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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
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
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
Rubber band guns are not fatal but they are guns... Water guns (loaded with water) are not fatal but are guns... So tell me again what was your point?
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.
The reason being is the law has no right to take away my freedom.
The law does this all the time - there's a huge list of things you aren't allowed to do. I hear you can get away with a whole load of things in some countries though... maybe you should move there?
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.
Personal Manufacture is your right, ah, unless that is stated in the laws of the land (and it isn't in Australia) then I call bullshine on that.
This may come as a surprise but we have fairly good gun control in Australia, people who hunt are allowed to own guns, all gun owners are licensed (except for illegal guns of course) and gun violence is fairly uncommon (it has flared up a bit of late, a few drive bys and shootings, but every time someone gets shot that is a national news item so yeah, not at all common) so I have no issue with what the police are suggesting here, but as I have said, very difficult to regulate.
Your freedoms are defined by law, and as such will always be at the whim of politics. You do not have "Freedoms" just because you think you should.
Leg Godt!
I believe the australians are correct in making it illegal.
Rubber band guns are not fatal but they are guns... Water guns (loaded with water) are not fatal but are guns... So tell me again what was your point?
Errr... I bet he's shitless scared about photo-shooting as well... you know? One may be killed by having a bullet ricocheting from a photo.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 government should fear it's citizens, NOT the other way around.
unreliable, inaccurate, impractical. But hey, don't let reality rain on your totalitarian parade.
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?"
Mad Max was fiction and the crime rate is still on the way down.
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.
What's a projectile? I'm sure as heck a good old CRT is shooting out photons at the speed of light. I'm also sure that all radionuclides shoot off particles other than photons at speeds way over 300 fps. An electron moving at 300 fps has a rather laughable energy of 5E-8 eV. I don't think there are any small decay products with energies so may orders of magnitude below 1eV.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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
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.
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.
Ummm... is that so? Note: Australia is a democracy and the cited law wasn't issued by a govt. decree or something, it did pass through parliament.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
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!
No, you're born with all the freedoms you will ever have. It's the law that takes those freedoms away.
when did we switch to the term "firearm" ? All i saw was the term "gun"
what black market?
I can walk less than a mile and buy a gun for less than $100, legally.
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.
Making it illegal means they can put you in prison AFTER you've killed someone. How did we go so long with out this???
If you have parliament, I doubt you're a democracy. Democracy is when everyone gets a vote -- on everything, instead of representatives. The purpose of parliament is to *bypass* democracy.
I'd say our freedoms can be measured by our ability to get rid of the government if needed...
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.
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.