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First Arrest In Japan For 3D-Printed Guns
PuceBaboon (469044) writes "Earlier today (Thursday), police in Kawasaki, Japan, arrested a man for violation of the firearms control law. He was apparently in possession of five, 3D-printed handguns, two of which were reportedly capable of firing normal rounds (although no actual bullets were found). The suspect was arrested after releasing video of the guns online. Japan has very strict gun control laws and, whether or not the suspect actually appeared in the alleged video, he may just have signed himself up for some serious porridge."
A person is violating gun ownership laws and gets arrested.
How is this news for /. ?
Japanese police arrest a man for having a pipe, nail and hammer.
This porridge, while thick and creamy, may also in fact come with maple syrup and fresh berries or should he plead guilty, a knob of butter and a dash of salt as would be the law in japan as it applies to sentencing and conviction within the bounds of the criminal porridge system. The whole grain oats, enriched generously with folate and iron, would serve to deter even the most wanton of breakfast criminal.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Maybe this sort of thing contributes to why Japan had a murder rate of 0.4 per 100,000 people in 2009, compared to the U.S. rate of 4.4 (Afganistan, for the record, had a murder rate per 100,000 of 2.4 in 2008).
It's long past time for the U.S. to stop setting firearms policy based on the paranoid fantasies of a bunch of brain-damaged rednecks.
Because guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
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He broke the law and then told on himself. Plastic guns are stupid and so are laws.Once I had a cop threaten to arrest me if I didn't mow my lawn YET the same day I was firing metal home built guns on lawn. The officer called them fascinating.
"I can’t complain about the arrest if the police regard them as real guns"
Not just the police, every 3D printing nutcase regards them as more lethal than a nuclear bomb. And definitely the future. I mean just look at those things. Not a single bullet was ever fired by any of them, but they could have!
They're vaguely gun-shaped plastic cake decorations.
You can sell firearms across state lines just fine --- the transaction just has to take place at an FFL in the state-of-residence of the purchaser and be legal in the destination state.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Japan does have a log of Bullet trains that are used often in suicides, so I kind of have to disagree with you there.
A 3D-printed gun will only fire a few rounds - sure. A piece of steel pipe will fire many more, and is a lot cheaper than a 3D-printer. Outlaw steel pipe while we have a chance!
For something really practical - a 3D-printed gun mechanism using a steel pipe barrel. Strong where needed, with all the tricky mechanical parts made effortlessly on that printer.
And of course, that means undergoing a background check.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
With 3d printing, I suppose you can print something which would be capable of firing a bullet, but not look or seem anything like a gun. A box perhaps. Would that still be a gun? I don't know if laws define guns as what most people traditionally think of - a handgun shape is very recognisable and 3d guns look similar...at what point does it become a gun, and at what point is a piece of plastic just a toy? If he printed a box with a cylindrical hole in it and a mechanism to pound into the centre of the cylinder, would it also be a gun?
He was apparently in possession of five, 3D-printed handguns, two of which were reportedly capable of firing normal rounds (although no actual bullets were found)
The commas...I just don't understand...
After reading the summary I suddenly had the urge to start a brand of alcoholic beverage called Kawaaisake. I'd sell it in really cute little bottles.
You might want to sort that chart by rate and look at the countries with higher and lower rates.
As for slightly higher than Canada?
Canada has 1.6 murders /100,000 people and the US is 4.8 / 100,000
That's not slightly higher, that's 3 times as high!
You are a bad person. :-)
require the people carrying a gun to also carry liability insurance and carry proof of that insurance with them anytime they are carrying their gun? I hope so, but probably not.
I think that if we are required to carry liability insurance and proof thereof for something as mundane as driving a car we should require the same for carrying something that is designed specifically to kill other people.
I think the "free market" could solve the gun problem in the US in a hurry. Insurers would simply make it so expensive to carry a gun that people would have to give up on the idea.
Te samurai might be gone but the Japanese elites have never tolerated armed peasants.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
(the category of "violent crime" excludes homicide, because the stats are collected through surveys and dead people don't reply to surveys, homicide rates are over 4x higher in America).
Except that in England they don't count a murder as a murder until a person has been convicted of the crime. No one ever addresses the fact that every country has a different method or system for counting murders so there is no real way to do an apples to apples comparison of murder rates between countries. Anti -gunners never admit that fact. If you want to compare murder rates between multiple places you better be using the same recording methods if you want anyone to take you seriously. Along with that it's fairly common place for police in certain political climates to "cook" the statistics. I dont remember the last time i took a walk in downtown New Orleans and saw a jihadist behead a person on the other side of the street.
Er... so you would support a monarchy?
Japanese have a harder time killing each other so they turned to killing themselves.
I heard someone printed a bong in a non-green state!
OMG laws broken! Hype Hype Hype!
Oh wait, a stoned population doesn't threaten the status quo, so no big political/media drama.
3D printed guns don't mean the end of gun control. If it means the end of anything, it's unregulated 3D printing.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
not necessarily. Depends on the state.
Guns per capita doesn't correlate at all to % of population armed at any given time. Nor does it correspond to regulations around carrying a firearm with you.
Just looking at the chart one would think that almost half of the Swiss and 90% of the US population were armed at any given time, which isn't even remotely true.
...before he became a cereal killer!
So for the past 50 years people could use machine tools to create guns made from plastic. Even guys in jail cells could make zip guns. Now that we have 3d printers, there is suddenly a problem?
First, most states that "require" car insurance actually don't. The laws, generally, require proof that a driver has the ability to pay for some minimum level of damages and most poor or middle-class people do this with car insurance policies (usually specified as an option in the state laws) - but the fine print in most states allows people to go to the court to demonstrate sufficient financial resources and then get a waiver on the "insurance requirement". This is one reson why people do not get as outraged by being "ordered to buy a commercial product" with car insurance as with "Obamacare" (the other reason for different outrage levels being that driving a car is optional, but living is not)
Second, you can generally legally operate a car without insurance in most states as long as you are not on public roads (i.e. a farmer or rancher could traditionally have people driving around on his land while they're under-age and unlicensed - except of course that several years ago the Obama admin tried to ban this under new "child labor" and "child safety" regulations, which drew a lot of flak from family farmers). Therefore (and it's an important "therefore") the regulation is about using your car driving freedom on a public road. In "gun control" terms, the equivalent would be to place gun regulations only on guns on public property - with NO regulations for guns on private property.
Third, a car is essentially a convenience and NOT a Constitutional right. Americans are not guaranteed a right to "keep and bear arms" so that they can wander around shooting at cans on fences; the right exists [1] to remove the justification for a large standing army that some future tyrant could use to oppress the people, [2] to dissuade tyrannical government, [3] for individual self defense [4] for people to be able to hunt for food. As such, government regulation of autos is not an affront to te Constitution, but regulation of firearms is a stickier issue (given that much of the "right" is specifically aimed at limiting government, making government interference in that right a direct threat to it)
It's always interesting to see how eager people on "the left" are to find underhanded/backhanded ways to attack a Constitutional right when they are blocked from directly assaulting it (when it involves guns). With other rights, you guys stretch the Constitution in ways the founders never indicated support for in ANY of their writings, but with guns (where they wrote, and spoke, very clearly in many documents about their intent that all adult men be armed with frontline military rifles, and optionally pistols - Washington wrote this) you're always trying to limit the right, make the ammunition unavailable, require licenses that your favored bureaucracies then refuse to grant, require unaffordable insurance, etc. This is the VERY sort of government behavior the 2nd amendment is designed to oppose. You guys have apparently stumbled into "newspeak" (a literary prop that was SUPPOSED to be a crazy outrageous warning of evil - NOT a dreamy thing to be emulated) and you'd be outraged if anybody else similarly abused the plain meaning of words and pushed for the same stuff on the "rights" you like; Rather than allowing all the harm that comes from people planning crimes every year, should we ban speech until people first pass backgrouncd checks, get licenses, and pay for insurance (to cover all the harm they might do) etc? Should people have to prove to the government that they would incriminate themselves, and get a license before they can "plead the 5th"? (this is as stupidly contradictory as government-administered "gun control"). You might think you have a right to a "free press", but perhaps we should require journalists to get licenses (which government officials will only give to their "friends") and carry (very expensive) liability insurance (in case they slander somebody, or start a riot, etc) ... and maybe we should make it too expensive for most people to have web sites or blogs...... oh, nooooo, THAT would not be interference with any "rights"... it would just be necessary regulation .... for the good of the children....
In the vast majority of cases guns DON'T kill people; BULLETS kill people....
Government in the U.S. routinely sells guns. ALL levels of government sell surplus guns to individuals, including many local governments that sell the guns that come in via "gun giveback" or "gun buyback" programs that are presented to the public as "get guns off the streets" programs (these are some of the most-laughable examples of government idiocy)
Then, of course, there are things like "Fast and Furious" where tho Obama administration DEMANDED that gun shops sell guns (over the objections and concerns of those dealers) to obvious "straw buyers" as a way to funnel those guns to the Mexican drug gangs. Please explain, by what magic, how this makes the government ANY less responsible for those thousands of "assualt rifles" ending-up in the hands of the drug cartels and their gangs than if it had directly sold them.
Iran-Contra, which you cited, is actually the more interesting case: On the one hand, the US government encouraged the government of Israel to transfer some obsolete anti-air missles to Iran (with a pledge that Israel's inventory be replaced by newer hardware) both to raise money for the contra-half of the activity AND to assist in freeing an American who was being tortured in the middle-east by Iran-supported actors - this was a government-to-government-to-government transfer of missiles. On the other end of the transaction, this was the (indirect) funding of a rebel army purchasing arms in its attempt to overthrow another rebel army that had overthrown a government. This is VASTLY over-simplified, but my point being that it had NOTHING to do with individuals with guns.
"... Or do you support the notion of everyone being able to legal own a 20 Megaton nuke? Because that's the sort of firepower you really need to oppose the US government; ..."
Just wanted to point out in reply that in a democracy, people oppose the government in terms of existing laws all the time through voting, lawsuits, campaign donations, jury nullification, running for office, civil disobedience, writing to their congress person, moving, innovation that changes perceived economic imperatives, performance art, publishing books, writing newspaper editorials, buying different products, eating differently (like eating less energy/water-intensive meat despite government subsidies for it), creating new organizations as examples, fostering alternative communities, contributing to internal political pressures when working with government, and so on. These could be considered variations on the "boxes" of democracy: soap box (publishing), ballot box (voting), mail box (writing legislators), band box / pizza box (community), lunch box (eating and purchasing politically as I see it; social safety net as originally defined), jury box (jury nullification by voting not-guilty because the law is wrong), moving box (between states or between countries) -- all available before the ammo box.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Other countries oppose the USA all the time as well via the international laws, tariffs, subsidizing local industries, currency manipulations, making choices about whether to trade in dollars, setting standards of imported products, forming their own cartels (like OPEC), educating their own populace, investing in their own infrastructure, making stuff for the USA cheaply to make the USA dependent on the other country and to obtain its business and technological secrets, setting examples of alternative practices as successes, and so on. See also Noam Chomsky on "The Threat of a Good Example":
http://www.thirdworldtraveler....
As Isaac Asimov had a character (Salvor Hardin) say, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
And for a true-life example, consider Leon Shenandoah:
http://pathwayofpeace.blogspot...
"We are the spiritual energy that is thousands time stronger than nuclear energy. Our energy in the combined will of all people with the spirit of the Natural World, to be of one body, one heart and one mind for peace."
Or as I quote about him here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-d...
"Warriors are held up as heroes. They are praised for their gallantry, exalted for their conquests, and used as symbols to inspire patriotism. Monuments are built for them as reminders of past victories and to prepare citizens for the next campaign. Leon Shenandoah was no warrior, yet no warrior could stand up against his power. He carried no weapons, used no harsh rhetoric, and made no demands. His strength was in gentleness. When he spoke, those around him listened. His words were always soft, his kindness evident. He was a spiritual man."
I don't feel US gun culture or politics is likely to change anytime soon. The USA is what it is with a certain cultural momentum. And personally I feel if the USA took care of its economic and mental health issues better (like a basic income and medicare for all) the amount of gun violence would go down. Improving the environment helps too, given lead levels have been linked to violence:
http://www.motherjones.com/env...
But what really bothers me is US gun owners who vote for politicians (of any party) who put i
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
If I'm not mistaken, in addition to absolute gun control, Japan also practices what we need here in the states; bullet control. i.e. it would basically be impossible for him to acquire ammunition in the first place. So, while manufacturing what is ostensibly a firearm in the eyes of the law is almost certainly illegal in Japan, might it not have been more prudent to wait and see what he intended to do?
I see three possible outcomes they missed by not waiting:
Of course, being Japan, that last one is just as unlikely as the first two-- except not as ludicrous --because the police, as much as the media, like to turn just about any crime above a purse-snatching into a spectacle simply to show that they're doing their jobs.
At any rate, I hope they show some restraint in prosecuting him. Barring any further evidence, he just seems to be a nerd/tinkerer who wasn't thinking about what he was doing, but didn't intend any harm. (And no harm was done.)
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
There are lots of ways to make improvised firearms, and some of them are probably a lot faster and more reliable than 3D printing. I think this is only a story because of the recent popularity of 3D printing. I don't think it would have made /. If it were five improvised firearms from steel pipe or something. Makes you wonder if all those guns they make on the show "Sons of Guns" in the US would be illegal in Japan. I wonder where the line between improvised firearm and gun smithing really lies, or if they even make a distinction in Japan.
This was on TV in Japan a couple days ago, and they showed a pretty in-depth report.
The film crew talked to the guy who was arrested and looked at his home lab setup.
The guy looked like a typical geek but was very pro-guns, saying guns are necessary in case someone you know is getting beat up and since he could easily get one on the net he thought he should. Guns are prominent in entertainment in Japan though.
His nice looking 3D printer was shown printing something and the guy has developed his own parts they said.
Three people were solicited for their viewpoints about the story, which is a common approach of Japanese news shows. This is roughly from memory, but one was a smart and sensitive appearing woman who said "We [Japanese] have grown up in Japan but live now in a world that is permeated with these cultural values" and I think suggested we need to adjust the laws or find some way to harmonize the gap between law and contemporary culture. Then they showed how high-end 3D printers being used in a fab where a skull was being printed, though I don't remember if they talked about 3D printing for surgery. A second person was a 3D printer user (a man in his 30s maybe) who said, "This was very regrettable... As these kinds of machines spread into homes all over the country, we need to concurrently learn how to use them ethically." Finally they had the third person, a man in his 50s who was some famous professor IIRC. They usually pick such a person to give a socially acceptable comment. I found it interesting that this person did not go down harshly on the victim but rather suggested that laws needed to be changed even about guns perhaps.
Personally I am interested in 3d printers though I have never used them. I am not interested in guns at all. I wish those people had not uploaded gun plans to the net causing all kinds of problems for people like this guy who has no need of a gun, who they would never try to help, and ignite a controversy that could end up forcing licensing or vetting of 3d printer owners for no good reason.
The person who was arrested seemed to be a pretty naive, introverted otaku kind of guy and he was obviously an idiot for posting to youtube or whatever. I felt bad for him since he seemed a bit disturbed and he seemed to have fallen into a pitfall, and I wondered what kind of experience he must have had which led him to print, use and brag about guns when they aren't even legal in Japan. Perhaps it was even a call for help of some kind.
It was interesting to me that the news show emphasized that he only fired empty rounds and had never actually fired a real bullet in them. The whole spin on the show was a big difference from the way I would have expected a Japanese news show to act which would usually have the pretty announcer frowning with crinkled brow, etc. The two announcers did at the end seem to sort of shrug at each other sort of like "what a weird story" (didn't catch what they said) but considering the comments they aired by the defendant and the other people they had rounded up, it came out quite positively it seemed on the side of the defendant, 3D printing, and even the question about guns. This is all a huge change from what the attitude would have been 10 years ago.
FWIW Japanese culture still is extremely highly influenced by U.S. culture though it does not share the love of the military and police, personal weaponry, force makes right, and so on. My impression is that when technology makes it possible Japanese geeks will without question build gundam-style giant robots (one group in Kyushu has actually built a rescue robot a man can ride in even), so anime is a major influence and guns are undoubtedly a romantic object. This does seem to point to a dissonance such as the woman mentioned, where Western media influence causes desires and thought processes that conflict with Japanese culture and legal system. This probably will continue to grow.
Even comic-style books in the local convenience store sometimes provide links to apparently d