Version 2.0 of 3D-Printed Rifle Successfully Fires 14 Rounds

coolnumbr12 writes "The world's first 3D-printed rifle, named 'The Grizzly' after Canadian-built tanks used in World War II, was fired in June, but the first shot fractured the barrel receiver. The creator, a Canadian man who simply goes by 'Matthew,' refined his design and posted a video Friday on YouTube of Grizzly 2.0 successfully firing 3 rounds of Winchester bullets. The video description says the Grizzly 2.0 fired 14 rounds before it cracked. The new rifle was also safe enough for Matthew to fire it by hand rather than the string system used in the first test."

Comments

Re:I hope it explodes and kills him

[centipedes.in.my.vag]

Nothing like wishing harm on people to show how you're morally superior and non-violent. Amirite?

Oh No! Assault Rifle!!

[SuperKendall]

What's this? A weapon too large to conceal that is also really bulky? Only one thing to do, call it an "Assault Rifle" (yes sir those are scare quotes!) and ban the thing lest some law abiding citizen manage to protect themselves with it!

Just because criminals only actually use unregistered handguns that they can get for cheap, doesn't mean we should not fear this monstrous beast of technology!

I don't get it.

[Joining Yet Again]

As someone who was brought up in a school with a cadet force which taught marksmanship and such, but in a country which doesn't have much of a gun culture, I really don't get this obsession with 3D-printer-manufacturing of parts of guns. In particular, I don't get why it's such a thing on /. What's the big deal, really? I assume some US states have always allowed the home building of guns, perhaps with licences, while others haven't? And that lots of people have fucked up, while others do a competent job? What's *new* here?

Re:I don't get it.

[avandesande]

My guess is it is really a statement about gun rights- if they become trivially easy to manufacture than banning the sale and ownership of guns will be pointless.

Re:I don't get it.

[cusco]

There are a couple of things going on here. The first is that it's an easy and obvious device to stress test materials, construction, and designs. No need for expensive test equipment, you know exactly the stresses generated by a round. Ammunition production has pretty stringent quality control and all the hard work of figuring out the forces involved has been done already by the manufacturer.

The other is just the normal tweaking of the government, where if there isn't a rule in place people will push the issue until a rule is made.

Re:I don't get it.

[Joining Yet Again]

I don't think so? It's already trivially easy to build a deadly weapon. Gun control exists to stop an arms race by discouraging people in general from thinking they need to carry guns (both criminals and law-abiding), not to make it impossible to get a gun. In some areas this works, as you end up with very little gun crime - e.g. urban UK - maybe in others (remote?) this doesn't apply, as law enforcement is so far away? I am not sure there's a hard and fast rule...

Re:I don't get it.

[Jane Q. Public]

"Not really. Few animals (humans included) want things to get more violent than they need to be, for obvious reasons, and a criminal has no particular desire to carry a gun unless he thinks he'll otherwise be confronted by someone with a larger weapon."

While this might be all good philosophically, one thing we *know* is that it doesn't work in the U.S.

While no cause-effect relationship has been firmly established, correlations are clear: the areas of the U.S. with the strictest control of firearms are consistently the areas with the highest gun crime (including murder). And this is not just over 1 or 2 years, but over the many decades that the government (not some hack on one side or the other) has been keeping statistics on it.

And that also holds for changes: in areas where the firearms laws were made stricter, firearms crime went up. In areas where the restrictions were relaxed, firearm crime went down. There have been a few minor exceptions here and there over the decades, but that is all they have been: rare exceptions.

But I should also throw in: this is not unique to the US. After the last "big" firearms ban in the UK (and this is according to UK government published statistics), firearm crime went WAY UP and stayed way up for something like 8 years, before it began to settle back down again. And that later downturn in crime cannot be responsibly attributed to the gun laws, because crime in most of the other "modern, western" nations was going down also... including in the U.S., where gun ownership went up over that period.

So don't misunderstand me: what you say may have some merit. But the hard numbers don't lie. Firearms restrictions in the US do not deter crime.

Re:I hope it explodes and kills him

[centipedes.in.my.vag]

Live by the sword implies the use of the tool, not merely the existence of the tool. This man didn't murder anyone, it wouldn't be divine comeuppance for him to die. It would make as much sense (i.e. none at all) to look at a demolition engineer and say, "He worked with explosives, a bomb-maker, it's fitting that it exploded in his face." This man has not "lived by the sword" by any sane definition.

Re: I hope it explodes and kills him

[centipedes.in.my.vag]

If your political system is corrupt - go and change it.

Using...

Re:I hope it explodes and kills him

[Opportunist]

He's not putting the gun in anyone's hands and sending him off to go on a killing spree. By your logic, pretty much everyone from Heckler, Koch, Smith and Wesson should go to hell for making people kill each other.

Let's be sensible for a moment. If at any moment in the future such guns surface where they could even REMOTELY be linked to any kind of terrorism, you'll soon see how police starts peering around for people with "suspicious" cargo. Even WANTING a gun that cannot be detected is illegal and punishable, and unless you spent the last 2 months or so under a rock, you should know that it is trivial for certain three letter goons to find out who downloaded what blueprint for a 3D model.

Re:I hope it explodes and kills him

[ArcadeMan]

No, all these assholes are doing is pushing toward crazy laws such as "owning a 3D printer makes you a terrorist".

Remember we're talking about politicians and law makers, they don't care if a lathe can make a better gun, they will still outlaw 3D printers anyway.