3D-printed guns are back, and this time they are unstoppable
61 replies, posted
https://media.giphy.com/media/l43mTOjbRKdi8lW14n/giphy.gif
A new network of 3D-printed gun advocates is growing in America – and this time things are different. Unlike previous attempts to popularise 3D-printed guns, this operation is entirely decentralised. There’s no headquarters, no trademarks, and no real leader. The people behind it reckon that this means they can’t be stopped by governments.
“If they [the government] were to come after me, they’d first have to find my identity,” says Ivan the Troll, a member of the group. “I’m one of many, many like-minded individuals who’re doing this sort of work.”
Known only by his online moniker, Ivan the Troll is the de facto spokesman of an underground wave of 3D-printing gunsmiths. Ivan says he knows of at least 100 people who are actively developing 3D-printed gun technology, and he claims there are thousands taking part in the network. This loose-knit community spans across the whole world.
They communicate across several digital platforms, including Signal, Twitter, IRC, and Discord. They critique each other's work, exchange 3D gun CAD files, offer advice, talk theory, and collaborate on future blueprints. These 3D-printed gun enthusiasts – who share similar ideas and political viewpoints on gun control – mostly found each other online via gun control subreddits and forums.
Oh don't worry bout that either!
Our boy Ivan is hard at work on his "Project Butwhatabout!" regarding gun barrels and other pressure loaded parts.
https://twitter.com/Det_Disp/status/1128016555399352320
Aw Christ this shit again?
A gun made out of plastic is idiotic. I would not put my life behind one of those things. They look just as likely to go off in your hands and unless they've made a lot of improvements (I woulden't know - the videos from this guy are taken down) then they likely still fire only one round from a small caliber before needing to be disposed.
It's not the plastic crap you should be worried about its the abundance of free gun cad software for mini CNC machines.
governments don't like these on principle because if the barrier of entry to manufacturing becomes so low that everyone could buy a cnc mill the size of a washing machine then whats the point of abiding by copyright laws? whats the point of buying anything more than metal billets? Manufacturing a staple of government tax money becomes widespread and decentralized.
This scenario is already here. I'm impressed that no one has acted on it and that governmets are seemingly unaware of this impending microbrewery-esque manufacturing boom.
If you look at the Twitter I posted above[Deterrence Dispensed], you can see that things are improving rapidly. Not to mention that the Japanese guy who was arrested by in 2015 is now free, and is actually working with collaborators in the states to improve his own designs.
I don't really get how this is supposed to stop gun control. Gun control isn't about completely eliminating all guns, it's about reducing the number of guns that get into the hands of the wrong people who would use them for wrong purposes. No criminal or mass shooter is going to put their trust in one of these shitty plastic pieces that seems just about as likely to blow up while you're holding them than actually firing, so if their purpose is to propagate the true purpose of the second amendment and stop tyranny, go for it. It's just another condition case for my ideas about gun licenses and such.
Oh if a theoretical resistance were to use these plastic pieces of shit then I'm afraid they've already lost.
Oh it's still a long ways off until you hit the gun control advocates nightmare. A long, long, long ways off.
At the moment, wouldn't 3D printed crossbows be more effective?
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/220592/127b8e66-4387-465b-9d10-fdedfb500adf/image.jpeg
Prey thinks so
I thought it was incredibly easy to manufacture reliable handmade firearms using basic tools? What does cheap-ass 3D printing do different other than bringing discutable materials and structural integrity into the mix?
Just make up your mind TBH. Either making weapons manually with industrial-level reliability and a low cost is possible and easy to do, or it's not as simple as it seems and you lose out compared to straight up buying a factory made firearm, hence why 3D printing seeks to bridge that gap in areas where that's not an option. You can't have both be true at the same time.
Wonder how long it'll be before we start seeing a flood of news articles about some dipshit in Bumfuck, Nowhere blowing his fingers off with a 3D printed gun during a bank heist.
All this is going to do is get people hurt, people arrested, and cause there to be some kind of regulation on 3d printers. Same kind of shit that caused RC planes/helis/quadcopterss to have to be registered because assholes just cannot stop flying near airports.
Considering the up front cost to get a 3D plastic printer capable of making a full gun it probably wont be for a while. I understand that the printers themselves are going down in cost each day damn near, but for the same money you could just buy a regular gun and not have that problem. At least in the US anyway.
There are companies that have already built firearms using metal 3D Printers that use powdered metal as the base, as far as having a reliable and repeatable full firearm this would be the way to go. Of course the tech for this is incredibly expensive, and quite frankly it would be cheaper to simply get a CNC machine at this point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_Concepts_1911_DMLS
The whole point of doing 3D printed firearms is to more or less throw gun laws as they sit topsy turvey. The notion that anyone can build a firearm in their home with little to no knowledge of how to build a gun themselves the normal way is what this whole movement is after.
The fear of 3d printed guns is so god damn overblown. Guns aren't that hard to actually make, they are mostly simple tools. Hell, 3d printing cost too much, its cheaper to buy a gun at a gunstore and would be more reliable.
Also, illegal guns are cheap as fuck from what I hear, that should be more of the concern.
On the other hand this does mean an enterprising young gun-and-dragon-dildo enthusiast can get the 3d print files for the two things and quite literally stick two and two together and come out with something nobody asked for but kind of expected at this point.
You ain't 3D printing a gun out of garden variety PLA, ABS, PETG or much any other plastic, it'll shatter to pieces either on the first round, or the first few.
There was already that ghetto-looking flare gun ripoff that I believe fired shotgun shells. It was about as reliable as you could make an ABS gun, and it would still blow up on your hand pretty fast. Not to recall it was incredibly inconvenient to use.
If you could get a working gun out of PLA, I'd be holding one right now, just for shits and giggles. Wouldn't exactly be hard to get rid of, in case I got nervous about what legislators thought of it, it would take 2 minutes max with a hot air gun and side cutters until it looked like a blob of molten plastic, rather than a gun.
However, I can't recall what parts of a gun in the US are actually controlled. I have a vague recollection that the part of the AR15 that's actually tracked, is the lower receiver, which to my recollection didn't contain much when it comes to complicated parts. Someone with a gun hobby can fill in on that.
No, they won't. There's no such thing as "gun grabbers". There are politicians that listen to their voter base, and a lot of people out there see gun control as a reasonable method to reduce crime and terror threat. Those measures are taken because they're nice and flashy and so politicians know people would support them. The majority of people do not know what an AR-15 actually is other than knowing it's general shape and purpose and thinks it's far more dangerous than it actually is, and so they support assault weapons bans. High-capacity magazine bans are also seen to be a reasonable way to stop mass shooters, just like a lot of other measures to those kinds of people. People have their limit though, as I'm sure you'd be hard pressed to find people that support banning hunting rifles or antiques. Stop with this conspiracy-tier bullshit. No politician is out to take your guns for the sake of taking your guns. If you instead started proposing actually reasonable gun control and started educating people and compromising with them rather than this paranoid attitude that they're out to get you, I think a lot more people would be sympathetic to your cause. I guarantee you, right now it really sounds like you care more about your right to own a chunk of steel than you do care about others lives to quite a decent chunk of people.
It's overblown but I can see why people are worried. forget about guns for a second and focus on the means of production. Think if everyone had a household cnc minimill or metal 3d printer, as if it was just another appliance like a washing machine or refrigerator. That would do more to destabilize society more than illegally manufactured guns ever could.
Despite this amazing future where electronified overpriced schlock and shitty aftermarket vendors get kicked to the curb, would copyright even matter at that point? would patents have any weight to them when everyone can just fabricate parts as they need them? Furthermore think of the manufacturers themselves, all of the sudden the masses have accessible lidar to cad and minimanufacturies in their own homes, this would fuck over a lot of rich people.
The internet has yet to directly come to the manufacturing world but its oh so very close.
Lol how would it destabilize society?
Criminals already use guns
And legal gun ownership is in the millions, in fact there are more guns then citizens.
All 3D printing does is scare the powers that be because it is a variable they cannot control or know about.
"Why don't you compromise?" isa load of horse shit. "Compromise" in relation to gun control has always meant "Implement gun control at a slower rate than gun control advocates want." You know what compromise is? It's a give and take, it means that both sides gain something and both sides lose something. None of the shit proposed in regards to gun control ever gives anything back to gun owners, it always just takes gun rights away. And every fucking time gun rights advocates say they're fucking tired of people passing nonsensical gun control that isn't supported by evidence, they're told "Why don't you compromise?" It's because there is no fucking compromise.
Read it again. You might have missed a paragraph or two.
Feinstein's mere existence serves as a direct counterexample to this entire line of thinking.
I'm fine with that future.
No, there is compromise, you're just unwilling to see it because you're so caught up in your deluge of wanting to own guns and anti-governmental conspiracy you're unwilling to try it. Look at almost any other western civilization that still has guns and yet still has gun control laws, like Norway and New Zealand. Simple stuff like requiring people to own a license for weapons that aren't antiques, or safe stowage laws. Hell even fucking Australia, long considered the holy grail of gun control advocates, still allows people to own guns for very reasonable reasons. The best types of policies for a reasonable gun owner who understands guns shouldn't be handed out like candy are those that still allow people to obtain firearms, but require a few hoops to get through first, to make sure the person who is trying to obtain such a weapon is responsible enough to own them, as any proper gun owner would be. And by responsible, I don't just mean they won't commit crime, I mean to make sure little timmy doesn't blow his brains out, intentionally or accidentally, or some criminal stealing their improperly stored guns and robbing a store. Restriction, not banning, is a quite reasonable alternative that if the gun community readily adopted, the so called "gun grabbers" would have zero legs to stand on. And if the gun community doesn't restrict itself, it's inevitable that the gun control lobby will ban something. In exchange, I'm sure many people out there would be more than happy to trade a properly safe and secure gun system for getting rid of stupid shit like the Hughes amendment and restructuring the NFA.
That doesn't change the fact that she is a direct counterexample to your ridiculous claim. She is an out and out "gun grabber".
I don't even know why I'm having this conversation. You bring up these same arguments again and again, call people conspiracy theorists, move your goalposts around (as is the case here), then leave in a huff when people get inevitably come in and start calling you out.
Still doesn't change anything.
You can make stuff all you want, but if you mass produce something what is the purpose of it if you cannot sell it? I can go buy a CNC machine and start making parts right now, but what good does that do if I cannot sell or move my product. What good does it do if I cannot sell my stuff without the fear of my money/assets being frozen or seized?
People have been making bootleg stuff for ages and been making home-made guns for as long as guns have existed. Everything will be fine 3D printing will be the revolution that makes overly expensive shit affordable for poor people. The rich will still be rich and the poor will still be poor.
The only people who are going to destabilize society is the rich and the gov't that feeds the rich. Society will implode on itself because of greed, not because some people who are sick and tired of being fucked by the gov't are 3D printing parts.
Cannot legally* sell or move.
Last I checked organized crime rings don't exactly care about the legalities. The 3D printing of firearms completely breaks almost every facet of current legislation. The products are practically untraceable. Organized crime will be able to trivially run 'legitimate' machine shops that use scrap and loss to manufacture guns, regardless of legalities. It's cheaper to buy guns elsewhere for now, but as the tech continues to advance, a front that can make large quantities of disposable weapons will become economically viable.
I can legally make and sell gun parts. I just have to have the proper licensing.
Assuming we're talking about the illegal aspects. It still doesn't change anything - the benefits off it outweigh the negatives. The community who is building 3D firearms are not doing it to fund an illegal trade or feed guns to organized crime.
Organized crime doesn't need 3D printing - they already have firearms and already have access to them. Look at mexico, cartels already operate with full-automatics. Criminals already have access to a source of firearms. Again 3D printing isn't going to make it worse or better. 3D printing is just going to be used as another scapegoat to scare people into giving up their rights or pushing shitty gun control legislation.
It is like blaming heavy metal and doom for school shootings.
For now it's more expensive. That won't be the case indefinitely.
Even ignoring that, we seem to be in agreement. Firearm restrictions have almost no impact on the availability of guns to criminals, particularly organized crime, and that will turn into literally zero impact as 3D printing advances. Regulations will only shit on normal citizens.
Exactly.
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