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Affordable 3D Metal Printer Developed Based on RepRap
hypnosec writes "Researchers have developed and open-sourced a low-cost 3D metal printer capable of printing metal tools and objects that can be build for under £1,000. A team of researchers led by Associate Professor Joshua Pearce at the Michigan Technological University developed the firmware and the plans for the printer and have made it available freely. The open source 3D printer is definitely a huge leap forward as the starting price of commercial counterparts is around £300,000. Pearce claimed that their technology will not only allow smaller companies and start-ups to build inexpensive prototypes, but it will allow other scientists and researchers to build tools and objects required for their research without having to shell out thousands, and could be used to print parts for machines such as windmills."
It's a modified RepRap; looks like we're getting closer to the RepRap being able to print all of its parts.
You wouldn't download a car........?
http://makibox.com/
I've yet not tried it but not heard any major disasters.
Buy all the other parts off the record. No registration. Untraceable. Full auto. Deadly. All set? Go shoot a bear. Remove arms from bear. You have a right to those, just like your founding fathers sought.
More like the wingnuts who attempt to print their own guns will end up disarming, or at least dishanding themselves.
This will be the next thing demonised in the media, even though the technology has many positive benefits in terms of manufacturing. But after printing the object do you still need to trim it and sand it down? Maybe you print it slightly oversize and then trim it down to smooth it out. What is the exact finishing process with this tech?
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
It's not really clear what it's doing. The photos show square bits of metal, and no signs of any kind of additive manufacturing. This looks more like a computer controlled metal cutter. Which is nice and all, but not really a 3D printer.
When I heard "metal printer" I thought it was a laser sintering machine or something of that kind.
Cue Trinity in a long leather coat sitting behind a desk starting a printer.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I first tried laser sintering 5 years ago - I got a few steel gun parts custom-made by a "printing" company, then mounted the parts in a real gun and got the proofhouse to shoot it until it died. I was working for a certain very well known luxury gunmaker at the time, and we were investigating new ways of producing parts in very small volume.
The laser sintered parts were as good as, or better than the original parts! And the prices are great too: we paid per cm3 of material "printed", which worked at at just under $900 for a receiver, as opposed to $7500 for the equivalent part machined with conventional tools.
I've known since then that this is the future of metalworking. As a result, I've been holding off upgrading the lathe and the milling machine in my workshop, because I've been waiting for a metal-building machine that doesn't cost a quarter million bucks.
This $1000 thing probably won't be it, but the next generation machines, or the generations after them, will. At last!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Either the US government rapidly steps in to quash or severely-restrict this technology in the US or their plans to disarm the US population will die stillborn.
If you knew anything about guns, you'd know it only takes a few basic tools and materials to make a functional gun that goes bang without killing its user. You don't need a 3D printer. There's no way to disarm anybody in any circumstances.
I love the smell of dying government tyranny in the morning.
Wishful thinking... It's not the lack of guns that keeps your tyrannical government in place, it's the lack of courage in a population that has turned bovine, uneducated, and more interested in shopping and watching reality shows on TV than in fighting for liberty and moral principles.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Either the US government rapidly steps in to quash or severely-restrict this technology in the US or their plans to disarm the US population will die stillborn.
If you knew anything about guns, you'd know it only takes a few basic tools and materials to make a functional gun that goes bang without killing its user. You don't need a 3D printer. There's no way to disarm anybody in any circumstances.
I love the smell of dying government tyranny in the morning.
Wishful thinking... It's not the lack of guns that keeps your tyrannical government in place, it's the lack of courage in a population that has turned bovine, uneducated, and more interested in shopping and watching reality shows on TV than in fighting for liberty and moral principles.
It's kind of funny that Americans with all their guns seems to have a more tyrannical government than countries with fewer guns but a lot more political engagement from the population.
dying government tyranny? did it die when full auto weapons were legal to buy in USA? no?
you really think it's just a matter of weapons? fuck no it isn't. not at all. most people just don't want to revolt, stopping government tyranny is first and foremost a political problem of mobilizing people to your cause, arming them is easy.
you think they're going to ban bicycle shops and hotrod shops full of 5 axis cnc's and cnc lathes? ban vocational colleges? ban drills and metal stock? but why the fuck would you bother even with those when you could go visit your neighborhood gang to buy the guns. does having guns help them from government interference? not really, no..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Making guns is easy. Getting hold of the ammo is a lot more difficult and you can't print bullets yet.
It's kind of funny that Americans with all their guns seems to have a more tyrannical government than countries with fewer guns but a lot more political engagement from the population.
That's because most Americans have added two boxes to the four boxes of liberty: the ice box and the idiot box. And they seem to have stopped using the four others.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Now what the hell am I supposed to do with these bear arms?
I'm thinking maybe I should have just put on the wife-beater shirt instead...education wasn't so good back then, maybe they misspelled a word...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Wake me up when we can print silicon.
Any developments in this direction? It surely would be possible to print a 1950's type of transistor at home, right?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
If you knew anything about guns, you'd know it only takes a few basic tools and materials to make a functional gun that goes bang without killing its user. You don't need a 3D printer. There's no way to disarm anybody in any circumstances.
I do know something about guns and about metal machining and fabrication work. Making a Sten is dead-simple. Heck, I've got the plans.
You're correct that between the staggering number of guns that already exist in the US (and the majority of rifles & shotguns never having been registered) combined with the ease with which a gun that's at least good enough to get an enemy's gun is to make conventionally, it seems pretty impractical in the short term.
However, there's "simple" for some people and then there's "simple" for everybody else. It's dead-simple *IF* you have a lathe, drill press, sheet metal brake, and maybe a mill depending, along with multiple other ancillary tools and pieces of equipment like an arbor press.
*AND* you *also* have the requisite training, skills, & experience to operate that fabricating equipment well enough to produce more than a modern-art piece or a way to assure that you never need worry if you lose one of your mittens and/or your sunglasses. It's not a trivial skill set in the least.
The difference here is that you basically only need the printer instead of a pole-barn full of expensive machine tools, plus you don't need any advanced machining & metal fabrication skills or training to fabricate high-quality components.
The printer/software and the plan file supplies the majority of the training, experience, and skills otherwise necessary, while replacing multiple expensive pieces of metal working & fabrication equipment while also requiring less space. More like residential garage/shed/basement-size instead of pole-barn size.
A metal printer would also be a much more practical solution in the city. The printer is also far more portable than a bunch of machine shop equipment. It can be relatively quickly moved between locations and concealed compared to normal tooling.
Wishful thinking... It's not the lack of guns that keeps your tyrannical government in place, it's the lack of courage in a population that has turned bovine, uneducated, and more interested in shopping and watching reality shows on TV than in fighting for liberty and moral principles.
I agree. However, I'm hopeful that people are beginning to wake the hell up. I haven't seen the current levels and breadth of dissatisfaction and anger with government since the '60s/'70s, nor anywhere near the current numbers of people who seriously think the government needs to spend less and have fewer powers, and are actively getting involved and doing something about it.
When was the last time you remember *this* happening?
http://conventionofstates.com/
There may yet still be hope. Especially if you consider it was only about 10% of the colonists at the time who were actively for the US Revolutionary War and independence from England.
Can we scrape up 10% with a brain and a spine these days? Who knows. We'll find out, I guess.
Maybe the concept of free men governing themselves by common agreement dies here forever, technology guaranteeing the jackboot continues forever grinding the human face underfoot.
Maybe humans need another few 10, 20, or 100s of thousands...maybe even millions...of years of evolutionary advancement before mankind is ready to leave kings, dictators, tyranny, and authoritarianism behind us.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
It's not like loading ammo is hard, and bullets are probably the easiest things for these machines to print.
If you knew anything about guns, you'd know it only takes a few basic tools and materials to make a functional gun that goes bang without killing its user. You don't need a 3D printer.
The scary/interesting part about 3d printed guns is that you don't have to know anything about guns or metalworking to produce one. Download a good design, print, assemble, charge, and fire.
Of course there's still a few issues, such as: accurate printing in metal still isn't widely available for consumers, operating a 3d printer requires some skill, parts still need finishing, need for ammo, printed guns are prone to failing and/or blowing up when fired, etc. But all of these are problems that can (and probably will) be solved.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Right now I am imagining a bug that causes a self-printing printer to go out of control, so that the printers keeps printing printers that keep printing printers that keep ...
I am anarch of all I survey.
to the grey RepRap plague. When will this madness ever end?!
This machine they are touting is a MIG welder on a 3-axis stage. Whatever it makes will be a large pile of weld bead. Just how good of a gun do you think you could make with that? (Or most any part, for that matter.) The number of finish operations required will be long and arduous - and require most of the machine tools and skills you've just mentioned. You may as well start with billet.
Maybe a low-cost metal 3D printer will come along that makes it "simple for everybody else," but this one sure ain't that.
authoritarianism starts in the family . . government merely perpetuates the upbringing we are most comfortable with . .
Oh please.
An educated person would know that it's foolhardy to put your life and the lives of your kids in jeopardy by "fighting back" at an institution which is completely and utterly insulated from whatever you try to do against them. They have the money, the power, and will fucking RUIN you to get rid of any troublemakers. An educated person knows when to fight, and when to accept reality.
There's a lot at stake in putting your life (or just your livelihood) by going against a Government. You might argue that it's the only way real change can be made, and you'd probably be right. But you need everyone to do the same thing, and honestly, for all the shit people have to deal with in modern life it's still a lot better than it could be. No-one really wants to rock the boat and risk losing that.
David and Goliath is a story. An educated person knows that in the real world, not every story has a happy ending. There's too much at personal stake to stick your head out sometimes. I absolutely guarantee you're all talk and no action yourself. But hey, it sounds nice and makes you look all big and educated for saying what's pretty fucking obvious to EVERYONE. We KNOW fighting the Government is the only way things will change. But it's not bad enough and there's not enough despair in enough people to push towards anything happening. It's only when people en mass have nothing left to lose that they'll do this... and people have everything to lose.
http://hexus.net/tech/news/peripherals/62261-direct-metal-laser-sintering-used-3d-print-working-metal-pistol/
You were saying?
I hate printers.
It's kind of funny that Americans with all their guns seems to have a more tyrannical government than countries with fewer guns but a lot more political engagement from the population.
There are times when I think the whole 2nd Amendment thing may be doing us more harm than good. We don't take political action when we should because if things get too bad we can just haul out our guns.
Except that by the time guns are the best or only solution, we've already lost pretty much everything anyhow. And who (aside from fantasists) really want a life that's basically nothing but guerilla warfare against tanks and drones?
More like the wingnuts who attempt to print their own guns will end up disarming, or at least dishanding themselves.
In the end you should be happy, because it guarantees pussies like yourself the freedom of speach, even if you have no idea what you are talking about, or how things work.
It's kind of funny that Americans with all their guns seems to have a more tyrannical government than countries with fewer guns but a lot more political engagement from the population.
The US government is more powerful than any other. Now just imagine if there were no guns in the hands of the little people. Thankfully, whoever wrote the constitution, understood this completely.
Gah - clicky error
(But I can cite several events where voting ballots in the hands of little people made the U.S. government to either change policies or itself.)
Why was this modded down? You're feminist scum is that why? Good boys who obey?
Builded, you moron.
> If you knew anything about guns, you'd know it only takes a few basic tools and materials to make a functional gun that goes bang without killing its user. You don't need a 3D printer. There's no way to disarm anybody in any circumstances.
Yeah, but that is a theoretical point. Still, you need theoretical and practical skills to build one, as well as time and money for experiments. This limits the practical availability. A 3D printer would allow you to print virtually everything without any skills, just by downloading a blueprint and buying a printer. This increases the practical availability by orders of magnitude.
It's the same as saying "Bugs in Linux are no problem. It's open source, so just fix them". Not everybody is a programmer, and not every programmer has the time to track down and fix bugs.
It worked precisely once - when the US government was the British government.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not to mention that there are quite a few ABS plastic parts that will be exposed to UV for quite a long time during operation.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
pwhaaa haaa haaaa, that was funny!
Why would you print bullets when lead casting is so cheap and easy? The real sticking point is the availability of primers. You can make your own, but it's labor-intensive and there are some substantial safety issues involved.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I can't remember one event in the history of the U.S. where guns in the hand of little people made the U.S. government rethink their policies and withdraw some legislation, measures or orders.
You are onto something. Just read exactly what you wrote a couple of times, and it might just click.
But if it doesn't, I give you a hint by setting the bold on a couple words.
I'm sure your zip gun backup plan has the US military quaking in its boots.
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The website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit. Please try again later.
Guns have never protected freedom of speech. If you start to assemble a group of people with guns to revolt against the government you will be taken out without problem. There won't even be a public outcry about it because you would fit every definition of a domestic terrorist organization and the military will have a widespread support when they take you out.
It is the other way around, the freedom of speech makes it possible for you to voice your opinion and gather the tens of thousands necessary to stand against the government. If you are armed or not is irrelevant if you have the strength in numbers.
If gun ownership is legal or not is irrelevant since it is illegal to use them against your government regardless. If you intend to revolt then you might as well break the gun ownership law.
Also, you shouldn't call others pussies. Your freedom of speech was taken away form you with the "free speech zones" and you never lifted your guns to protect that right. You are just a hypocrite that uses arguments you don't believe in as an excuse to keep your toys.
The freedom of expression, used by people willing to suffer the consequences of standing up to tyrants, their ability to inspire millions of ordinary people to rise up against tyranny is what creates a thriving democracy with great standard of living. That is when warrior wannabes like you strut around claiming to be the cause. You are the effect, not the cause, of the first amendment.
Trying your "second amendment solutions" against a lawfully elected government of the USA is rebellion, and it is constitutional for the government to put such insurrection using any means necessary. If the government is restrained it is because of the first amendment rights of people who would speak up against heavy handed tactics by the government. Definitely not because of your puny little glocks, brownings or bushmasters. Our army had been battling AK-47s and IEDs for ages now buddy, you don't stand a chance against our army. You are able to trash talk, only because we restrain our government against taking overt and open actions against US Citizens.
Just look around you. People who used guns to overthrow tyrants became tyrants themselves. People who spoke out and inspired ordinary people to rise up against tyranny created enduring democracies. Only in such democracies crazy wingnuts are able to run around waving their guns thinking they somehow are the protection against tyranny.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
David and Goliath is a story. An educated person knows that in the real world, not every story has a happy ending.
Of course! That's what makes it a good story material - alleged testimony of unlikely event that once brought a relief during hard times. Stories are just lubricants for your minds and your will, they encourage you to commit to do what you would want to do anyway, if you weren't afraid of consequences of failure.
Having said that, I completely concur with your views. After all, David and Goliath is a story from an "nothing to lose / will lose everything even doing nothing" situation.
He's talking about the people who use a $300 printrbot to try to print a zip gun, which then proceeds to blow up in their hand like a cheap firework.
Now what the hell am I supposed to do with these bear arms?
I'm thinking maybe I should have just put on the wife-beater shirt instead...education wasn't so good back then, maybe they misspelled a word...
This! It's so obvious that the founding fathers were enshrining the right to wear short sleeved shirts: the right to bare arms.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I can't remember one event in the history of the U.S. where guns in the hand of little people made the U.S. government rethink their policies and withdraw some legislation, measures or orders. Care to elaborate?
Here you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
"The Battle of Athens (sometimes called the McMinn County War) was a rebellion led by citizens in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the local government in August 1946. The citizens, including some World War II veterans, accused the local officials of political corruption and voter intimidation."
You're welcome.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Sure, go ahead and use a home-built fabrication machine to produce weapon parts. That's at least two levels of production without quality control.
The thought of thousands of gun nuts accidentally blowing their faces off does make me smile a bit though. Natural selection.
If these things come down to smaller CNC size, anyone could stick it in the back of a box truck with a generator on top and make guns anywhere.
"...looks like we're getting closer to the RepRap being able to print all of its parts."
Sure, assuming it can print an Millermatic 140 arc welder and an Arduino.
Look, nature has already solved this problem, so we know something about the complexity and difficulty involved. We have cows that print milk and copies of themselves, chickens than print eggs and copies of themselves, grass that prints grain and copies of itself, etc. These things consists of millions of cells, each about as intelligent as an Arduino. Good luck creating something like that with a few hundred parts!
do generate more comments about guns than anything else. But I guess other uses are not "newsworthy". We are all idiots and we deserve the government and laws we refuse to do anything about. 30k dead per year is nothing compared to the value of our freedom to kill 30k per year. Yay! We win!
He's talking about the people who use a $300 printrbot to try to print a zip gun, which then proceeds to blow up in their hand like a cheap firework.
These are the same geniuses that kill/injure/maim themselves and others and destroy homes and property every single day doing things like putting a frozen turkey into a gas burner heated deep-fryer full of hot cooking oil, and uncountable numbers of other equally idiotic and extremely dangerous actions and worse.
You can't fix stupid by trying to idiot-proof the world. It's not possible, it cannot work, and it unfairly curtails everyone else's choices and freedoms.
Darwin gots' to get paid, yo.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Guns have never protected freedom of speech.
Warning! History lesson ahead.
Please exercise caution, as facts are known to the State of California to cause extreme mental anguish in those suffering from politically/ideologically-driven voluntary ignorance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
From the wiki:
"The new government encountered challenges including at least eleven resignations of county administrators.[citation needed] On January 4, 1947, four of the five leaders of the GI Non-Partisan League declared in an open letter: "We abolished one machine only to replace it with another and more powerful one in the making."[11] The League failed to establish itself permanently and traditional political parties soon returned to power.[7]"
You were saying?
This device is slated to cost about £1000 (roughly $1650). For the same price, you can already buy a half-decent CNC machine, and that machine will be able to make a far better firearm than the 3D printer can.
I don't understand why gun nuts have this obsession with 3D printing. Making a weapon by fusing tiny bits of plastic or metal together will always generate an inferior product compared to milling the parts from solid blocks. Probably even inferior to stamping them from sheet metal.
People have made jury-rigged "zip guns" from regular hardware-store materials for decades. I don't see how making an inferior version of the same thing using a $1000+ device is a step forward technologically.
The new government encountered challenges including at least eleven resignations of county administrators.[citation needed] On January 4, 1947, four of the five leaders of the GI Non-Partisan League declared in an open letter: "We abolished one machine only to replace it with another and more powerful one in the making."[11] The League failed to establish itself permanently and traditional political parties soon returned to power.[7]
You were saying?
So, he admits he can't remember any event, and instead of supplying him with a list of events, or even one single event, you just reiterate his admission. How about you stop being the armchair quarterback, put your shoulder to the wheel, and cite something.
... or is it that you can't remember one event either?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Haha, you should reread what you wrote a couple of times, too. You even used bold to give yourself a hint ; )
You are asking why you need to have a polio shot when there was not even one single case of polio in the US since 1979. I mean you are right, it's hard to explain if it's not obvious.
They haven't done anything to quash CNC milling machines, which small table-top milling machines plus a conversion kit have been available for a long time. Cheap, full sized milling machines are approaching the $1-2k price range now due to cheap Chinese built ones. Price comes down to mostly how accurate you need it, and if you are going to have time to screw around with getting a 3d printer still in development working, you have more than enough time to use traditional equipment to build gun parts.
With this technology, guns will be a side show. Yes, people will make them and there will be much bloviation about that, but the real impact will be on local economies.
Open any phone book or Google for any city, "machine shop"; there will be hundreds. They are the foundation of any kind of manufacturing economy. My company deals with at least 20 different shops, parceling out work to meet shipping deadlines and lower costs. When this technology matures to the point where it is as ubiquitous as a CNC mill or lathe, you will see turn around times crash and labor shift from skilled machinists to skilled CAD engineers (good or bad...you decide). It's conceivable that the actual making of a part becomes almost a lights out operation.
Hang on to your hats, this will be a game changer in the world economy.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
A million dollar machine shop can build a gun. No one has ever had any doubt about that.
Isn't an affordable 3D metal printer simply a welder attached to an x, y, z axis table? With a welder you can control the bead size by simply adjusting the feed rate and current. What is the issue here? Just get a mig welder, disassemble and attach it to a robot, then enclose the whole thing in a box filled with inert gas.
I'm guessing most tinfoil hat types don't have tens of thousands of dollars and an team of engineers at their disposal. I imagine consumer grade models will use something like pot metal rather than stainless steel. And even this .45 is surely not as strong as the forged barrels of production weapons. I wonder what would happen if they tried to print a functional .30-06 M1 Garand?
Ah! I see now. What you're saying is that it has never happened. Well, why didn't you say so plainly, instead of being coy about it?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
When this thing can print hellfire missles and reaper drones to carry them, then maybe the government will get worried.
But I guess other uses are not "newsworthy".
Prints a "Michael Jackson Pacifier!"
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
You do realize that the site you're recommending is financed by the koch brothers right? Not trying to stir things up, just an FYI. I can't support any movement that's back by large corporations asking for more deregulation. I think People need less regulation, not the corporations. I'm tired of living in a country that's on the brink of fascism.
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power."
-Benito Mussolini -
I don't understand why gun nuts have this obsession with 3D printing. Making a weapon by fusing tiny bits of plastic or metal together will always generate an inferior product compared to milling the parts from solid blocks. Probably even inferior to stamping them from sheet metal.
People have made jury-rigged "zip guns" from regular hardware-store materials for decades. I don't see how making an inferior version of the same thing using a $1000+ device is a step forward technologically.
We don't have an obsession with 3D printing. The media does. Many of the real firearms enthusiasts view it as mildly interesting, but not terribly practical. Anyone can make a 12 gauge shotgun from about $10-20 of parts from Home Depot. The people who seem to be really following this 3D printing thing are really only a subset of firearms enthusiasts and tech nerds. Essentially, where the two groups overlap. They have knowledge of firearms and knowledge of tech. 3D printing of guns and gun parts fits both.
He's talking about the American Revolution. His coy act is obnoxious, but your deliberate obtuseness is annoying, too.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Interesting statistic that came out this thanksgiving was that deep frying a turkey is more likely to kill you than a shark attack...
I guess you forgot about the Revolutionary War.
Well, I'm not going to worry until it's capable of scavenging the raw materials to build copies of itself.
That could get a bit dicey.
cf "The Mechanical Mice" by Eric Frank Russell
The so-called "Battle of Athens" was not an armed insurrection against the US Government - it was an armed encounter vs. a, by all accounts, extremely corrupt local government whose activities seemed to mirror that of a small organized crime conglomerate.
There were no US government forces involved, nor was the national guard mobilized by the Governor of Tennessee.
Not really. It's just that Snowden's revelations have focused more on the US than other countries. Most other Western countries are just as bad, and will only get worse as their economies continue to deteriorate (same with the US).
What he is saying is that guns in the hands of the populace PREVENT such things from ever even being discussed, sort of like how no-one ever discusses building a residential development inside the caldera of a volcano. That would just be stupid. But take away the magma, and it might just happen.
He's talking about the American Revolution. His coy act is obnoxious, but your deliberate obtuseness is annoying, too.
I am not an American, so if there is some American cultural reference linking "one single event" and the American Revolution, you'll have to forgive me for not picking up on the hint. Besides, the American revolution is not an example of the US government changing its policies because the US population is armed because there was no US, or US government, or US population (armed or otherwise) at the time.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Way to miss the point.
Guns didn't win that battle. Without the freedom of speech and the right to assembly there wouldn't even have been a battle, just a lone gun-nut.
The fact that they weren't just gunned down has more to do with the Sheriff not wanting to kill the opposition than with superior firepower.
Again, a thousand men without guns are better equipped with dealing with the government than ten men armed to the teeth. Not because of superior strength but because of higher legitimacy.
The guns will only work as long as the government aren't willing to shoot you.
In the end you should be happy, because it guarantees pussies like yourself the freedom of speach
What's "speach"? Is that anything like spackling?
Shark attacks are rare. Another interesting statistic is that you are more likely to be bitten by a New Yorker than a shark.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
All true.
The more interesting question is, when is someone going to design a gun and corresponding ammo optimized for home fabrication?
Sure, today ammo is plentiful enough (although that's been changing over the past year or so) that it's not worth going to something else ... at least not in the US. But when/where that changes, there might be other design choices that make more sense. Primers or percussion caps aren't the only way of igniting propellant. Maybe something electrical or even optical (e.g. using the laser diode out of a blue-ray) might make an easier-to-fab weapon.
How about the battle of athens?
Yes... the (presumably American) Revolutionary War was totally about freedom of speech.
The Revolutionary War was about home rule, with specific points of contention over taxing of commodities, and the independence and impartiality of the judicial system. This is why most of the founders were importers, farmers and lawyers, silly.
Britons in the 18th century, with the exception of certain kinds of lese majeste, basically had free speech that any American would recognize.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I read a short bit a couple of years ago, I think it was in "A people's history of the united states", wherein a group of veterans came home from the war and decided they'd had enough corruption in their local town; they ended up guarding the ballot boxes against the local political machine at gunpoint. In the end, the ex-soldiers won, because the only reason the crooks stayed in office was a lot of ballot-stuffing.
Guns are an important tool; this point sometimes gets lost when some of the more vocal gun folks start to fetishize them. OTOH, Anti-gun folks would do well to remember that it doesn't always have to be "You vs. the Entire U.S. Military" for guns to be useful. (And even then, various insurgents have shown that can be a lot more effective than you might think.)
Try googling "NRA" or the "National Rifle Association".
Oh, I agree with you there. I just foresaw this thread continuing on in that manner forever and I wanted to make it stop!
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
"Build" does not substitute for "built."
It happens every day. Just think how the government would be if they did not have us to fear.
I still find it odd that some citizens are so proud of something (the 2nd amendement) that is only of use when things are totally fucked.
Has it never occured to them to not let things get quite so fucked in the first place?
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Heck, a reasonably talented and careful machinist could build a gun with a wood lathe, a drill and a few files. I may have left something out, but that's pretty much it. Maybe a chisel or two and a hammer.
For that matter, my neighbor (when I was a kid) built a 3 inch pipe cannon when he was young. It fired rocks over a mile. IIRC he had most of the barrel buried in dirt, which would explain why he didn't get sliced and diced by shrapnel from the barrel exploding. He's long dead of old age, so no details are available now.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
There's a reason why all the printed guns use pistol rounds, it's because the powder load is so much smaller. A pistol round will put a dent and possibly a hole in a car door, a rifle round will go through the door, through the driver and passenger, and out the other door.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
if you only require a resolution of 5mm per step for your print, it'll be just fine. anything better - yup, pile of poo prepare for metal minecraft yodas and nick cage faced cats.
I've always wondered if you could dissolve the lumps off kids cap gun cap strips into water to form a paste then let set in an empty shell (.22) or primer cap (larger) to suffice as primer. would be safer that trying to make your own from scratch, when wet there should be very little risk of premature detonation. anyone tried this? I know hammering a whole pack of cap strips in one go makes one hell of a bang.
Way to miss the point.
Guns didn't win that battle. Without the freedom of speech and the right to assembly there wouldn't even have been a battle, just a lone gun-nut.
Sorry, but you're the one missing (intentionally?) the point.
The sheriff and his armed deputies illegally took the ballot boxes containing the people's votes...their speech...by armed force, threatening to shoot anyone who tried to stop them.
Votes = speech.
Guns in the hands of citizens willing to use them against those armed & threatening men acting illegally and un-Constitutionally "under color of law" as agents of the State prevented that speech from being suppressed/altered/corrupted by those agents of the State.
This is not rocket surgery.
The fact that they weren't just gunned down has more to do with the Sheriff not wanting to kill the opposition than with superior firepower.
Might try reading what went on. There was a gun battle in which the sheriff and his deputies were holed-up in a courthouse and certainly tried to "shoot the opposition". The citizens, thankfully, had superior firepower. After a hail of return-fire from the citizens, they were then able to approach and dynamite the door and take control of the ballot boxes and take the deputies into custody.
Here's a couple of videos you should watch for your edification.
Battle of Athens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgspMlPP7bA
Innocents Betrayed: The History Of Gun Control: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUmKT43j4Tc
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Ahhh, a Wilhelm Reich fan, eh?
That's the very DEFINITION of "an armed insurrection against the US Government". They don't stop being the government because they're corrupt.
"There were no US government forces involved"
"an armed encounter vs. a, by all accounts, extremely corrupt local government"
Pick one of those two. You can't have both of them.
http://conventionofstates.com/ [conventionofstates.com]
This will never happen, and that's a good thing. Look at what they're advocating. Talk about throwing the baby, the house, and most of the continent out with the bathwater...