• 3D-printed guns are back, and this time they are unstoppable
    61 replies, posted
Honestly, reading this article, absolutely nothing has changed. This has been the case for years.
Millennials don't want to do things the old fashioned way. Both methods work to make functional firearms, so I'm guessing it's an age/generation thing.
I keep bringing up these same arguments because very few ever listen and either accept it or make up a decent argument against it. Usually people just emotionally swell up and start going on about how they don't give a shit about other people and it's their given birthright to own a gun like it's a human right or something, like MR-X. The people who do argue with me who actually back up their logic with statistics and facts tend to have a pretty productive discussion. I've changed my mind on things like gun registries because of them. I've also convinced some people as well. For example, Albert Wesker made and excellent list of things we can do that sadly I can't seem to find. Unfortunately this doesn't happen too often as there are far too many people so entrenched in pro-gun views having seen such terrible gun control policies and being constantly told and reminded by the gun lobby there's no such thing as reasonable gun control and that the government is out to get their guns for nefarious purposes (which seriously gets dangerously close to conspiracy theories sometimes, which is why I brought it up). Still it's worth it for those who do listen, because if I can convince even one gun owner that they need to regulate themselves in order to prevent others from regulating them, it means gun rights can still be protected, and people can be saved. Diane Feinstein only wishes to get rid of every legal firearm because her voter base allows her to, because that's what they want. Lobbying can do a lot, but it doesn't change the fact that if even a simple majority of voters in California decided that guns rights were an important issue that needs addressing, she would be kicked out. Diane Feinstein wants to get rid of guns because her populace supports her in doing so as she and they believe it's the best way to reduce gun crime and violence. She does not do it just because she wants to take away your guns for the explicit purpose of doing so, nor is she doing it because she's a tyrannical politician who wants to eliminate American's ability to defend themselves against a rogue government. She is not a gun grabber in the terms that she's a nefarious politician who wants to take guns for the sake of it or for some worse reasons. She's doing what her support base wants her to do. And even if you were to support reasonable gun control, she would never succeed because of people like you. So please, if I'm such a shitposter who ragequits from a thread and moves my goalposts, please stick around and prove so.
Which still remains a direct contradiction to your previous point. That is an absolute fact. The reasons don't matter. She want's them gone. No amount of hemming and hawing on your part can change that.
No it doesn't. Gun grabbers as we know them don't exist. Nobody is out to take your guns for the sake of taking your guns.
Someone advocating registries and confiscation is a gun grabber by definition. Unless of course you have some conveniently alternate version of basic English you'd like to use.
Basic English? I think we have a bit of a misunderstanding here because I've always heard gun grabber used as a slang term to describe a politician whose trying to take away guns because they want to control the populace or similar "evil" reasons.
Why should the reasons for limitation/confiscation matter in the slightest? Excessive regulation accomplishes next to nothing in the best of circumstances*, so the justifications backing confiscation are irrelevant. The logic is very much A +B -> C -> D. Given A: Firearm restrictions don't reduce violent crime in any meaningful context. Given B: The net effectiveness of a firearm ban is the only piece of criteria that should be considered when proposing legislation. Therefore C: Firearm restrictions are at best a net neutral. Therefore D: Banning them cannot be a net positive. The only way you can attack that line of reasoning is to attack either the premise by arguing that dumb shit like AWBs actually do something, or by arguing that we should base our reasoning based on something other than effectiveness. For the former see the footnote. For the latter, explain why I should give half a flying fuck about literally any other reason than a proposed ban's effectiveness. The result is the same. Confiscation is confiscation. *This isn't really even open for debate anymore when even the federal government's own studies confirm this. I mean, even if you wanted to argue that it was some form of population control/suppression, why would the entity that could want that willingly publish a report indicating no effective causation between violent crime and firearms following the AWB?
Does the reason really matter? Let's say a government wants to ban encryption (or provide a government backdoor if you want a more realistic example) because terrorists use encrypted messages to plan their attacks. Sure the reason isn't the same as we want to ban encryption so political activists and groups can be monitored by the government but the end result is still the same, these groups can use encryption and are more vulnerable to government supression.
Yes they do, because in an incredibly complex and nuanced issue such as gun control, it's so easy for arguments to fall apart into nothing but hot tempers and great emotions. Someone saying that politicians only do what one side wants because they are tyrannical just poisons the well and prevents reasoned discussion from taking place because the other side is fired up and believing those they are against only believe what they do for maligned purposes, rather than having their own reasons and beliefs that are valid. I've met far too many guns rights advocates who believe that even my relatively mundane suggestions of gun control are just me wanting to personally take away their guns because I'm a sheep following tyrannical politicians. Intention and motivation have always been important in making judgements about decisions and the people who are behind them. There's a reason we care about them so much in the system of law when someone has committed a crime. A person who kills someone in defense has no different outcome than a person killing another in cold blood. Either way, someone's dead. What matters is the intentions and motivations of the people involved so we can determine who is moral and who is not. This also applies to politics, because humans aren't completely logical creatures and whoever holds the supposedly higher moral position is likely to be taken more seriously than another.
There are tougher plastics than ABS, FYI. Nylon and polycarbonate come to mind, and you can even buy them with carbon-fibers embedded within, which increases their stiffness substantially. You'll still have a potential for layer separation, though.
What about places like Australia, where biker gangs have to resort to using unreliable DIY firearms? Doesn't seem to me like it doesn't have any effect.
Plastics suck at being pressure chambers regardless. The best 3D printed guns are those that use metal barrels.
Really dude? Do you read your own posts? You add nothing to the conversation and just recycle the same old bullshit. The very thing you accuse others and myself of doing. You only write paragraphs long posts that add nothing and have no substance to them. I don't even bother posting statistics anymore because people don't give two shits about the facts that are in front of them. It is all about emotional appeals and virtue signaling. There have been plenty of people, including myself, on this forum who posted reasonable "gun control." We've posted many examples as to why the same doesn't work currently and why eroding peoples rights shouldn't be happening. Get a grip dude. Don't bitch about people not listening to you when you regurgitate the same shit over and over again. It might not be your definition of gun grabber, but to everyone else people like her are. They've been pushing the same shit for decades. I'm not emotional swelling up, I'm defending a constitutional right. I'm tired of having to listen to people like you who say sweet nothings and claim nothing is happening to gun-owners when we've been getting demonized for fucking decades. You know what, actually you are right. I'm sorry dude, I shouldn't worry about anything and just be oblivious to what people like Feinstein do because people like you say it is all okay. My bad.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AD_VghlO7so
Bro...Just listen. She isn't a gun grabber, I don't get why you people keep saying that. She doesn't want to outright ban firearms, she just wants to disarm the populace and make exclusionary rules so she can keep her own firearm permit and rich people can still have private armies.
Sorry I also forgot to say the list you wanted me to bring up. I actually got most of it from @catbarf Allocate the DoJ funds specifically for prosecution of straw purchase, the #1 source of illegal firearms, but which they currently lack the resources to pursue. Allocate the ATF funds specifically for prosecution of unscrupulous FFL holders, the #2 source of illegal firearms, but which they currently lack the resources to pursue. Raise liability on stolen firearms, or introduce safe storage laws. Further restrict handguns, the overwhelmingly most common weapons used in crime. Open the NICS to non-FFLs, then mandate background checks on all sales. Fix the broken interaction between state and federal databases (due to HIPAA) which often causes mental issues to not be reported to the federal background check system. Address law enforcement failures to follow correct procedures to update NICS. Address suicide in some meaningful capacity. Address causes of gang violence in some meaningful capacity. These are the social issues that are the most common root causes of gun violence. As for people like Feinstein, their reasonings are irrelevant and doesn’t change the fact they want to threaten our way of life regardless of whether or not the intent is from malice or ignorance. In her case though it is most definitely malicious as she has been caught multiple times just making shit up on top of CARRYING A GUN FOR HER OWN PROTECTION whilst trying to deny us of the same right.
Calm down man. This a discussion forum, you're supposed to post your opinions in response to others, refining both them and yours in the process. I don't know where you keep getting this shit about how I only post the same arguments over and over again never changing, because I do change my argument and I have. I find it incredibly frustrating how you and the other guy keep making up shit like you actually vividly remember past arguments, when I've always been free to discuss things with logic and reason. That's getting absurdly close to a callout post and it's shit like that which makes me hate the new paradigm that you can just bring old arguments up from previous threads, because it's so easy to manipulate and change memory to what you want it to be. Either way, I'm here because there is such thing as reasonable gun control, there are examples of it working (look at literally any other developed nation other than the US), and it can be adapted to the United States without people's rights being infringed, and I will argue that until you either leave, make a valid point against it, or accept it. I keep "regurgitating the same shit over and over again" because people like you never listen and just get angry and spiteful and don't try to respond to what I'm talking about, like what you're doing right now. For example: You are emotionally swelling up though. You get angry and you don't listen. I'm not saying "sweet nothings". I've made a reasonable argument for quite moderate gun control in this thread, and no where have I said there's nothing happening to gun owners. That's my entire fucking point in fact. Gun owners will be fucked with and potentially fucked over if they don't start instituting reasonable rules that everyone can agree on, and do things that actually make a difference. If they don't, eventually the pro-control side is going to sway enough moderates to agree with them and then actually institute things that really do infringe on peoples right, like gun bans. and sidenote: is it really surprising extremist diehards like you get demonized when you say shit like this? I do apologize for this however. Like I said, from what I've heard gun grabber has always meant a politician who wants to get rid of guns completely so they have more control and I assumed that's what you guys were talking about as well. Diane Feinstein definitely wants to get rid of all guns that she can and it's bullshit, it's just I think her reasons are less malicious and more what people in the state of California want. Keep in mind however, she's an extremist, and just like any extremist she will try to control the conversation unless you don't let her. It's not easy but nothing about politics these days is easy. If you guys and other gun owners were to start expressing to others reasonable policies and ways we can deal with gun violence rather than just simply pro-gun arguments, I think people would be a lot more receptive and agreeing with you, and we could push extremists out of the way and get some real actual change done. I know we're just posters on a small forum and are only a dozen individuals out of the entire United States, but even if it's pissing in the wind, it might make someone else want to piss in the wind too when the liquid floats by them.
There have been quite a few studies that show no meaningful deviation in violent crime post ban in Australia. Crime was on a downward trend to begin with, and that didn't change post ban. There are people here far more knowledgeable than I about that particular topic though. As for the actual guns, their current guns aren't exactly primitive either. Yeah, they're doing a lot of shit with sheet metal instead of casting or milling parts, but that's a cost/convenience issue. Minor changes in the weight/balance/texture of a weapon have little impact on the weapons effectiveness. As an example from a manufacturing point of view, glass filled nylon is one of the 'best' materials to make something like a grip out of. It's strong, lightweight, durable, shock resistant, doesn't corrode/rust, flexible, scratch resistant, etc, etc. It's also a ring tailed bitch to work with. It has the consistency of chunky peanut butter when molten, it's unbelievably corrosive (to the extent that making molds for it is difficult because the gasses it leaks when hot can eat through damn near anything), along with a whole bunch of other things. The point being, some random guy making guns in his garage isn't going to have the equipment to make glass filled nylon castings. On the other hand, hitting sheet metal with a hammer is a lot easier to do. Making primitive dies out of aluminum with a drill press to shape sheet metal isn't much harder. Either way, the end result is basically the same thing. Sure, a stamped piece of metal may not look great, but if it does the job it does the job. As 3D printing progresses, the manufacturing difficulty with a lot of this stuff goes away. By the time you can 3D print gun barrels, little things like having a nice stipple finish on your grips/mags are trivial. Top end 3D printers can already produce parts with very fine textures, and some of them can use materials like glass filled nylon. Are they as good as cast parts in terms of durability, hardness, etc? Not yet, but the tech is coming. Once you get to the point where 3D printers can manufacture something with the strength and dimensional tolerances of a gun barrel, you've entered a world where Joe Blow can push a button and get a gun. Legislation is meaningless in a world like that. What, are you going to regulate 3D printers? Good luck. Any country that tries will cripple trillions of dollars in manufacturing potential.
Thanks to you and catbarf by the way, really couldn't find it and it's a really good list of things we can change that will make an actual difference that I'm sure we can all agree on. None of them infringe upon the second amendment except perhaps the fourth one, and even then requiring a basic license where you're just forced to go through some firearm safety courses, instruction on safe stowage, and basic self defense situations and a background check to ensure you're not a felon would really help a lot. You could even integrate concealed carry into the licenses as an extra step, and use it to get around a lot of the bullshit paperwork the ATF makes you go through because we don't have a proper licensing system. Feinstein is a piece of work though and she basically amounts to the liberal version of McConnell in my eyes. It's bullshit how many people on both sides of the aisle are completely dishonest about guns considering how the republicans just shot down the Manchin-Toomey agreement considering how much it would have helped guns rights activists.
One could argue that inconveniencing and increasing costs for biker gangs is not necessarily a bad thing, though. AFAIK, decent quality handmade guns are significantly costlier for them to make/buy. Also, crime still being on a downward trend post-ban (which is what you'd expect regardless of the effectiveness of it) is rather low-tier when it comes to evidence of its ineffectiveness. By comparison, studies such as this one that show a link between less of a given demographic having access to a firearm and said demographic's suicide rate drastically lowering are much more specific.
The burden is to show that they are effective, not the inverse. The studies couldn't substantiate a strong causal link between violent crime rates and the weapon bans. That's enough to argue that the laws aren't worth passing. I mean, if you want to argue that a law should be passed without supporting evidence you can, but don't expect to be taken very seriously. Suicide is an argument for handgun restrictions, not 'assault weapons'. It's also a separate topic from violent crime. I'll admit that I don't have a great answer to the suicide debate, but I'd rather focus on social reforms and the root causes that drive people to contemplate suicide over worrying about the methods. A bunch of people wanting to commit suicide but failing to do so because one of the better methods isn't as widely available isn't exactly my idea of an effective resolution to the problem. Which is why I keep harping on about 3D printing. That is (usually) the case for now, but it will not continue to be. Firearm legislation needs to look forward to the next 10-20 years.
Sometimes it's simply not possible to get strong evidence regarding whether it will work out before it happens, though. If nobody enacted new policies until those policies were proven to be efficient, you'd never produce evidence of said policy being efficient, even if it is. It's a catch 22. If a policy sounds sufficiently sound as a concept I'm not necessarily opposed to enacting it and observing whether it solves the problem. Otherwise we'd just never get anything done. I never mentioned assault weapons either, so I'm not sure why you're bringing that up. It may be a separate topic from violent crime, but it's still something we should avoid, and something that democratization of gun ownership through 3D printing could have some influence over. So I'd say it's relevant to the thread's topic. Why not both? An issue can be tackled from several sides at a time, it's also generally more efficient to do so. Why does it need to be an either/or problem? The relationship between gun ownership and suicide rates is also not about people attempting suicide but failing at all. If suicidal persons simply looked for the most efficient way to kill them selves, then those with no access to firearms would simply attempt suicide by drowning (84% fatality rate) or hanging (82% fatality rate) and we'd only see a reduction of about ~7% in suicides (suicide by firearm has a 91% fatality rate). By comparison, reduction of firearm ownership within the Swiss study's demographic of interest more than halved the suicide rate. So evidence points towards gun ownership simply increasing the odds of a suicide attempt occurring as a significant mechanism here. I'm surprised by your apathy towards the potential of significantly reducing the amount of deaths by suicide. If evidence shows it works (which is apparently the main thing you consider when deciding whether to support a policy), then why would you brush it off in such a way? If a >50% reduction in suicides isn't what you consider an effective solution then I don't know what would be.
This twitter is cringe
Dude, shut the fuck up and don't lecture me on discussion posting. You're not some level 1000 IQ level poster, you're a dude who is pretentious. What a joke.
I never said I was. I'm literally just trying to discuss an issue and all you've been doing this page is attacking me for doing so. So what if I post in an exaggerated manner? Respond, or don't. There's no need to get offensive about it.
i dream of the day when i can 3d print an AT gun
Honestly? Yes Having a 3D printed gun that works like a regular gun means 3D printing the plastic lower and then going out and buying a real gun so that you can use all the actual gun parts to complete your 3D printed gun. Otherwise you'll just have a shitty gun that's even less reliable than FP-45 Liberators that were air dropped all over France
Oh also, your rounds probably won't penetrate thick cardboard because you won't be able to build any chamber pressure. You might as well throw your rounds at your enemy.
Just throwing this in, but I think you guys are forgetting this is actually quite feasible with an AR15 platform. The lower receiver is the only part which is considered a firearm and really all it does is hold the fire controls, bolt catch, trigger group, and magazine release. Most of the pressure bearing parts are completely unregulated (like the entire upper receiver assembly and barrel). Once I legally got a lower receiver (just a piece of metal with no moving parts) by passing the background check and everything, all of the vital components needs to fully assemble the gun could just be ordered through the mail without any questions. Also it’s not illegal to manufacture your own lower receiver as long as it’s not an NFA item and you don’t plan on selling it to anyone, so basically people already have been printing or milling their own lower receivers for years with %80 lowers before 3d printing them was a thing. Right now, 3d printing at its current stage already allows people to bypass assault weapons bans, making them effectively unenforceable to anyone who has enough money. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqvFW71g8gM In effect, pretty much anyone with enough money can make their own AR15, including felons. Sure the lower may crack or break with enough stress after a few hundred rounds, but what kind of criminal sticks around long enough to shoot or carry that much ammo aside from the exceedingly rare mass shooter or body armor wearing bank robbers? Even then all they’d have to do is save the metal parts and print another cheapass frame/receiver, or buy another one from their friends. It’s only a matter of time now before someone finds the means to reproduce something far more dangerous like the frame of a Glock. If anyone doesn’t know how reproducing a handgun is far more dangerous than reproducing a rifle by now, then you haven’t been informing yourself about the issues. Admittedly one part of me feels this is just desserts for all those years of anti-gun folks completely neglecting the means by which people can illegally obtain firearms in favor of advocating constantly for petty and shortsighted nonsense intended to harass/dissuade people from obtaining firearms legally. However I do fear this may have opened the floodgates a bit too much. I don’t think people realize how big of a deal this could become. This development makes all current firearms laws effectively obsolete and irrelevant, even more so than just people being able to manufacture their own guns through conventional methods. Being able to 3d print regulated gun parts will drastically increase the refinement and accessibility of improvised weapons. It it was already easy for criminals to manufacture firearms, now this will just make it effortless. It’s literally the “ghost gun” boogeyman come to life.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.