3D Printed Guns

[Phoebe]

The interview with the guy who's doing this is edifying, both because he's an extremist crazy and because I worry he's right that once the genie is out of the bottle it's going to be very hard to eradicate the spread of this information and capability to create 3D printed weapons. I don't know if they really work as well as their counterparts, or well enough for people to do the nefarious things they might want to do with them. However, they're not entirely undetectable, as standard search procedures can find them, and their shapes are also presumably detectable in airport screenings. I'm not sure it's the question of detectability that troubles me as much as the idea that people who have been prevented from purchasing weapons, for highly specific good reasons, will be able to pursue this route if they are very motivated.

On principle what puzzles me about the 2nd Amendment extremists is that very few people - including most of them! - think the other amendments are interpretable in such an extreme fashion, and the text and surrounding documentation around the 2nd Amendment doesn't even lend itself to as broad an interpretation as other amendments. Why is this particular Amendment their fetish as opposed to other aspects of habeas corpus? I'm afraid that the likely answers aren't very flattering.

[Tahlvin]

I haven't been paying real close attention to this, other than reading headlines. But the impression I get from several people I know who are knowledgeable about firearms and gunsmithing think this is being misunderstood and misreported.

One person described it as, what the person is really posting a specs for a hand-held, plastic pipe bomb. Sure, they can 3D print a functional firearm if they wanted to, but the materials used by almost all commercial 3D printers are drastically inadequate to withstand the forces generated when the weapon is actually used, so it is much more likely to injure the user than the intended target. One person questioned whether the person posting the plans online had sufficient liability coverage to handle all the inevitable lawsuits that will happen when people start being injured by weapons printed from those plans that end up injuring the users. At best, they'll be printing firearm bodies, but will still need to purchase professionally-produced barrels and firing mechanisms in order to be usable.

One person I follow described what is actually being posted online as being equivalent to engineering specs, and that suppressing the publication of the documents is essentially the suppression of sharing engineering and design information. I'm not sure how accurate that description is.

Like a number of things, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. No, I don't think there's going to be a rash of people 3D printing untraceable weapons that are going to trigger waves of violent crime. I think the media coverage has probably drawn more attention to this than it really deserves. Yes, it is concerning to a degree, but more as a general trend of technology in general outpacing existing laws.

[Mike]

I also haven't looked much, because we did the whole 3D printed guns thing when 3D printers first became a reality for home use. The consensus then was that you COULD do it, but it was so likely to be dangerous and/or ineffective that it wasn't worth it. Has something changed or is it just that someone is handing out actual specs to the public?

[DMDarcs]

From what I understood from the bit I heard on NPR this morning, the plans for a single shot pistol had been widely available on the internet for some time. It's a bigger issue as a much larger number of plans have been released, including automatic weapons. The newscaster reporting on it seemed somewhat dubious that this would be a big issue due to the limited access people to have quality 3D printers and the fact there will still be a number of metal parts required for any of these to work. (They should, however, be easily obtainable at hardware stores.)

[mimekiller]

I've never even SEEN a 3D printer IRL so I'm going to assume this is the media trying to make people afraid for ratings.

[Cazmonster]

I have 3D printed things. There is no way you're going to get anything more than a nylon zip-gun out of this. Even with some of the annealing filaments that are available now, you won't get consistent rifling inside the barrel and you won't get the firing chamber strength you need for regular firing.

So a few nerds are going to be able to fire a handful of bullets out of a couple of pounds of nylon. 3D printed guns are far less scary than what's already out there.

[Walrus]

So speaking out of my ass at the moment, my understanding is that the 3D printed guns were a panic early on, but the lack of practicality of the product made it not a realistic concern. the new fears are accompanying it are down to improved materials and end-product that bring it into the realm of likely practical, or soon to be practical.

None of this is that surprising or drops my opinion of humans as a species much. Mainly because it's difficult to go beyond rock-bottom.

But think about it. A technology is invented, that has the potential to revolutionise everything, space-travel, medicine, prosthetics, cybernetics, computers, robotics, extreme environment survival, so on and so on. So what do people do with it? Find ways to produce stuff to kill and maim each other. And that is why my opinion on the species ....

[Mike]

Hey, slow down... we only weaponized it so quickly because finding ways to use it for sex were less practical.

Oh wait... we do that too.

I mean look... there's always bad actors at the fringes, and they get a lot of press, but look at the vast number of stories about 3D printed items being used for truly revolutionary and uplifting stuff. On the balance, good is still in the lead.

[Walrus]

[Mike]

Yeah, the printed word is used to spread hate and propagate violence, but it's also produced a lot of good things.

Everything produced by humanity is on a bell curve: one percent magic, one percent shit, all the rest on a sliding scale in between. When the product is country music, the shit parts are still just music. When the product is electricity, the shit parts can kill you (sometimes intentionally). If you focus primarily on the negative, then it can definitely overwhelm you.

[Bonefish]

What does this change? Right now? Not much. The capabilities of modest 3d printers are such that you really can't make a reliable and safe firearm, without some significant design compromises, such as a very small and low powered caliber, single shot pistols that are bigger than .44 magnums. And if you're that interested in making your own firearms, there's dozens of better plans that are just as easy to do and require a similar investment. They might require you to know how to use a drill and file, but they're far better than what you can print.

I mean, let's say I wasn't able to buy a gun because of some reason(criminal past or mental instability), and I wanted to have a cheap single shot gun, I guess I could buy a printer that costs hundreds or maybe of thousands of dollars, and I can have me a .22 or maybe a .38 that might blow up in my hands. Or. I can go get some black pipe, and screws and fittings down at the hardware store and a box of shotgun shells, and have a single shot firearm that fires shotgun shells, reliably and fairly safely. Mostly. It's atleast an order of a magnitude better than anything you're going to print.

Now, what it does change? Well, there's a lot of parts of a firearm that don't have to be made out of metal. Most of it, really. If you're familiar with polymer frame handguns like, I dunno, the majority of those out on the market, then you'll understand where I'm going with this: a lot of the ergonomic features of a firearm, the stock, the grips, etc, can be printed. And that is awesome! Well, if you're into making guns, which some people are. And that's perfectly legal, by the way.

Now, there's also the other facet of the issue, which is information. There's a lot of information available that can be... misused for nefarious purposes. Forget single-shot crapboxes. You can use a 3d printer to make a small cruise missile. If you were so motivated to do so. That is scary, scary information. How do we control the spread of dangerous information? How do we decide what is dangerous information?

[Ronster]

1. 3D printing is not just plastic. I will add that the jet engine repair and manufacturing industry is well into the process of 3d printing blades for engines. We are working on it right here right now.

2. Any projectile will have metal elements at this time

3.Unless you are going to walk up to someone and assassinate them the gun will be useless.

4. There are no guns in Chicago, yet 74 people were shot with them on one hot weekend. None of them 3D printed, none of them NRA members. If they were the story would have made the news.

[Bonefish]

[Mike]

Just out of curiosity, why pick on Chicago? I know it gets mentioned a lot, but they're ranked like 20-something'th in per capita murders for major US cities, and there's like a dozen cities that rank higher in gun violence rates.

Cities that beat Chicago on both counts: Miami, Memphis, Oakland, Pittsburg, Atlanta, St. Louis, Detroit. You know gun laws better than I do. Are all of these cities super-restrictive on guns? Is there a real correlation here?

[Ronster]

my numbers were wrong, 66 shot and 12 killed...from shooting...and Chicago because there are no legal firearms there

[Mike]

[Bonefish]

The correlation is super weak. At best.

[Walrus]

just curious, if you were say mentally unstable and unable to officially buy a gun, why spend thousands on a 3d printer? why not just go to a gun show, spend a few hundred on a private sale and get just what you want? no checks required.

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

I feel better knowing that access to a standard plastic 3D printer isn't enough to make a durable, effective gun, and that metal printing is probably beyond the means of most people you'd be worried about pursuing this, or too inefficient to bother with. I wonder if that will change in the future. But glad it's not like that for now.