metal or plastic.
Check my math: So disclosure: I am personally all for responsible gun control, combined with strict liability/insurance (like auto is) required for gun owners. I believe in freedom - but also no matter how many guns I own, if the government wants to carry me away in the night -- they will be able to. My theory is that once the government comes knocking -- I'm already f*cked -- and for that reason I think strong encryption will probably keep me safer than any gun ever will. So as the future unfolds we're heading in a direction where *everybody* can own a gun -- that costs $25 to make -- but only fires 8-12 rounds .. that's awesome!
First - because that ought to "suck the money" right out of the gun lobby -- why buy a gun from glock, beretta, s&w when I can just print my own at home for $25. Can't wait till I can print my own ammo too (it's coming).
Looking forward 10 years -- lets say 2023 --- if there was a repeat of Sandhook - does that mean we'd see an event where a trouble child steals his single mothers AR-15 with a high capacity magazine brings it to an elementary school and starts unloading -- and immediately finds himself face to face with a normal class size of probably 45-60 lightly armed school children who are extremely well versed at battle tactics like guerrilla warfare and counter insurgency thanks to CoD XII.
If so .. wow. We can't slow down progress, might as well embrace it.
Making ammunition is trivial:
- bullets can be cast from lead http://www.amazon.com/Cast-Bullets-E-H-Harrison/dp/B0007ASOHO
- primer can be strike anywhere matches carefully ground up, or fashioned from chemicals http://cryptome.info/0001/tm-31-210.htm
- gunpowder is simple chemistry http://www.amazon.com/Do-Yourself-Gunpowder-Cookbook/dp/0873646754
- cases can be turned on a lathe (granted they're not as malleable as those which are formed, but they'll last for a couple of firings) http://www.janellestudio.com/metal/turning_brass.txt
and of course, doing a muzzle loader eliminates the need for that, just need a patch
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The ability to make guns at home is nothing new. Many people used to do it. The absurdity is that so many people have become so disconnected from chemistry, physics, metal/woodworking, and engineering that they actually think that this is anything remarkable. I suppose if all you ever do is write laws or software, "guns" are these bizarre complicated contraptions that come out of elaborate factories, when they are actually the metalworking equivalent of bubble sort.
The only way you are going to control guns if you erase pretty much any ability of people to work metal or plastic. I suppose it's possible to do so: interest in chemistry has largely been killed already through the war on drugs, misguided safety concerns, and anti-terrorism efforts, which have made most of the chemicals that people used to get introduced to chemistry through illegal or hard to obtain. If you are for gun control and the war on drugs, you are pretty much automatically against chemistry, engineering, and manufacturing skills, whether you know it or not.
It's pretty similar to the conflict between DRM, secure boot, hooks for law enforcement, and regulation of cryptography on the one hand, and open source and freedom to publish source code on the other.
Making ammunition is trivial
So is making a pipe bomb, but that doesn't mean that they should be widely available for sale.
Let's see.... Nothing you posted was actually what your article said. None of it. It varies between misrepresentation to outright lie. Why can't you just use the truth in your arguments? Really? I know there's problems. Everyone knows there's problems. Making stuff up just makes you look legitimately paranoid.
1. Misrepresentation(A crime was committed, but it wasn't that, paranoid confirmation bias at work)
2. Outright fabrication
3. Was with a warrant, so no.
4. Being sued with a claim doesn't make it true. The complaint includes accusations that representatives were "rude". Really?
5. That's not what happened and that's pretty clearly intentionally a misrepresentation of the investigation's purpose, and only reflects your paranoia. I cannot understand how you'd possibly misconstrue the purpose that far, other than paranoia.
6. Oh no, someone has an opinion that's different than yours. And she's a politician. That's tyranny.
Christ this post is just doubling down on intentionally misreading everything. I used to be sympathetic about the damned IRS thing until everyone started pretending it meant something besides what happened.
A few years ago my dear departed Dad who was a NRA Lifer and very active in firearm education, gave a rather lengthy speech to a newsman with a camera who was to report on some firearm classes being conducted. My Dad talked about how the NRA used to be at the forefront of firearm education. They sponsored training classes and encouraged young adults to learn how use a firearm properly. Then sometime in the 60's the NRA got all whacked out and obsessed with their legislative agenda. They now devote all their efforts to that end and none (or very little) to education these days. Dad goes on about how the NRA needs to get back to it's roots of education and be more proactive in promoting safety and worry less about who gets political contributions.
I don't know if what he said was true, I'm not old enough to remember a time the NRA was anything but a lobbying group.
When he got done talking the reporter said "We'll need your name and address so we can air this footage on tonight's news. What's your name sir?"
"Chuck Heston" was the reply. The reporter moved on.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
DC man saves a kid's life from a violent animal. And get fined $1,000. Because we're "Common Sense" like that..
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/19/dc-man-wont-face-gun-charges-shooting-pit-bull-att/
These guns look amazingly like toys. Complete with bright red plastic in an odd shape.
More folks with toy guns (squirt guns for example) are gonna get shot by scared people who don't know if they are faced with a real threat or not.
I simply do not understand the obsession of printing a gun with 3D printers. It seems as soon as we talk 3D printer the next sentence is "used to print a gun!" Really? Is that the only thing these people can think of?
$ 1725 for the pringer, $25 for the materials, and 48 hours to print it.
Versus my local hardware store, where I could build a zip gun that will fire as many rounds as I want, without any worry about it exploding in my hand, ever, for about $5, in about half an hour (including drive time), and have no record kept of me buying politically sensitive tools.
A Google search for "zip gun plans" produces about 2 million hits. 3D printed guns are nothing more than crappy zip guns, more dangerous to the user than to the target. And to be crappy compared to the average zip gun is saying something.
2D Money?
At least have a national background check before allowing the person to buy a gun, and yes, that includes private sales and gun shows.
Your argument that criminals don't follow laws therefore we should not enact those laws is outright idiotic. Imagine if we applied that to all other laws. "Everyone speeds anyhow, so why post speed limits and have cops waste their time giving out tickets?" hey, the free market will sort out those who can drive from those who can't right?
I realize we repealed the 18th Amendment because everyone was breaking the law anyhow, but that does not mean it's OK to turn all of the country into the wild west just because a few wackos want to have more guns than people.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Maybe Americans need to get out in the world more, and see and talk to people who have dealt with actual police states, who have lived under actual tyranny. Just because you have a broken democracy with some serious issues that need to be addressed doesn't mean you are the verge of collapsing into 1984. It is like watching someone get a bad cut on their arm and leg, and then go on and on about how they are going to die and to tell their wife they love her, etc., when despite needing to take care of the cut but are not in any short term risk of dying
And so, you agree that highly armed citizenry does not lead to deposing of despots.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's not true Freedom (TM) until someone loses a fucking eye - intentionally or unintentionally.
Look nobody is taking your bate material, you can still look at a picture of the pres and fap away on it if you want.
The NRA still does a lot of firearms education and training. The rabid anti-gun folks stand in the way of these efforts at every opportunity however. Firearms-related accidents are good for the anti-gun agenda
Check out the Eddie Eagle program:
http://www.nra.org/Article.aspx?id=1353
Now, try attending a city council or school board meeting and proposing that you have the NRA come in and give a firearms safety presentation to the school kids.
In many places, people will be screaming at the top of their lungs at the idea of having anything NRA-related coming anywhere near the schools.
The NRA didn't suddenly get "whacked out" and shift its focus. The 1960s is when the big push for new federal anti-gun legislation came along. The last thing the federal government wanted at the time was a bunch of well armed black people demanding equality.
Now it is true as a matter of history that one point the "Founding Fathers" considered was that a nation that relied on a militia (armed and trained body of citizens) for its defense, rather than a standing army, had a built-in defense again its government going tyrannical.
And they learned that the government might be stopped from becoming tyrannical, but even a lightly armed flotilla from a nation across the ocean can knock the whole damned never-can-become-tyrannical government. The only war in which the United States of America was invaded and defeated was the war of 1812. Remember that.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The 3D printers are neat and all, but really. These stories sound like silicon valley never heard of shop class.
You can make a simple firearm with a decent-sized drill press and $20 of scrap metal--and a decent drill press costs maybe $150. It can cost much less if bought used.
Erm, they now do goatse.cx mail :P
I think the most ironic part about this post (and it was really hard to pick one thing as the most ironic...) was that every single item mentioned is a conservative propaganda talking point.
While there were those who have been citing for years now that:
The IRS has had powers to influence companies without proper oversight. While all the way back to the 80s (and before) there were cases of the IRS performing targeted auditing that had driven companies out of business with nothing more than false information or a clerical error on the IRS's side.
The warrentless FBI issue has been brought up several times with people who have been nothing more that remotely related to those who the government is interested in, or by people who have simply posted something on facebook. There are hundreds of complaints out about this, but, it happens to the media once (after they do the same thing to a government only a couple years before), and all of a sudden people bring up the issue.
There is a reason the "Fast & Furious" gun fiasco disappeared out of the news almost as quickly as it came in. It wasn't an attempt at gun control, lack of gun control made the case fall apart. Because they couldn't arrest anyone distributing guns to those who would do us harm, they had to "watch" (and they still do on a daily basis) guns sold in the US go to people who would do us harm. But as the laws stand, until the gun is used in a crime, there does not need to be a trail of the gun ownership, which means any private citizen can sell a gun to someone who can not legally own one. There was only one gun that "walked" in the F&F ordeal. All the rest were monitored sales.
I won't even comment on a single person commenting on wanting to take our guns. That just seems silly.
Meanwhile,
We have groups of people who are targeted and arrested because they are hide their faces and participate in public gatherings without warrents.
We have police infiltrating religious groups in order to bait and catch potential "threats".
We have laws being put in place that restrict people from respecting their religious views (Christian, Muslim, Hindi, or otherwise) because it might offend atheists.
We have regulations put in place so that citizens must answer to businesses, while regulations (or the agencies responsible for the regulations) depleted so that businesses do not have to answer to citizens.
We have raving geniuses (sarcasm alert) publicly posting information that can only do harm. And while I am all for the free exchange of information. Only a complete idiot would think that releasing schematics for a printed gun will not be used to kill innocent people. It is only a matter of time. And by proving something people already knew, all they did was make it easier for people who would normally be too dumb to figure it out to do harm. Knowledge is a responsibility, and should be handled as such.
We have people leaking government information endangering lives, policy, and stability because they feel people should know, or for their own personal gain. Again, knowledge is power, taking that from those who protect us does nothing but prevent them from being able to protect us. Now, if the government, or someone in the government is obviously doing something counter to the nations security or stability, it should be raised up. But not in this crazy partisan banter that seems to snowball.
There are news stories of police shooting children trying to protect the same people they are killing.
We live in a world where Governments have lost control of their own borders. And as a result, they (in the case of the US, and many other countries at the behest of their own citizens and elected officials) are targeting it's own citizens to create a feeling of safety.
And if you think the little things you mentioned are anything near the nightmare that already exists, you are so lost.
With the escalated fear of those who are not us, you have citizens attacking innocent
I get the impression that you actually, honestly believe that there is, to quote Mr. Obama, "no there there" in any of these scandals.
Here's a hypothetical. Suppose, during the Bush administration (either one, take your pick), the IRS had engaged in a program of "be on the lookout" for groups that had "gay", "lesbian", "transgendered", "queer", "hemp", or "legalize" in their names. Suppose the IRS had sent intrusive questionnaires... "what books are you reading?" "give a full list of the members of your group and their home addresses" "give a full list of everyone who attended your meetings" "I remind you you are under penalty of perjury if your answers are incomplete or wrong"
Suppose, as a direct result of that, that for 27 months in a row none of the targeted groups ever succeeded in filing for tax-exempt status. As icing on the cake, imagine that in the meantime, right-wing organizations routinely got that status in a few weeks with no problems.
There's a voting angle, too. Those tax-free organizations set up so that people can donate anonymously, to feed money in to the political process. So one side of the political process had its operations hampered while the other side did not. This isn't quite to the level of denying people the vote, but it was screwing around with the ability of people to organize. Oh, and those intrusive questionnaires with personal information were passed to the political enemies of the people who had to fill them out.
If Bush had been in charge and this had been done to gays etc? Ye gods, every newspaper and TV news show would have gone white hot incandescent over this.
Because it was the Obama administration, and the code words were "tea party" and "patriot" rather than the ones I listed above, many people including you have no problem with it.
The IRS has an extraordinary amount of power, and that power comes with limits. The "tea party" crackdown went well beyond those limits. I want to see jail time for the perpetrators, and I do not for one second believe the perpetrators were low-level; there are almost 500 cases known now of this IRS abuse and they were all across the whole USA.
The best theory I have read is that this extra-legal activity was coordinated through union channels rather than government channels. The IRS union overwhelmingly donates to Democrats and the union leader had meetings with Mr. Obama before all this started happening. I can hear you now: I must be a crazed conspiracy theorist to even imagine this. I ask you, which is a simpler theory, coordination through the union, or a completely spontaneous eruption of identical behavior by low-level bureaucrats at widely scattered offices across the whole country? (Using similar questionnaires, I might add)
As for Fast and Furious, let's compare that one with "Wide Receiver", a plan concocted and executed under George W. Bush's administration. In Wide Receiver, guns were allowed to "walk" into Mexico. This was a joint project of the USA and Mexico, i.e. Mexico was told about this in advance. The guns had radio transmitters hidden inside them to help track them. The plan was a fiasco: the gun runners kept moving around until the batteries died in the transmitters and the plan failed. Guns went into Mexico and were not tracked. The plan wasn't ever tried again.
Now, how was Wide Receiver different from Fast and Furious? (0) Mexico was notified, with FaF Mexico was not told. (1) Radio transmitters in guns, with FaF there were no transmitters. (2) An active attempt was made to track the guns, with FaF not only was there no official attempt, when an agent tried to stakeout on his own his bosses ordered him to stand down.
Now, please formulate a theory to cover these facts. Why was Fast and Furious so different from Wide Receiver? Occam's Razor suggests a simple explanation: that with FaF, the guns were not intended to be tracked. I don't like that theory but it is simple and fits the facts. I can't wait to hear your theory.
If we
I don't even like Obama much, I just hate the self-reinforcing confirmation bias circle the internet creates in paranoid people. Obama's aggressively center positions on near everything aren't sufficient for a modern world, especially with the overton window shifted so far right.
I get the impression that you actually, honestly believe that there is, to quote Mr. Obama, "no there there" in any of these scandals.
I don't "believe" obama on anything. It's just that even more than a cursory examination of these "scandals" reveals them to either be normal function of government misconstrued as a crime or a legitimate problem bent completely out of factual frame of reference in order to blame the president.
As to the entire rest of your post, I can't imagine the level of self-awareness you must lack to write all that in the context of discussing paranoia and not recognize it as such. There is almost nothing there but conspiracy theories unbacked by evidence.
It does appear that the goal is not to reduce crime, though that is used as a statistic. I do agree that the banning of guns appears to be an end on its own for these people. It makes little sense. There is an irrational fear, probably instilled at an early age. It is similar to the irrational fear that other people have towards people instead of objects.
I am not afraid of guns. I am afraid of people with guns. 'Cause, you know, its people that do the killing. And giving people guns gives them an edge in killing that I would prefer that they don't have.
They got lucky and the barrel didn't crack, splinter, shatter, or explode. I'm no gun expert, but I imagine that will eventually happen as people experiment with cheaper and cheaper materials.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
You're going to get a call from the National Apostrophe Association, they want to educate you about the difference between its and it's.
Guns are nice but I am looking forward to 3d-printed guillotine or medieval chair of torture. I want to be free and protect myself.
I'm sure Generals Pakenham & Jackson remember that quite well...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/culturing-science/2013/01/29/killer-cats/
Maybe Americans need to get out in the world more, and see and talk to people who have dealt with actual police states, who have lived under actual tyranny. Just because you have a broken democracy with some serious issues that need to be addressed doesn't mean you are the verge of collapsing into 1984. It is like watching someone get a bad cut on their arm and leg, and then go on and on about how they are going to die and to tell their wife they love her, etc., when despite needing to take care of the cut but are not in any short term risk of dying
Why should we tolerate "nigh-third world shithole conditions" just because a WORSE third world shithole exists?
Here's a cluebat for you moron, those places got the way they did because people didn't fight hard enough, or recognize what was happening, or were bought off.
did you even read it? as all? can you read? are you just blindly linking cause some else who didn't read it told you it was bad?
Are you stupid?
His fine has to do with the 3 unregistered weapons he had. Normally he would go to jail, but since he saved the child he is just getting the fine.
This is reasonable.
From the article you didn't bother to read:
"
As part of the agreement, Benjamin Srigley, 39, was required to pay a $1,000 fine but will not have criminal charges filed against him for the three unregistered firearms and the ammunition that investigators found in his possession, said Ted Gest, a spokesman for the office of the attorney general.
“We took it into account that he saved this boy’s life,” Mr. Gest said.
Possession of an unregistered firearm or ammunition in the District is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, and prosecutors said Mr. Srigley could have faced up to seven criminal charges in the case.
"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
armed populace only disposed of despots when the despot isn't also armed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes, but you can not have a gun to be found until the day you intend to use it.
So you can plan to do an attack,, and then the day of make and distribute guns.
Injection molds are need for injection molding. They can be found and destroyed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I used to be sympathetic about the damned IRS thing until everyone started pretending it meant something besides what happened.
In your own words, summarise what happened, and tell us how big a deal it is on the ten scale. Give us the real truth.
A) Not nearly as much as they used to. It's gone from being their primary purpose to being used to support there fear mongers PR bullshit.
B) I don't know of any anti gun person who doesn't want gun safety. I can even find any article that support that premise.
C) The person who wrote the article needs to learn statistics.
D) I wouldn't want the NRA coming into my school becasue of A.
Yes, the NRA did shift theior purpose , wildly. TYhanks to Orrin Hatch.
He had a ,ot of 'studies' and 'reports' done in the 70s about firearms,. He had every data point and fact that was against his point of view removed from the reports and the presented them as facts.
The the NRA hire a PR firm to have keep in house PR team at the NRA.
After which the FUD, fear mongering, and lies really began.
Prior to Orrin Hatch guns where NOT considered a right for all people to have unregulated, and many states had for stricter regulation then they do right now.
Here a head scratcher: right now there are few firearm regulation then throughout all of US history.
Until 1970 States and cities could dictate firearm policy.
in the 'old west' many towns outlawed guns becasue in realty, civilized people do'n't like shooting other people. So having everyone armed didn't help much.
However not allowing any firearms helped a great deal.
But the NRA doesn't actually talk about fact.
FYI:
I am a mormer member of the NRA.
I have taught my kids gun safety.
Based on actual historical data, I would rather all firearms where banned.
But, the NRA doesn't talk a bout the Well Regulated part of the same sentence the NRA use as some sort of excuse to not allow actual regulation from being put in place.
The fact that they opposed a check to ensure the purchaser is legally allowed to purchase a firearm should tell you they don't give a shit about anything rational. It doesn't help the the PR firm now dictates what the NRA does, and it's in the PR firms best interest to create fear.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They are squishier though.
"These 3D printed cheap plastic guns are going to flood Africa and other such places with very cheap guns. "
I'm usually polite, but that sentence qualifies as "fucking stupid".
Africans are quite capable of making things, Kalashnikovs included.
Firearms are easy to make on basic machine tools available globally. Most classic weapons PREDATE CNC technology of any type. The Third World has many machinists who are skilled and ingenious. It has to because people must repair what we would discard in the US.
Kalashnikov prints abound, but a decent machinist can simply copy a working example. It ain't rocket surgery, because Mikhail Kalashnikov was a MECHANIC who wanted a rugged, simple weapon.
Africans can also obtain weapons from foreign donors. (First World sanctions are mostly good for disarming the innocents Janjaweed kill. If we wanted to protect Darfur we'd arm and train the weak to kill their enemies so they could defend themselves in detail, not help ghettoize them in refugee camps instead!)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
let alone nails, for hundreds of years pretty well. you can find books on japanese joinery in a good high-end woodworking store.
from wire. just feed the wire in, out comes a spring.
Why the rudeness? Although I'm not a material scientist, I am an engineer who has done experiments to determine loads that will cause structural failure with various materials. Is that better?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
or where they are at in my home or cyberspace. And when you do have to kill some prick instant throw away. Better get a printer now before they have software that dont allow guns
Why is it referred to as the 'so-called Liberator'? That's its name.
The article above about the new video console would have been a more logical place to use the term.
For instance: "The so-called 'Xbox One' has been announced, which is technically the third Xbox console."
Citations needed.
6. Oh no, someone has an opinion that's different than yours. And she's a politician. That's tyranny.
I wonder if this would be your attitude for any other article in the Bill of Rights.
-1 Troll? As if. It's too much work to look up those references.
At least it wasn't -1 Overrated, also known as "the cowards' moderation".
Criminal gangs and intelligence agencies have been using CNC equipment to build whatever they need for decades. Guns, keys, tools, badges, whatever.
There was a case a few years ago down in Southern California where the authorities responded to the smell of gasoline in a building full of condominiums and the occupant of the condo where the smell of gas had come from fled out the window, leaving behind a CNC machine and a generator he'd been using to power it. I think it might have been right next door to a federal Reserve or United States Mint building of some sort, there were some concerns about electronic eavesdropping.
It won't protect them, but it will:
1) give them the option to fight back (use the zipgun to take out 1 of the tyrans goons, then take his gun for the rest of the fight)
2) at the very least, make tyranny more dangerous for the tyrants
The thing that kills me reading most of this conjecture is that almost NONE of you have the faintest idea about the internal pressures and ballistics involved in a repeating firearm.
The plastic gun isn't new. Just printing it is. Every point made here in this thread has been made many times over for decades.
Plastic is not metal. And all metals are not created equally. Even low caliber ammo creates amazing pressure in the chamber and at the muzzle.
A plastic printed chamber and barrel is a "zip" gun. Until we experience a major leap forward in plastics or the ability to print hardened steel... this is a bunch of conjecture about a science project level discovery.
Getting a gun past "security" anywhere takes about 30 mins of planning and a two man team. And this would be a reliable firearm purchased at street value of $100.
I'd suggest waiting on this to get past the science fair stage before worrying about it.
A Cheap CNC machine can make the controlled parts of a full auto AR-15 in no time flat. And most of the parts are legal to own separately without a license. This represents a larger danger than the plastic zip gun. But... we don't see many abuses of this availability. Nor will be see many abuses of the plastic zip gun.
This is a great example of why gun control laws are flawed. Simply firing a bullet isn't a difficult task and it can be accomplished by virtually any material (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartridge_Trap). Ammo cartridges, on the other hand, must be made with high explosives and metal to be effective. I'd like to see a 3-D printer that can create gunpowder. Another pro to controlling ammo is that gun murderers wouldn't be able to murder many people if they had a limited ammunition supply whereas a murderer with one gun and unlimited ammo would be able to keep killing until armed officials arrive.
It's amazing that there are technological advancements like this going on, but whether it's a gun or not doesn't matter. Any regulation that could effectively "prevent the average Joe from mass printing guns" will do nothing but restrict exploration into for example.. Using the spring and shock absorption ideas to print myself a prosthetic leg that actually fits and feels right.
As for people secretly making firearms at home - Give me 48 hours and a quarter of the cash invested in that Lulz printer for me to gather hand machining tools and to put together a legitimate workbench and I'll make a better gun with basic metal yard materials.
What then? Make it illegal for a person to learn machining skills, permits to use hand tools, drug the population to prevent the creativity to create firearms? Restricting knowledge is the worst thing imaginable for the human race.
If you are interested in a more balanced perceptive on tyranny in the US (although late in the video a couple words are said about Ron Paul), I recommend this video.
[youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApMNKGT6eE8&feature=youtu.be
It reasons out why the idea gun banning is almost always malicious to the general population
Call me a naysayer, but this average-joe race to create improved and inexpensive firearms in the home doesn't do much for my sense of security or positive worldview.
get back to me when someone prints a mac 10.
You don't have to be super skilled to use a lathe to make a steel barrel either, so between the few, and perhaps a few other easily or obtained metal parts, and you might have yourself a serviceable device.