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Australian Police Move To Make 3D Printed Guns Illegal
lukehopewell1 writes "'Untraceable, undetectable, cheap and freely available.' That's how Australian police have described the 3D-printable gun known as The Liberator today as they announce that they will be seeking to make the download, construction and possession of these weapons illegal. In their tests, Police printed the 15 parts required to assemble The Liberator in 27 hours and assembled it within 60 seconds with a firing pin fashioned out of a steel nail. The two guns were test fired into a block of resin designed to simulate human muscle, and the first bullet penetrated the resin block up to 17 centimeters. NSW Police Ballistics division confirm that it would be a fatal wound if pointed at someone."
It's also used to make guns...
...at least they didn't move to make 3D printing illegal.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
You could poke an eye out with that
rewriting history since 2109
OK maybe the downloading part is not yet covered, but I'm pretty sure in NSW unlicensed manufacture is already an offence, as is possession obviously.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Ballistics division confirm that it would be a fatal wound if pointed at someone
Well, ya. It's a gun you morons.
I remember the old days of people hosting bulletin boards on their Commodore 64's. If the sys op was kind ... or if you had something to share, you'd get to download the stash of dirty pictures in glorious 8 bit color. Then they passed laws against it and now you can't find porn on line anymore.
If they were smart, they'd make a lot of noise about these things, but not actually make them illegal. As a police officer, what would you rather be facing? A handgun that is competently made or a fad which barely fires? Or for that matter, a semiautomatic rifle that has been modified to shoot automatic?
You'd want the "Liberator" in the hands of any crazies you happened to face. It's still dangerous, but the odds are better.
...is harder to get in Australia so improvised weapons are not going to be as much use as in the US.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
[Make metal ilegal too..] It's also used to make guns...
They aren't proposing to make the material illegal.
Bless the Australian police for actually performing an objective experiment on the machine before moving to ban it!
I hope you would have to actually shoot someone for it to be fatal.
3d-printing of guns: the quickest way to create legislation regulating the sale of bullets.
With a gun from a 3d printer
The reason being is the law has no right to take away my freedom. I don't care if it is a freedom of speech issue or the possession, manufacture, or distribution of dangerous goods. This is not the same thing as saying there should be no regulation of public entities. Personal manufacture though is your right and the government should not be given the power to force changes in these weapons just so that there job becomes easier.
It sounds like the police have never heard of PA Luty. http://thehomegunsmith.com/ check out some of the designs folks. You could make a MACHINE GUN that would be fully functional from nothing more than parts you bought at a hardware store. It would cost you about 200 bucks or so in tools and parts.
So this clown of a police commissioner says his greatest fear is of criminals blowing themselves up with it. Are you serious? Are you not just a little bit more worried of people with a grudge against police using it against them, or even innocent people?
Rocket Surgeon.
Good fucking luck.
You know the rest, be honest with yourself, this is the INTERNET, since when is ill eagle anything but a catalyst?
Cars in the water. Thanks, austerity.
Uh... for a moment, you scared me to death... I thought is about a bridge in Western Australia.
I believe the australians are correct in making it illegal.
Cody Wilson thinks that he's enforcing his 1st and 2nd amenment rights, but the truth is... the US is already awash with guns... and if the US government wanted to take them away, they have plenty of firepower to wield over people armed with a piece of plastic. The rise of the 3D printed gun is moot in the US because REAL guns are easy to get and cheap as well.
No...., all that 3D printed guns are going to do is introduce gun culture to countries that have decided to do away with guns.
Only the criminals will have them because most people don't want one and won't get one to defend themselves with.
Thanks a lot, you redneck jingoistic patriotic bastard.
Freedom of information is one thing, but this information in the wrong hands can kill. It's why we don't hand out uranium and bomb-making plans to just anyone.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Police printed the 15 parts required to assemble The Liberator in 27 hours and assembled it within 60 seconds with a firing pin fashioned out of a steel nail.
27 hours for a .38? You could make a dozen 12 gauges in that time, and really get your rampage on. Let me know when they start regulating black pipe and twine.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Now they dont know if my guns are in the closet safe or stored in cyber space and now that I have the code I can create many more kinds. And combinations of real and made parts. The world will soon be awash in them. The up side is in 10 15 years the big name manufactures will be nearly out of business.
Of course the way around bullet regulation is to simply 3D print yourself a coilgun.
These can be made with very little hassle using off the shelf recycled parts ie from old TVs and the files adjusted to take the components you have.
Then the multi coil setup allows firing of ball bearings, nails, and other "Fun Stuff" (tm) at about the same speed as a handgun for dispatching annoying vermin which is the main reason most people have guns in rural areas.
Heh heh.
People kill people.
Seriously - if you want to kill someone there's both cheaper and more readily available weapons than 3D-printed guns. It's a huge non-problem.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
I wonder how far a nailgun can shoot a nail into the resin...
When do the NSW police plan to start their backgound checks on construction workers and require a license to visit a hardware store?
The land where the cops want to make the Liberator illegal is the same as where it is perfectly legal to own a semi-automatic rifle & a silencer for that rifle. It's only illegal if you put the two together. Nobody would EVER do that!
Its over. The guns are going to flow.
Doubtless they'll try something with bullets. But making your own bullets isn't that hard either.
There are a dozen over the counter chemicals that could be purchased, mixed, and cooked to create explosives similar to gun powder. And then all you're dealing with is the bullet jacket, bullet, and primer. I've seen hunters that refill their own ammunition. They pick up the spent cartridge and save them. Then when they've got nothing better to do they wash them off, replace the primer, fill the cartridge with more powder, and squeeze a new bullet into it. The jackets don't even need to be made out brass or metal for that matter. A fully paper cartridge is entirely possible.
And beyond that, the machines that can print in metal are dropping in price as we speak. Still far beyond the means of the end user but you could say the same thing of the plastic prototype printers in the 1980s. In 30 years we will probably have 3d printers printing in metal.
And that doesn't even address the assembly capability and subtractive machining capability of many machines.
If 3d printers scare you, I can buy a metal lathe that can make gun parts out of steel for not much more then a thousand dollars. The technology isn't that complicated. Put block of steel in vice... tighten vice... wait for drill to remove all unwanted material. Remove finished part. The parts have to be designed to accommodate the limitations of a 2 axis lathe but if we're just going for a functional gun... it works.
Its actually surprising we don't have more home made guns throughout the world. It is really quite simple.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
when you outlaw 3d printing, only outlaws will have 3d printers. They may as well outlaw machining tools as well since you can make much more effective guns with them. Go Australia.
Surely it would be better to make killing people illegal and not try to legislate what people can construct at home in 60 seconds after a 3D printing is completely.
If killing people is already illegal, then why do they think that if they make something illegal that can be done secretly and completely undetectable in the privacy of one's home is going to prevent any crime? Surely the criminal that is intent on using a gun illegally isn't going to shy away from downloading plans and printing them.
I can make you a gun, get me a wetsuit, a screw driver and a watermelon, trust me I've made assault rifles with less.
- MacGyver the 2nd.
You can't bring that rational talk in here. There are rules.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So this clown of a police commissioner says his greatest fear is of criminals blowing themselves up with it. Are you serious?
No, but he thinks this is the most effective way to scare people away from downloading and printing it...
Like in the old days with the illegal money changers in East European countries. Police were not telling the tourists: "it's illegal to change money on the street, you might go to jail for it", but "most of these money changers are fraudsters, and will just rip you off".
Are you not just a little bit more worried of people with a grudge against police using it against them, or even innocent people?
Sure he is, but do you really think that telling people that will stop them from downloading it?
Seriously - if you want a gun, there's both cheaper and more readily available sources. You can even manufacture your own without a printer.
...Australia still has plenty of other shit that can kill you.
So lets have our police lie to us instead (nothing has changed there i guess). The end doesn't justify the means, and in a lot of cases will only breed contempt/distrust.
Rocket Surgeon.
Untraceable and freely available my arse, where the hell are you going to get ammo for it?
Geeze, Australia doesn't have this or that amendment to the constitution - Guys we ARE NOT a state of the USA. We have our own laws, and currently (legal) gun ownership is restricted. Frankly I believe that Australia is generally a safer place since the Howard government restricted legal gun ownership. Yes I know I'll be modded down and adversely commented on by those of you in the US who have the "right to bear arms", but frankly I don't give a flying fuck about your rights - I'm only interested in my rights and the safety of me and my family. So yes 3D printed guns should be banned here in oz. And I know that I'l get the storm of "yes but the crims and bikie gangs can get guns". Yes they can, and as far as I'm concerned they can go and shoot each other.
No he's concerned about people downloading the guns out of curiosity with the goal of firing it a couple of times in a paddock.
That does actually make a bit of sense. Although it would be much less of a problem if they let us have some normal guns without jumping though 50 hoops (hell were not even allowed some paintball guns here).
Rocket Surgeon.
It still shouldn't be his greatest fear though. You play with fire ... your pretty much responsible for getting burnt, but an innocent person or himself dieing because of some one else actions should be much worse. I swear sometimes it seems Australian police wont be happy until they lock everyone inside padded rooms, drinking their food so they don't choke, out of a straw in the wall so they can't drown.
criminals can get their hands on real guns fairly easily, I think there concern is more likely kids that decide to make one for a bit of fun blowing themselves up. Quite a reasonable concern really as they are the most likely group to try and make these, As an Australian licensed gun owner myself I think it would be insane to try and fire a plastic gun where you can't be certain their are no fatal faults in the barrel. Kids however are far less likely to think of such things.
No. The "clown" is afraid of some adventurous innocent "blowing themselves up with it":
I still would like someone to explain to me how the cost of a 3D printer is less than a black market gun.
... Go for it.
If you've got $20k for a one shot weapon that's likely to blow your hand off...
Common Sense (+1)
ummmm ... artistic license... I may have read the article a bit quick and i apologizes for the sensationalism. Still your hardly innocent when you print a gun (already illegal without a license), find ammo, and then fire it with out any testing and safety precautions. Are you innocent if you drive your car off the road and die while trying to do some trick you read on the internet, or doing your own electrical wiring with cellotape?
Rocket Surgeon.
Anyone who has had a 9th grade physics class knows that anything that has mass and non-unity constitutive parameters is detectable.
Hammers, tongs, and barbeque pits are next. For the same "reasons".
I really have to admire the propaganda machine of Australia. Of course they are working with a population that is predisposed to falling prey to it, but never the less, it's a stepping stone to the Holy Grail of American disarmament. I'm really impressed that they can pull of such a disarming of their population considering the Asian hordes that lie North of them all licking their lips in lustful anticipation at sacking them. Also, considering that fat rich whore that lords over them, talking about how she would like to pay them wages that only a starving African would appreciate, you would think they would see the writing on the wall of what is to come for them when they are reduced to throwing rocks like Palestinians.
We must consider that they are still in ways subservient to the crown, which today translates into whomever is in power in England. Rather sad isn't it? Couple that with the fact that it's a gene pool consisting of exiles, people not smart or strong enough to resist or be sent to the Americas. We really should have helped them cut the cord with England, but how were we to know? I think it will bite us on the ass the fact that we didn't help them cultivate their own culture more, giving them a sense of self pride and determination. I'm afraid they are predisposed to being subservient, hence they have been so extensively disarmed. Not everyone has the strength to sustain freedom.
It's the way of the new world order, to disarm the populations of the western civilization. The world has been divided up, it's now just a matter of controlling it. You can't leave around those pesky tools of freedom that liberated the people from tyranny before. You have to remove those, because one day, your subjects will wise up and want to rise up against you. But for now, you just whisper in their ears lies and prey upon their fears, and offer them false hopes. They will lay down their arms and then you truly own them.
At least most of them, some of them will naturally have to be destroyed.
Take the Red Pill.
Apparently there's no word for "Zip gun" in Australian.
-Styopa
"The laws passed "because of" her wouldn't have stopped what she did."
Most reactive laws don't work to stop what they intended to stop, or they have significant collateral damage for a simple reason.
People want politicians to do something, the easiest thing to do is make a new law.
To actually develop a solution is hard.
Just like my rant on "awareness" protests, complaining is easy, to actually develop solutions is hard.
The government should fear it's citizens, NOT the other way around.
All guns are already illegal in Australia.
Just like Chicago.
So why does the article say 'they are rushing to make 3d guns illegal'?
unreliable, inaccurate, impractical. But hey, don't let reality rain on your totalitarian parade.
You can kill someone with a baseball cap (non-adjustable, non-elastic headband), are they going to make those illegal too?
Bet they can pick up a blowgun at their local sporting goods store, and it doesn't require registration, is silent, and can kill with poisoned darts.
Can kill off an entire town just by tainting the water supply, or use something else in the mosquito foggers they drive around towns with.
So many ways to that people can off one another, the plastic gun is just a way to defend oneself against another person, including corrupt police officers like these Australian cops appear to be.
I think any gun printed that can fire bullets should be banned. If you print a gun that can't fire and is just for looks then I would say it's fine.
Apology accepted. Although, yes, you can do something incredibly stupid and still be innocent. I'm forty now and a tolerably sensible adult, but I still remember being a child and then a teenager, and the brain chemistry involved. Innocent and stupid is when you do something without thinking. Sometimes the results take away that innocence, force you to grow up fast, but guilty and stupid is when you refuse to learn from your mistakes and refuse to take responsibility for the consequences.
Or so I figure it, anyway. Getting back on topic. Note the article's phrase "home printer". I remember back when a monochrome dot-matrix printer cost over a thousand and took a minute per page. Today I can buy a colour laser printer for less than half that and it can do a page every three seconds. We're just in the early days of home 3D printing technology.
So the translation from Formal Bureaucratic English to Blunt Australian English is, "3D printed guns are bloody illegal and The Liberator's a piece of crap that'll blow your own bits off, we ain't just covering our arses, you've got no bloody excuse if you make one."
It's a gun, it fires a bullet.....what the fuck did you think it would do if the bullet hit something? smile and sing "Hello my darling?"
This is just like RIAA and friends trying to latch on to archaic copyright laws stopping the progress evolving technology has brought us where we can copy data almost instantly and send it across the planet within seconds. I swear the day we make robot waiters in restaurants there is going to be a law against it just to keep the industry running. I mean I get it, nobody likes to lose money but THIS IS WHY KEEPING UP WITH TECHNOLOGY IS IMPORTANT! Here we are again with Star Trek replicator-esque technology for every house hold, and the first thing we can think of is not to print guns. Really Mr. Monkey? I'd say stop using guns all together, lets go back to throwing rocks, the quarry industry is hurting. Oh... you have friends in the NRA? Nevermind, give'm a seat.
Mad Max was fiction and the crime rate is still on the way down.
In places like afghanistan weapon ownership is not able to be restricted.
As a partial consequence child bride ownereship is not able to be restricted either and males are more free.
That is good for males (well not good woman-obeying males, but the rest).
USA is not an unrestricted weapon state, the weapons civillian males are allowed to have are not effective against the rulers.
Once you have chaos, women lose their power. Women's power comes from the police man's club.
How's that national conversation going?
Doesn't there need to be a movie made about this before the general public becomes aware enough that the police see the need to shut it down?
Something's out of sync, here.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Everyone should have to power to take the life of someone else who is making them miserable. They just should also be forced to face the music for it as well.
But when you have asymmetry in the balance of this power... that would allow one person to take the lives of several people with limited consequence, then they'll probably start using it indiscriminately and frivolously.
It sounds like the main beef the police have is that these weapons are untraceable. Maybe if there was some way of putting some kind of watermark on the Liberator, it'd probably be all right. Anonymous first amendment sounds like a pretty good thing. Anonymous second amendment... not so much.
You can make a firearm out of raw metal stock and have that be untraceable too, so I really don't understand that argument either.
Yes, you could put watermarks and other sort of stuff like is done sometimes with printed documents (laser printers that put serial numbers into letters they are printing or other things that identify the printer). Then again, such security measures can be overcome with software if you were determined to file off those kind of things too.
The real complaint here is a loss of political control over the lives of other people. That doesn't exactly give me warm fuzzy feelings when somebody treats me or somebody I may know as a slave master. If you put yourself into slavery I suppose that would be acceptable, but I don't willingly want to be in that sort of position. I'm not really sure how many people volunteer for such a position in life either.
Australia's nothing but a bunch of criminals and their descendants...right? LOL
So I guess one can understand why they prohibited gun ownership.
J/K
The police want to run this country like a prison, where they are in charge and all the people are considered the same as inmates.
I want males to be able to do as they wish. To have freedom and not have to obey the majority (women and their good men).
I want them to beable to marry young girls if they wish, like in afghanistan and other areas of the world where males are in local control because they have an answer to almost all power (except for the drones that are murdering them) and a willingness to DISOBEY their "betters".
Males do not have liberty nor are able to persue happiness. The latter dissappeared around 1850 to 1890 when the previous english age of marraige (similar to the muslims age of marraige (look at the "jesus vs mohammed" video by stephen crowder to find out what that is)) was abolished and women's demands (the demands of the majority) were forced upon males by law.
Women do have liberty and are able to persue happiness, this is at the expense of males' ability to do so (mutually exclusive). This is a woman's country. Countries awash in military grade weapons are male's countries also awash in child brides. Look at early america, men were still marrying 7 year olds from time to time. Especially rich men who had no need to listen to the baying of the masses.
...good luck shoving all those naughty ideas back in.
Folks, plans for the original Liberator are out there, and it's a lot cheaper and easier to make (assuming a few hand/power tools) and one HELL of a lot safer to the operator. Not to mention a lot smaller and easier to conceal...I could make hundreds of the things for the cost of a single 3-D printer if I was so inclined.
So what exactly is the point of this hysteria over giant unreliable plastic POS's that no one in their right mind would ever want to use? That NO ONE has ever used in a crime?
Willful ignorance is never the answer. What you don't know can kill you stone dead...'Look at the pretty little blue-ringed octopus!"
If people are not allowed to run around with guns in their pockets, then the plastic guns are already illegal. If people are allowed to possess guns, then they can have a plastic one if they want it. It's just another gun. It still has to shoot metal bullets so claiming it can't be detected is an outright lie. I would imagine that sooner or later the person firing the plastic gun will be killed when it misfires and explodes in their hand. That is why I wouldn't bother printing guns and why I don't fear them. They are a greater danger to the user than anyone else.
The will of the majority (women) you mean.
When males rule and women are ignored the outcome is different by far.
Weapons laws, minimum age of marraige (often doesn't exist at all), all different in male dominated countries.
Democracy is rule of women. Mob rule. Rule of the 52 percent majority.
Democracy is not representative of males and should be opposed and overthrown.
un-registered guns in our country!?!?! We cant have that! What? Do you think you live in a free country?
Guns are a major cause of premature death. Cars, which also cause a lot of premature death, have extremely strict regulations that get stricter all the time. A lot of money is spent making them safer. Guns just continue to kill lots of people, because that is what they are for.
Yet cars still kill orders of magnitude more people than guns. Priorities, people! (Also in the context of comparing gun deaths to car deaths, describing the former with the word "lots" is a little disingenuous.
Go try and buy a gun pesant.
Not "could" "would"
That is the difference.
Because he is a faggot and believes in democracy and the female majority's right to tell us all what to do or not do.
Parliment does not represent males.
It represents the majority: women.
"There is no value, if it's illegal."
FUCK YOUR RELIGION (your law).
It seems like a simple message: (....) Police don’t want you to kill yourself.
Who will they have to oppress and bully if you kill yourself? Don't sully their fun!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Desktop manufacturing has always promised to be a tremendously disruptive technology, and most of the world remains clueless about what effects it will have. It will cause enormous disruption in the existing industrial model, and will unquestionably provoke vast numbers of idiotic and unenforceable laws, and the inevitable sacrifices of random people to them in the name of "containing" it.
But anyone with a brain can look at the open source printers we have now and realize anyone could have one of these things for a few bucks and some hours of elbow grease and they will be able to build anything they can imagine or download, and even the Australian authorities should be beginning to realize the impossibility of blocking that, given their wonderful success rate with porn and copyrighted material.
Desktop manufacture will supercharge the open-source world. They can struggle all they want to, complain all they want to, but if they try to put me in jail for violating nonsensical laws, I willshoot them with my plastic gun. And guns are only the beginning. We must soon learn how to live in a world where bioweapons, toxins and drugs are common and plutonium is available in every corner drug store. This ain't 1955.
The normal penetration of the 380 ACP is about 11.5", in the range of recommended self-defense rounds. But his Liberator only made "up to 17 cm", 6.9", in resin?
He's just proved the Liberator makes the 380 ACP about a quarter as dangerous as a cheap metal firearm.
"Fucking ignorant sensationalist cunt that doesn't know much about firearms", guess that's the job description for his position.
only outlaws will have 3d printers
Guns protecting your freedom is nothing but a myth.
The people taking away your real freedoms aren't the ones who want to regulate guns, they want you to have all the guns you can buy. And they'll sell them to you; then loan you a shit load of money to buy even more guns.
And while doing so, they'll make sure good jobs are scarce and convince you that you should be grateful to even have a job while gently suggesting that you put in extra hours, without pay, so you can keep that job. All nice an legal.
But you're going to have your guns to keep you safe and free. Or so you are deluded into believing.
Making it illegal means they can put you in prison AFTER you've killed someone. How did we go so long with out this???
Regulating downloading and possession of the program is almost impossible. Anyone with a degree in CS or CIS would automatically become suspect. Just monitor the local ERs for people coming in with missing fingers or mangled hands. Among the many things I've done in my long life after spending over 2 decades working with machine tools was about 6 years of "Light" gunsmithing. Considering the cost and the fact that we may legally build a firearm for our selves, I find that I can go out and purchase one for far less than what it'd cost to build one that has far more power, is accurate, and SAFE! I just purchased a 5 shot, tiny, light weight (13 oz) 38 spl +P for less than $500. Admittedly I had to register it in this state, but the printed gun comes nowhere near the capabilities of this tiny thing. The cylinder is Titanium and the frame is one piece of very light alloy. The barrel is a high strength liner in the alloy frame. It's so small and light you can almost forget it's in your pocket. At 13 oz, it feels like it's trying to unscrew your wrist. IOW. it's deadly on both ends and is not something you want to run through a couple boxes of heavy loads per day, just to practice. Now being a CS major with work on my masters, I do find the printed gun intriguing, but at present I could purchase quite an arsenal for just the cost of the printer. That and I still have all my fingers. I do find I like the idea and challenge of being able to make something that will go bang when I pull a lanyard. Yes, lanyard. I'm sure not going to hang onto one of those things when it goes bang! OTOH I do like the idea of Titanium/ceramic sintering with a plasma or laser where you really could build a safe, powerful, functioning firearm, BUT that would be far more expensive by probably an order of magnitude, so again, I'll pass. Consider that with the experience and I already have a machine shop I'll still go out and purchase one. Maybe it's because I have the experience and know what it takes to build a durable, accurate and safe firearm that I purchase one instead. I consider the printed gun to be impracticable and unsafe "for now" and anyone who holds onto one while firing it to be a complete idiot with a death wish or figures they'd be better off with fewer fingers. Course I did a lot of idiotic things myself in years gone by.
Anyone who knows about Australia gun laws would know it already is illegal. You already band from making firearms and any firearms must be registered. so if you make one that is already two charges against you
Come on now - that adds nothing to what just about every reader on this site already knows and avoids the topic anyway. Why exactly did you decide to jump on one of my posts again little VB jockey stalker? Surely you know something about some topic? Please write about that instead of showing you haven't picked up anything about politics beyond the age of ten or telling engineers that VB jockeys know far more about engineering.