UK Police Seize 3D-Printed 'Gun Parts,' Which Are Actually Spare Printer Parts

nk497 writes "Police in Manchester have arrested a man and seized what they claim are 3D printed components to a gun. They made the arrest after a 'significant' discovery of a 3D printed 'trigger' and 'magazine,' saying they were now testing the parts to see if they were viable. 3D printing experts, however, said the objects were actually spare parts for the printer. 'As soon as I saw the picture... I instantly thought, "I know that part,"' said Scott Crawford, head of 3D printing firm Revolv3D. 'They designed an upgrade for the printer soon after it was launched, and most people will have downloaded and upgraded this part within their printer. It basically pulls the plastic filament, and it used to jam an awful lot. The new system that they've put out, which includes that little lever that they're claiming is the trigger, is most definitely the same part.'"

Comments

over-reaction?

[Custard Horse]

FTFA: "The man was also arrested on suspicion of making gunpowder"

He was probably making coffee...

Re:over-reaction?

[RalphMichaelDeLeon]

That actually wasn't a 3D printer it was a pillow.

Re:over-reaction?

[RDW]

This is England, so it was probably tea. It's an easy mistake to make:

http://www.whittard.co.uk/tea/type/green-tea/gunpowder-tea

Re:over-reaction?

[auric_dude]

Barista seeks Barrister?

Re:over-reaction?

[mrspoonsi]

In other news, a 80 year old grandmother has been released today when it was found that a supposed rocket launcher was just an umbrella stand.

It is hardly a gun if all it consisted of was a trigger and magazine. A hammer and nail is much more dangerous (assuming you had ammunition).

Re:over-reaction?

[Thanshin]

And, as they 'significantly' discovered later, the man wasn't actually a man.

Re:over-reaction?

[paiute]

I'm hearing every comment in this thread in the officious voice of the late Graham Chapman.

Re:over-reaction?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also worth pointing out that there is absolutely nothing illegal about triggers or magazines in the UK. My father owns several deactivated guns, all of which have real metal gun triggers (not simply trigger shaped bits of plastic) and at least one has a magazine. These are legal and have been certified as properly deactivated yet that process does not involve doing anything to damage/limit those components. (Chambers on a revolver are blocked as part of the process however.)

So if it's not illegal to own real triggers and magazines, why is it illegal to make plastic things that look like them? Actual construction of a firearm out of plastic gun shaped bits should be illegal in a country where firearms are illegal of course. This is similar to black powder guns, or guns of obsolete calibre (for which ammo is not readily available), these do not need to be deactivated however if you make or acquire ammo for them from somewhere then you're in trouble.

Re:over-reaction?

[cervesaebraciator]

I may or may not remember making gunpowder after school.

After that explosion, it's hard to remember anything really.

Re:over-reaction?

[durrr]

Gunpowder tea

Re:over-reaction?

[Dishevel]

A hammer can be fairly dangerous without ammo. Some might argue that if you are facing 2 men. One has a hammer and a nail and a .45 caliber bullet and is trying to shoot you with it, the other just has a hammer and is coming at you with it.

I would put my focus on the guy without the nail and the bullet.

Re:over-reaction?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

So if you try to grow it yourself, does that mean that you have your own small gunpowder plot in the backyard?

Re:over-reaction?

[fahrbot-bot]

What happens when a person designs and builds a series of parts that are separately useful as something other than a "gun", but when combined in the right way does build a functioning "gun"?

Is that you Francisco_Scaramanga?

Re:over-reaction?

[rubycodez]

indeed, when an unconfined handgun round goes off, the brass flies away from the bullet. at gun club I used to belong we'd sweep up powder residue and brass after matches and burn the pile since a portion of the powder is ejected from a gun unburned. every now and then a live round would pop and send the brass flying. but put that round in the shortest metal tube, maybe even inch beyond edge of brass (e.g. like a snub nosed revolver, which even has *air gap* before the short tube), and that's a whole different matter, that's a lethal weapon.

Re:over-reaction?

[shutdown -p now]

At the point where you have all the parts that are necessary to assemble a working gun, you are deemed to be in a constructive possession of one.

Of course, such a law would be tricky to enforce in any meaningful cases, since buying parts separately is not illegal, and by the time someone actually assembles a gun and uses it, it's too late. So in practice it's mainly just an extra headache for legal gun owners - e.g. in US, you have to be careful to never be in a possession of an unmated short-barrel upper if you also have another full-length gun with a compatible lower, since that can be argued to be constructive possession of a short-barreled rifle (even if you never actually put the components together, or even disassemble the full-length gun).

Oh god

[O('_')O_Bush]

...the U.K. has found another moral panic. Everybody pop some popcorn, asinine laws are about to get passed and massive propaganda campaigns will be starting. Fun for the whole family, as long as you don't live there and as long as it doesn't spread here.

Last time I remember one of these "weapons" related knives, it was during the post-handgun knifing sprees, and the gov't managed to spin up its citizens so much with their knife amnesty programs that people were turning in unsharpened movie prop fantasy knives, kitchen utensils, and yard tools afraid they were going to get prosecuted for owning lethal weaponry.

We'll see what they come up with for 3D printers. Maybe plastic/printer amnesty days

Re:Oh god

[_KiTA_]

Lets not forget a major part of this panic is due to old manufacturing companies starting to realize that if we can print something for 5 cents, then why would we pay $5 for it?

While we're not at that point yet, we certainly will be in 5 years. In 10-15 years, we'll be able to print iPods. Once that happens... why buy an iPod, when you can download a crowd-engineered alternative that's better and cheaper?

I expect some form of faux outrage to ramp up and 3D printing to be banned or seriously restricted soon. It's too disruptive for us us mere plebeians to be allowed to have.

Re:Oh god

[qbast]

Yeah, it's just like with movies and music - nobody wants content owned by big labels anymore because free stuff from garage bands is so much better. Oh wait, they don't and almost all downloaded music is actually pirated stuff.

Re:Oh god

[harrkev]

Printing an iPod??? Not a chance. Printing an iPod case? Sure.

Sorry, you cannot print electronics. Well, you *CAN* (some have experimented with this), but your iPod would have the size and consistency of a phone book. Even a simple processor these days consists of tens of millions of transistors. Same for memory.

I can envision two scenarios for printing electronics:

1) Print just the board yourself. This is certainly feasible, eventually. However, assembly of something the level of a iPod requres soldering which simply cannot be done at home. Try soldering a BGA with 1,000 pins. This CAN be done is a toaster oven (but not by beginners), but requires a lot of knowledge to get it to work. Add in memory, caps, resistors, etc., and the odds of getting something out without any defects seems unlikely.

2) Print the entire circuit yourself. It is possible to print transistors, but not to the scale needed. I would guestimate that thousands of transistors on a sheet of paper would be possible, but that is still a far way off from printing millions. Modern transistors can most closely be compared in size to a red blood cell. That sort of scale is difiicult to achieve with billions of dollars of equipment.

Printing of electronics will be awesome when it comes, but it will have limits. Expect some fantastic hobbyist inventions, but it will not be able to even come close to commercial products.

Re:Oh god

[RogueyWon]

Our police (I'm British) do seem to be on a bit of a PR flurry at the moment, trying to get headlines by puffing up raids and arrests in response to whatever the moral panic of the day is.

A cynic might suspect that it's related to a general crisis of confidence in them, relating to:

- several years of stories about the doctoring of crime statistics
- violent over-reactions in some public order situations
- attempted cover-ups of said over-reactions
- catastrophic under-reactions in other (genuinely dangerous) public order situations
- the sale of confidential information to certain journalists
- a brazen attempt to "stitch up" the career of a Government minister they didn't like (not a very likeable one, but that's not the point), through a series of increasingly barefaced lies
- increasingly silly uniforms (admittedly that one not really their fault)

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a general anti-police rant. I know that most of them are honest and do their best in a bloody awful job, in a country where even serial burglars routinely get community sentences (primarily the fault of successive government policies, with courts also sharing some of the blame). But there are plenty of signs that British policing in general is at a real low ebb right now and desperately reaching for all of the positive news stories it can get.

Re:Oh god

[nitehawk214]

Foam tips... could catch on fire... Incendiary arrows! Police, arrest this man!

Wait, the schoolyard that only allows nerf toys is in Toronto! Arrest those children, immediately!

Re:Oh god

[cyberchondriac]

There's no such thing as a "real" Klingon Bat'leth, for starters. Second, those kinds of weapons are props and do not hold an edge very well. Swords made for Renaissance faires are well known not be to be up to actual battle standards. But what's to stop someone from putting some nails in a cricket bat and going to town on someone with that? Going to ban cricket too? How about wood saws and hacksaws? Axes? Hatchets? Sledge hammers?

Re:Oh god

[tmosley]

I was about to make a comment about how modern music is garbage, and that people only download the stuff made a long time ago and probably that they already owned at some point, but then I realized that there are a bunch of damn kids on my lawn again.

Re:Oh god

[serviscope_minor]

Liberals let their feelings dictate their actions, regardless of the consequences.

Ah the evul libruls. What about the commie-nazis?

. That is why the UK has higher violent crime rates than the US,

lolwut?

The obvious search turns up this first:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-25671/Violent-crime-worse-Britain-US.html

Which is, of course the daily fail. Quoting from that has about as much credibility as quoting from the National Inquirer.

If you read a sendible analysis, then you get:

http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/01/12/fact-checking-ben-swann-is-the-uk-really-5-times-more-violent-than-the-us/

which paints a very different picture.

Violence ALWAYS follows disarmament.

In the UK, violent crime has been reducing both before and after the 1997 gun ban. The gun ban didn't appear to make a significant change on the trend.

Re:Oh god

[harrkev]

Well, I do have a master's degree in electrical engineering, and I design silicon for a living. I think that makes me at least a little qualified to answer. I am also capable of making a point without having to resort to personal attacks and insults. That is the sort of thing that you do when you do not know enough to actually use facts.

The problem with electronics is one of scale. To get millions of transistors, you need TINY transistors. Tiny transistors = machines with extreme precision, and an incredibly clean environment. Current technology has 28 nm process as the mainstream, with 22 nm being more cutting edge, and right now, anything smaller is "bleeding edge" with yield problems.

So, given this, I would consider 250 nm to be a nice goal to be able to do anything "real." 250 nm is 1997 technology, and ten times larger than current processes (along one axis, 100 times bigger for 2D items). This is about the same size as some larger viruses!!! Can you imagine a home device capable of the precision of the size of a virus? How much would that cost?

Now, home electronics DOES have a lot of DIY-type stuff. Things like the Arduino come to mind. How about an FPGA (since you are an expert, I am sure that you already know what an FPGA is)? The humble FPGA is one of the greatest things for a DIY-electronics enthusiast. If there is to be a real home-electronics revolution, it will likely come from making your own boards, maybe with a few hundred transistors for analog and interface stuff, along with an FPGA to do all of the heavy lifting. Still, soldering a large FPGA is not for the timid.

Re:Oh god

[Dishevel]

250 nm is 1997 technology, and ten times larger than current processes (along one axis, 100 times bigger for 2D items). This is about the same size as some larger viruses!!! Can you imagine a home device capable of the precision of the size of a virus? How much would that cost?

In 1998 Nokia came out with the iconic 5110. That is one year after the 1997 technology you talk of. Let us compare the 5110 with last big phone the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Nokia 5110: 2G Network. 170 grams. 5 line monochromatic display. SMS Messaging. Played 3 games. and could store 5 received, 5 missed and 8 dialed calls.

Galaxy S4: 4G LTE, 3G, Wifi, Bluetooth, A 5 Inch 1080 x 1920 pixel color display, SMS, MMS, Email, Web can store 64 GM of information, can play games that would have been impossible on full computers at the time. It is also lighter.

Again. 3D printing 15 years from now ... You really can not imagine what they will be capable of. Current processes are slowing due to the physical nature of the universe. 3D printing can grow quickly right up to those numbers. It will. I do not think it will take much more than 10 years. The materials they will be using are not knowable right now. I can tell you this. In 10 years it will cost less, be 1000 times more capable and will be used for things we can not even imagine now. Just like cell phones. 3D printers are a game changer. If you can not apply the history of technology when you look forward ... I am sure you can. The reason you did not is so that you could make that post. Again. Enjoy that post. It did not make you look smart, or knowledgeable.

Re:Oh god

[Trailer Trash]

This is about the same size as some larger viruses!!! Can you imagine a home device capable of the precision of the size of a virus?

And now the police in the UK are shitting themselves even more because someone's going to 3d print a virus.

Re:Oh god

[harrkev]

I should also like to point out that 3D printing has existed for over 15 years. It just took that long to get the price and size down enough for home use. However, the seeds were there almost two decades ago. I actually held a 3D plastic model in 2000. The technology existed then.

When it comes to making tiny transistors, there IS NO OTHER METHOD besides the conventional silicon fab.

There were some experiments to print circuits using modified ink-jet printers (in theory, all you need is a conductor, an insulator, and an 'N-type' and a 'P-type" semiconductor). These actually worked (nobody said that they worked well, or were capable of any type of speed). Even assuming that this technology takes off and gets millions of dollars in research, there are fundamental limits in this type of technology. You will not be able to "spray" transistors at the size that we are talking.

Now, if I wanted to prototype a million-transistor digital circuit right now without takint it to a real silicon fab, let me list the ways that this can be done today. 1) Simulate in software. 2) Put on an FPGA. All other methods (including hardware-accelerated simulations) are combinations or enhancements of the above two approaces. There is no thrid approach, even in the labs, as far as I am aware.

Let's look at building a custom chip in a 28nm process. The mask costs are easily over one million dollars. This means that the very first chip that you get back will cost over $1,000,000. The 2nd might only be $50, but the first one is the expensive one. If you find a bug, hopefully the problem is small enough that you can re-use most of the masks. If not, expect to hand over another million for a re-spin. So, if your design is risky and you are not guaranteed that it would work, paying $250,000 for a single prototype made by some other method would be a bargain! Yet there is nobody out there offering to prototype an ASIC like this.

The old saying is that what we have in our homes today was in the labs 20 years ago. There is nothing in the lab right now that looks promising for making your own high-density circuits right now, other than the FPGA. Low-density? Yes. Hundreds or maybe even thousands of transistors? Maybe. Millions of transistors? No way that I can forsee.

Kudos to the police for realizing...

[Godwin O'Hitler]

...a 3D gun is much more likely to be viable than a picture of a gun.

"During the searches, officers found a 3D printer and what is suspected to be a 3D plastic magazine and trigger which could be fitted together to make a viable 3D gun.
It they are found to be viable components for a 3D gun, it would be the first ever seizure of this kind in the UK."

Re:Kudos to the police for realizing...

[mark_reh]

I'll teach you how to make a better "gun" than you can with a 3D printer.
1) gather components: a bullet, a block of wood, a rock.
2) drill a hole through the block of wood that matches the diameter of your bullet.
3) place bullet in the hole in the block of wood. Congratulations, you're done.
Fire the "gun" by hitting the back side of the bullet with the rock.

The "gun" described above doesn't require a 3D printer, knowledge of CAD software or metallurgy.

Re:Kudos to the police for realizing...

[Zemran]

You need special glasses to fire a 3D gun and only people wearing those glasses can get shot by one.

Re:Kudos to the police for realizing...

[Feyshtey]

Yes. And a 3D gun that's exponentially more viable is as easily created by a water jet cutter, or plasma cutter, or oxyfuel cutter, or a laser cutter. Any of which requires roughly the same level of training to utilize as a home 3D printer. Granted those technologies are much more expensive, but there are 1000's of them in use in machine shops in the US and Europe. All one needs is the file that defines the part, and the ability to access the machinery.

Now you may be able to argue that the ease of access to home 3D printers makes it possible for more whacko's to get their hands on printed guns. But they will have shitty little pea shooters that might work once without blowing up in their faces. Whereas the 10s of 1000s of machine shop owners/employees out there are just as likely to be whacko's, and capable of producing things much more dangerous than some idiot in his basement. You're worried about a 15 round magazine being printed? How about a vulcan cannon?

Hell, a marginally talented machinist with knowledge of firearms can make a damn effective weapon out of some pipe, using a lathe and a drill.

So where's the moral outrage against the people with machine shops? Cutters? Drills? Maybe laws should be passed to regulate the purchase of pipes?

The guy that fixes your uber eco bicycle as every tool he needs to kill you and everyone within 50 feet of you. But you are freaking out about a chunk of plastic.

Speaking as a Brit

[sa1lnr]

I love that the Greater Manchester Police site has suffered the curse of slashdot. :)

Re:Speaking as a Brit

[daremonai]

If this is what the Greater Manchester Police are like, I'd hate to meet up with the Lesser ones.

How realistic are the fears?

[91degrees]

Is there really a risk of "organised crime groups" making plastic guns? My understanding is that the ones that have been made are more proof of concept than something that would actually be particularly useful. On the other hand, there are plenty of places in Europe where guns are available, and hundreds of people take the ferry (or Le Shuttle through the tunnel) to and from Europe every day so if you really want to get hold of them, it's not going to be difficult.

Do wonder why the police raided this guy in the first place. I assume they didn't just pick a house at random hoping they might find soemthing they can chage someone with.

Article slashdotted

[rhazz]

Article slashdotted - alternate story including updates below. Despite the obvious evidence, police continue to wave their arms wildly. http://gigaom.com/2013/10/24/uk-police-seize-3d-printer-and-printed-gun-components/

The process is the punishment

[mc6809e]

They punish someone with the legal process, knowing they can't convict, but sending a message to anyone with a 3D printer that 3D printer owners can expect trouble from the state.

Re:The process is the punishment

[IamTheRealMike]

Is that meant to be a prediction, or a statement of fact? If you read the article it becomes clear that they had search warrants as part of a targeted investigation into organised crime, and apparently were surprised to discover the 3D printer at one of the searched areas. Given that they arrested someone because they think he was making gunpowder, and because you can't make gunpowder with a 3D printer, it seems that they believed (correctly) that someone was trying to manufacture ammo and got a judge to issue a warrant on that basis. When they discovered the printer, they made the obvious logical conclusion - someone who is illegally making guns, and has a 3D printer, might be experimenting with 3D printing plastic guns. What else would he use it for?

It may turn out in the course of events that the printer was used for something else, or making tools used to help make ammo rather than making gun parts, or something else. But ownership of the 3D printer is incidental. There isn't even any way they would know he had such a device, as far as I can tell.

Re:The process is the punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the reason why they raided this place originally. It wasn't because he was a guy who owned a 3d printer, it was because he was associated with criminal gangs in Manchester and they were raiding him and others to confiscate the proceeds of crime. This was one of the things they found, alongside ~$3.5m in counterfeit goods, $500k of drugs and $50k in cash and 50 people arrested.

When you find a 3d printer in the garage of a suspected gangster, you don't assume anything and investigate everything. Last year, a member of one of these Manchester gangs, already wanted for double murder, lured a couple of unarmed female cops to a house to investigate a break in, and then killed them with grenades. This is a fucked up part of the UK.

Re:Thank god

[Anne Thwacks]

Well, mostly they dont. This is a good thing, given that they shot some guy for carrying a table-leg (thought it was a gun), and another for being on the underground (obviously an act of terrorism - only terrorists would go underground).

Police seize $1000 in Cash

[Anonymous Coward]

Police seized $1000 dollars in cash due to the possibility of obtaining a gun with said cash.... source: future...

Re:Police seize $1000 in Cash

[Justpin]

Thats not funny, SOCPA 2005 prohibits carrying more than £2000 of cash on you without good reason with the penalty of forfeiture if you can't prove where it came from. In fact a few years ago the London police went for a smash and grab of safe deposit boxes, it was all declared illegal except people went and started claiming it back with receipts.

Re:smug retribution

[qbast]

Week later: 20 kids gunned down in another school massacre in USA. "Crazy" depends on what you want laws to achieve.

Toy guns and fabric softener?

[FatLittleMonkey]

Also, if a plastic trigger is illegal, that would make every plastic toy gun, every water pistol, every cap gun, illegal. And every seller, maker, importer guilty of manufacturing/importing/distributing illegal firearm parts.

Nearly every cleaner, weed-spray, bug-spray bottle in my laundry has a trigger on it.

Are triggers and magazines controlled in the UK?

[cyn1c77]

Is printing gun components illegal in the UK?

In the US, the only part of a gun that is controlled is the receiver. What are the laws in the UK?

It's hard to believe that making or owning a trigger is illegal in the UK since low-power pellets guns (which use triggers) are legal. That said, UK gun laws are so restrictive, that I am sure they try to control high-capacity magazines. (UK high-capacity meaning more than two rounds.)

Re:Happy I live in the US

[Gibgezr]

Just pointing out what most folks are missing: hey had a warrant, which was not based on "look for 3D printed gun parts", but on other stuff related to the fact that this guy is a member of a criminal gang.

Re:smug retribution

[qbast]

Clearly the only answer is 'more guns'. If other 14 years olds (hell, why not start at 8 years?) all were carrying, this tragedy could be avoided.

Incendiary comment

[FatLittleMonkey]

police confiscated what they claimed were "incendiary arrows" but were actually foam-tipped arrows used by LARPers

Meanwhile, the same police will call their own actual incendiary grenades "smoke grenades" which, oops, "may have accidentally caused a fire" (and burned the body of the shot suspect and most of the evidence re: the police shooting.)

And the media will go along with it. Which is the problem. Reporters trust police statements to be roughly factual, so police quickly learn they can get away with saying almost anything.

[Note the phrase the UK police are hammering in every release in TFA, "The next generation of firearms". (Which involves "technology being acquired by the organised crime groups, which they supply to criminal gangs, which are causing misery in our communities".)]

Re:smug retribution

[qbast]

Unfortunately you can't just legislate it away. That doesn't work, has never worked, and will never work.

Well, it works very well in Europe. So while this particular case is example of police idiocy, the law in UK is not crazy. But I agree that it would be extremely hard to do in USA.

Doesn't stop them from trying, though.

I'm not going to get into it beyond that though - I'm not an expert, but it doesn't take an expert to recognize that something is broken. I really don't think just taking them away is the answer. As other incidents have spotlit, the act will not change, only the tools. Children (and adults too) committing violence against their peers and authority figures is the symptom, the gun (or knife etc) is just the vehicle, and the real problem is something else that I can't really identify personally. People are losing hope, getting restless, frustrated, and angry. We need to determine (and fix) the cause of that, not the results. But good luck with that, because the people in charge only care about looking like they are fixing things. Which only compounds the problem.

With that logic every kind of weapon should be legalised. Why bother banning nerve gas and explosives ? After all this will only change tools, not the act itself.

Re:Simple solution

[cdrudge]

Or that you can use replacement gun parts to make printers.

Re:More Apt than you think?

[serviscope_minor]

While it does indeed take more knowledge to operate the lathes and such, currently that tool set can produce far more capable devices, and I'd imagine that at least the CNC cutter shouldn't be that much more complicated to program than the printer.

It's actually put it the other way round for now. I have a bit of experience in CNC milling and a bit of experience in using a 3D printer (the type in the $1000-$2000 range). I think that puts me in a reasonable position to judge since I'm an expert in neither field so know how far a bit of knowledge can take a person.

Honestly the 3D printers are harder. Don't get me wrong, they're fantastic machines and I love them, but they are not easy to use. After receiving instruction on how to use it, getting reliable prints out of it still took considerable work. Even after figuring out that much I (and ecen much more experienced people) still have the odd problem with parts sticking too hard, not hard enough, curling up, etc.

And don't get me started on how the slicing process can go bad...

I think the main thing is that the 3D printers are cheap and small and clean devices so you can have one without having to dedicate serious space (I don't own one, but I live in a place which could easily accomodate one. The same cannot be said about a machine shop). You also only need one, rather than a quite large collection of tools.

It's also that the barrier to entry is lower in that there's a nice library of 3D things to print online and the slicing process for the printing is simpler the software to do the printing is more readily available.

So, they're not necessarily simpler to use (that really depends on the shape being produced), but they are much, much, much more accessible.

Re:smug retribution

[Archangel Michael]

Here is the statistic that should shut people like you up for good. Suicide and Murder Rates for the US and Great Britain are about the same. One has strict gun control laws and the other does not. Suicide by guns in the US far outpace Suicide by guns in the UK, yet the overall rates are almost identical. The same is true for murder rates. In fact, if you exclude the cities in the US with the strictest gun control laws (DC, Chicago etc) which also happen to have the highest murder rates by guns, the murder rates in the US is actually LESS than most other countries.

The problem is, the facts don't line up with the Liberal Logic. Less guns do not produce less violence. This means people are violent with whatever tool they find handy, just like killing themselves. We should address the reasons for violence, not the method.

I mean just recently, you had a trained military person beheaded in broad daylight by a couple guys with knives. AND nobody stopped them. Nobody could. In America, you would have had someone (or a few someones) kick the shit out of the guys before they could finish cutting the soldiers head off.

Sorry, I don't want to live in a Society that is so scared of everything that people don't step up and face evil directly. Call it "Rugged Individualism", something Liberals can't understand and therefore despise.

Re:smug retribution

[Archangel Michael]

But if he did it with a box cutter would you blame the parents for leaving the box cutter out? Because that also happened just this week. Is that "negligence causing death" too? Do you want those parents jailed then?

Perhaps it isn't the tool that caused the violence, it is the person using the tool!

In a related story...

[Macdude]

A Manchester plumber was arrested for having a van full of "bomb" making material.

His pleas of "It's just pipe for a sink" went unheeded.

Re:smug retribution

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong.

US: 4.7 per 100,000
UK 1.2 per 100,000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Shotgun!

[FatLittleMonkey]

There is steel scaffolding pipe which is exactly the right inner-diameter to hold a standard 12-guage shotgun shell. It's also usually pre-threaded off-the-shelf.

So buy or cut a half a metre (a couple of feet) of unthreaded pipe that neatly holds a shotgun shell. That's your barrel. Then cut around 15cm (six inches) of a larger diameter pipe that slides over the first pipe, this should be threaded at one end. Get a standard end-cap that fits the larger diameter pipe. Drill a pilot hole in the centre of the end cap, screw in short screw, so a few milimetres (errr, not much of an inch) of the point is poking through the inside. Size the pilot hole so that the screw is in tightly, it's your firing pin.

Screw the end-cap on the larger pipe, also tightly. Load a shotgun shell in the small (long) pipe, put the larger pipe over the back, and pump it sharply against the shotgun shell to fire. (Like using a bike pump.) Pull the "pump handle" off, flick the spent shell out, load new one, repeat. If you want to get fancy, you can make up a stock, springs, catch and trigger, etc, to make it more "gun-like". While making it, use a spent shell cartridge to see if your firing-pin lines up and is the right length. And the first time you fire it, it's worth removing out the shot and test firing a blank cartridge. Look for cracking or warping between every shot.

Do not point directly at face. Do not fire at humans or pets. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. No responsibility is taken by FLM Co or its parent company for any damage or injury caused by...

Seriously, making zip-guns is dangerous, and typically illegal outside of the United States. The point is that it's easy, even without skills, and yet outside of hobbyists (and prisons), you don't see criminals using one-shot zip-guns for their crimes.

Re:Shotgun!

[cusco]

Dull the point of the screw, you need to punch the firing pin, not pierce it. It will take some testing to get the firing pin the right depth, too shallow or too deep and it doesn't ignite. In the US it's more common to use a .22 caliber rim-fire cartridge since no firing pin is necessary.

Re:smug retribution

[qbast]

Here is the statistic that should shut people like you up for good. Suicide and Murder Rates for the US and Great Britain are about the same.

By "here" you mean in your head? Only total moron would post lie that can be disproved by 30 second search in google. Here is source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate . USA - 4.7 homicides /100 000 vs 1.2 in UK. Almost 4x difference is 'about the same' ? Go back to polishing your penis enhancer^W^W gun and leave discussion to others.

One has strict gun control laws and the other does not. Suicide by guns in the US far outpace Suicide by guns in the UK, yet the overall rates are almost identical. The same is true for murder rates. In fact, if you exclude the cities in the US with the strictest gun control laws (DC, Chicago etc) which also happen to have the highest murder rates by guns, the murder rates in the US is actually LESS than most other countries.

Exclude cities with highest murder rate and murder late drops a lot ... thank you captain obvious! You can't exclude any cities, because people are free to move between them without any border control.

The problem is, the facts don't line up with the Liberal Logic. Less guns do not produce less violence. This means people are violent with whatever tool they find handy, just like killing themselves. We should address the reasons for violence, not the method.

Considering that you started your rant with total nonsense, your conclusions are not any better.

I mean just recently, you had a trained military person beheaded in broad daylight by a couple guys with knives. AND nobody stopped them. Nobody could. In America, you would have had someone (or a few someones) kick the shit out of the guys before they could finish cutting the soldiers head off.

Sure they would. That's why every other month another guy has ample time to shoot 20 people and off himself.

Sorry, I don't want to live in a Society that is so scared of everything that people don't step up and face evil directly. Call it "Rugged Individualism", something Liberals can't understand and therefore despise.

Your 'rugged individualism' exists only in Hollywood action flicks. Your are living in society of sheep scared half to death of 'terrorists' and everything else.You do know that majority of US citizens actually supports TSA ass-groping because it makes them feel safer? On Slashdot it might look differently, but slashdotters are tiny minority. If you want example of actually brave society, then look how Norway handled Breivik incident. They prosecuted, sentenced and chucked him into a prison then got on with their lives. No PATRIOT acts, no crazy witch hunts, all civil liberties retained - just business as usual.

Re:smug retribution

[stymy]

Umm, the murder rate for the US is about 4.7 intentional homicides per 100 000 people, while for the United Kingdom it's 1.2. So almost 4 times more murders per capita in the US.

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Re:smug retribution

[Grumbleduke]

Unfortunately, your "statistic" to "shut people ... up for good" isn't actually true.

Suicide and Murder Rates for the US and Great Britain are about the same

According to the United Nations (warning, .xls file), the intentional homicide rate in Great Britain (the UK collects different data for England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, so I've combined the E+W and Scotland data to get a GB one) in 2011 was 1.1 per 100,000. In the United States it was 4.7. The suicide rates are similar, but the intentional homicide rates are way off; over four times as high.

That said, according to the FBI about 69% of homicides in the US in 2012 involved the use of firearms. So ignoring all firearm-related homicides, the US's homicide rate is about 1.4 per 100,000, so still higher than Great Britain's.

But none of this means anything on its own, as far as policy implications go. Working out whether bans on certain classes of firearms are necessary and/or proportionate is a very complex task, and a couple of statistics are hardly conclusive.

Your "statistic" was still wrong, though.

-----------------------

On the murder of Lee Rigby, there are a few subtleties you may have missed. First the assailants killed him by hitting him with a car, and then stabbing him with knives (apparently unable to decapitate him) before anyone could react, even if they were armed - it's unclear if there were even people nearby at the time (one of the first 'witnesses' got involved after thinking it was an accident and trying to give the victim first aid). The assailants had a revolver, so it wasn't just knives; it is possible that if they had anticipated resistance from someone with a firearm, they would have shot him (rather than stabbed) and may have shot others nearby.

The suggestion that anyone would have "kicked the shit" out of them is rather ludicrous in any event. As it happened, after their attack the suspects waited calmly for the police to arrive (talking to passers-by); when the police did approach, they charged them ineffectually, were shot, and taken into custody.

I fail to see how widespread access to firearms would have made the situation any better, or how passers-by beating them up would have furthered the interests of justice.

PEZ?

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>the magazine on the otherhand... a box, a spring, and a plate... now THAT is truly terrifying!

Putting a Miss Piggy head on top was a clever disguise, Mr. Terrorist, but we recognize a .22 short magazine when we see one. Come along quietly now before we get upset and have to beat you senseless.