Man Prints Gun

[canberraguy]

I read the article and the quote about this stopping the government restricting gun ownership etc etc just infuriates me. America has a massive gun culture and this mentality of I have the need and a right to own a machine gun is scary and baffling to non Americans, and many Americans I imagine...

[simonr1978]

...and that is going off topic and is likely to get this locked or sent to P&R sharpish if the discussion of Gun ownership/culture gets taken much further.

Can I just point out though, again, that this wasn't a machinegun of any shape or form and quite possibly wasn't even semi-automatic.

[theunwantedbeing]

Can I just point out though, again, that this wasn't a machinegun of any shape or form and quite possibly wasn't even semi-automatic.

Aren't some legal weapons able to be converted into machineguns?
There would be a huge worry about anyone being able to turn a legal weapon into an illegal one simply by being able to access a 3d printer (or you'de have a black market issue where they sell the parts to convert weapons and they don't need to house the parts anywhere as stock and all the illegal info is say..on a usb stick and nowhere else).

That becomes worrying when guns are legally allowed.

[Toadius80]

It would be impossible for a 3d printer to make any sort of fire arm. Just like it can't make a working oven or power drill.
The funnier side of this is that a real fire arm cost less to buy than a 3d printer.


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[Son of Morkai]

Aren't some legal weapons able to be converted into machineguns?

Not really. There's a technique called bump firing that most of those "conversions" are based on. Nothing more than pulling the trigger of a semi-auto very fast using the recoil as part of the action. Accuracy suffers. Severely.

I'd be more worried about an IED or incendiary any day. I mean... shouldn't any yahoo's ability to buy gasoline and a match be more worrying?

[canberraguy]

...and that is going off topic and is likely to get this locked or sent to P&R sharpish if the discussion of Gun ownership/culture gets taken much further.

Can I just point out though, again, that this wasn't a machinegun of any shape or form and quite possibly wasn't even semi-automatic.

Fair call, opinion got the better of me.

[Godzooky]

I'll just print myself a bulletproof jacket.

[C. Langana]

http://www.popsci.com/technology/art...de-3-d-printer

Same chap, working assualt rifle.

[Burnthem]

The sensationalism of this by the media is just daft. You can make alot of pieces for a firearm out of wood or even paper for crying out loud, alot easier and an order of magnitude cheaper than a 3D printer.

He didn't just punch in a design and a working weapon came out, he only made the lower receiver, which, whilst important, is not exactly high tech nor difficult to make.

[simonr1978]

Again though, you still need all the metal gubbins, springs and internal workings to actually get this to function as a weapon, and you cannot yet print these parts out so until such a time as everyone has access to the metal working parts and the technical knowledge required to assemble them in a functioning manner my bet is that the article's prediction that nearly everyone will be able to print out the weapons of their choice at will is quite some way from reality. All you'll end up with is the empty and useless carcasses of guns.

As an additional point I did note that on the thread linked to in the original article someone did point out that the melting point of ABS is pretty low and unless the shooter watches his rate of fire there's a very real possibility that the printed parts may start to soften and deform whilst shooting. This would be especially bad at the points they join to the metal parts.

One final point, the term Assault Rifle refers to a particular set of rifles with particular qualities. Unless Haveblue's design ticks all the boxes (And although it might, there's no clear indication that it does) it's a rifle not an Assault Rifle.

Of course, using the term Assault Rifle in an article that incorrectly predicts an almost universal ability to produce firearms at will is quite useful since it adds just that little bit more to the fear factor, perfect for anti-gun technophobic scaremongering.

[Burnthem]

As I just said elsewhere, this is the same as printing off a steering wheel and claiming to have made a car.

[Col. Frost]

Yeah, the number of non printed parts in that rifle is a joke. He hasn't printed any of the important working parts of the weapon. He may as well of just gone to a toy shop, picked up a toy assault rifle and converted that.

[VanHel]

I do pity any sort of alien life we come across, as it seems any new technology we create we immediately use to create weapons.

[simonr1978]

This is going off topic but that's hardly the case. Paper, printing, steam engines, concrete, personal computers, radio, and that's just a very quick list off the top of my head of technology and technological advancements that weren't immeadiately weaponised. The flip side to that coin as well of course is that a number of technological advancements, for example Radar/RDF, started off as military developments which found highly successful civilian applications.

[slaaneshes_own]

For fans of sci-fi, the author's name escapes me, but the title of the collected novella's was "A Second Chance At Eden," and in the short novel for which the collection was named, a woman is murdered using a gun, which the interlinked computer network that runs the length and breadth of the biome doesn't recognise until the fateful moment and then it's too late. But the gun was printed (for want of a better word,) and the ammunition with it, thanks to the organism that the biome is grown off, chewing through the rock of the asteroid, creating all that they need. Damned good story, but the people who printed this gun have been beaten to the punch by a literary work of fiction, and a bloody good work at that...