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‘Downloadable Gun’ Clears a Legal Obstacle, and Activists Are Alarmed

35 points by Anon1096 8y ago

ReverseCold 8y ago
Just curious, what if you wanted to register a gun that you made (put a serial number on it, etc)? Is there even a legal pathway to do that?
- djsumdog 8y ago
  US laws doesn't allow any way to register a firearm. Stores have to keep records, and tracing requests have to be forward to the store of purchase. There's a great documentary on this: https://vimeo.com/180763356 https://vimeo.com/180763356
  - annerajb 8y ago
    Not quite correct federal law provides a method to serialize a gun if you are applying a tax stamp for registering with the federal government if you are adding a NFA regulated modification. states law as usual vary but only a few states have serial number database of guns. Ymmv if they will allow it or not.
  - ReverseCold 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure you have to in California? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_California
- AngryData 8y ago
  If we are talking about the US yes and no. There is nothing illegal here about producing your own guns without any licensing until you start mass producing them to sell. It is fairly straight forward to stamp or engrave a serial number and submit the paper work of it. However we don't have a 'list of guns' to just submit some random new serial number too, they only want the serial if you are doing something not normally available like short barreled rifle, silencer, or selectfire/full auto. Technically you can even make your own machine gun legally if it is of your own design and manufacture, doesn't leave the state, and only really comes up against legal hurdles when you are producing them for the purpose of selling them to civilians (which you will of course be denied). You can however sell them to the military or law enforcement, well the prototype for the design anyways, you would still need to get federal licensing to produce them in mass to sell the actual finished product to the military but that just takes a bit of money to push the paperwork through. There is an even further legal/not-legal hole that allows you to sell that prototype machine gun you made to somebody else, you can sell it just because you don't want it any more or need the money, but only if producing it originally wasn't for the purpose of selling it which would make it illegal to even have in the first place. I don't think it has been challenged either way (I might be wrong) but the lack of legal clarification and the potential for losing all your gun rights is the only reason you don't see homemade machine guns being sold more often. If you sold more than one or two you would assuredly be investigated and likely charged. So tl;dr, you only need register a serial if you made something like a machine gun and hold a federal firearms manufacturing license, and you can only make one or two versions of each design without changing things, and the serial number only really matters when selling or trading it, which you both are and aren't allowed to do depending on what the courts feel your intentions were. Otherwise the mechanical design of the gun can be freely sold to law enforcement or the military. Also the rules change once you actually get a manufacturing license (you are signing away some rights in the process, similar to signing away your right to not have an ID while driving when you get your driver's license) but if you get your manufacturing license you should probably have an actual lawyer.
  - gonzo 8y ago
    > Technically you can even make your own machine guns legally if it is of your own design and manufacture and only really comes up against legal hurdles when you are producing them for the purpose of selling them to civilians (which you will of course be denied). This is really poor advice. The BATF considers just having the parts without the requisite Class III license (really a tax stamp) to be a felony. The Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 prohibits civilians from owning any machine gun manufactured after May 1986. All the other 5 categories of Class III firearms (SBRs, SBSs, Silencers, AOWs and Destructive Devices) can still be made, even by an individual, if he/she first applies for and receives permission to do so. To do so, they must file an ATF Form 1 (maker form) and pay a $200 make tax fee. A civilian can still legally own any machinegun that was created PRIOR to May, 1986 as long as they get approval on an ATF form 4.
    - AngryData 8y ago
      There are exceptions to the rules for producing prototype weapons, that is why you have to be made 100% of your own design for them, you can't copy another machine gun and claim it is a prototype. In order to register or sell a new machine gun design you need to have a working physical version already existing. You also need to make something that could reasonably be considered a prototype weapon you were making to legit sell to the government, some pipegun hardware store contraption obviously wasn't produced with the intention of being sold to the military or law enforcement and would not qualify as a prototype. Regardless, you should definitely speak to a lawyer before attempting anything like this, there are tons of local laws that you can break even if you are following state and federal law. And once you break a local law it becomes an illegal weapon and negates any legal standing you had with the state or federally.
  - somebodynew 8y ago
    > Technically you can even make your own machine gun legally if it is of your own design and manufacture, doesn't leave the state The only ways to legally produce a new machine gun in the US right now are to pay thousands of dollars a year for a federal firearms license and special occupation taxpayer license to manufacture, or to otherwise receive explicit permission from a US government agency to get the ATF to approve a Form 1 application to make and register an NFA firearm. See 18 USC 922 (o) regarding machineguns not registered prior to 1986. (Wickard v Filburn dispensed with the notion of claiming to avoid federal law by keeping activity within one state.)
AngryData 8y ago
Why be alarmed? You can do the same thing with a mill or CNC machine except its made of metal and not shitty plastic and it has been available for like 60 years. Gun technology is not secret nor are the mechanics unreasonably complicated, plans are easily available both in books and online and have been since before near everyone here was born.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  You have to be an experienced metalworker to make one that way. A computer doesn't do it for you (at least not yet). Whereas any idiot can download a file and send it to a 3D printer.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    And plastic isn't detected by a metal detector (there's a movie plot about this! [+]). [+] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Line_of_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Line_of_Fire
    - giancarlostoro 8y ago
      Also Hotel Artemis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Artemis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Artemis
    - woolvalley 8y ago
      I'm not sure if the entire gun can be made out of plastic without making the gun near useless or explode in your hands as you shoot it. Usually these 'homemade' guns buy a lot of professionally made gun parts such as the rifle barrel and just make their own lower receiver, which isn't exposed to the explosive high pressure part of a gun.
      - king_nothing 8y ago
        DemoRanch, Taofledermaus or iv8888 fired shotgun shells bare, ICRW. They’re the lowest chamber-pressure lethal (22LR and .25 are difficult but not impossible to make lethal) rounds.
cellularmitosis 8y ago
The article says the alarm is over a perceived increase in the ease of obtaining an unregistered and untraceable gun. If that’s your goal, isn’t it still lucky easier to obtain a manufactured firearm, grind off the serial number, and then (somehow) modifying or distort the refiling? Even excluding that option, I’d imagine it’s essier for these types to find a buddy who owns a mill and lathe and make a gun the old fashioned way than it is to build or obtain a working metal-capable 3D printer (and the result will still need finish machining on a mill and large anyway, right?)
- CapitalistCartr 8y ago
  The 3D printed guns aren't metal; they're plastic, and this is as good an idea as it sounds.
  - em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
    The guns made with the Ghost Gunner CNC mill are made out of 7075 billet aluminum, which is strong enough for multiple shots.
- niij 8y ago
  Tampering with a firearm serial # is a felony (up to 10 years in prison).
  - bnolsen 8y ago
    because definitely people died due to the filing.
- AngryData 8y ago
  Yes, it is done very commonly although filing the number isn't 100% effective. As for changing other parts of the gun, matching the rifling on bullets or marks on the shell or primer is 99% of the time impossible unless you got some significant manufacturing defects or wear marks. They could possibly tell it came from a certain certain manufacturer's model, but mostly they just know what caliber it was, and there are tens of thousands of identical guns of that model all over too, it's like having the fingerprint of 1 of 20,000 clones. Some of them you can rule out due to unique defects or scars, but at least half of them are going to be too closely indistinguishable from another to tell.
ioquatix 8y ago
This is a very tricky situation. I generally abhor guns in society. However, I'd be more concerned about living in a society where creating and disseminating information, such that no crime is committed, is a crime in and of itself. On a more practical note, I'd be surprised if any 3D printed gun was actually strong enough without metal components/reinforcing. I'm reasonable experienced with 3D printing... and I'd personally expect such a device to at least blow a few fingers off.
- mushufasa 8y ago
  Society already criminalizes disseminating information, such as national security secrets, and nuclear weapons technology. Though information itself wants to be free, I am very much in favor of increasing friction for world-ending technologies like nuclear weapons. There was a good documentary on 3D printing guns a few years ago where the plastics were essentially good for a few rounds and then wear out. They've improved since then, and will keep improving. Plastics don't need to compete directly with metal to be formidable.
  - DuskStar 8y ago
    >Society already criminalizes disseminating information, such as ... nuclear weapons technology Have you ever heard of the Nth Country Experiment? Keep in mind that this was conducted in the 1960s. Suffice to say, designing a nuclear weapon is not a problem. Neither is manufacturing one. The difficulty lies in obtaining sufficient nuclear material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment
    - GW150914 8y ago
      If all you care about is a low-yield, wasteful, heavy bomb? Yes. If you want an advanced dial-a-yield thermonuclear device capable of leveling a city, and fitting on a missile? Not so much.
  - mygo 8y ago
    > information itself wants to be free That never made sense to me. Information desiring something of itself would imply that information is sentient. I think it is people who want information to be free. And not all people want that, at least for not all information.
delbel 8y ago
Title saids Activists Are Alarmed, but it doesn't quote or say a single activist. Also, this happened during the Obama administration (who didn't have anything to do with it) and the article trys to slam it as a Trump administration with totally separate subject. New York Times is NOT a reputable news organization. Yes, they once were, but ever since the whole WMD 2002 Iraq war, to me, they've been horrible. Yes occasionally they might have something good, that's how propagation works: you hide your agenda with things that make it neutral so that you can't distinguish between facts and agenda narratives, it also gives plausible deniability against critics. So whatever.
- bittercynic 8y ago
  I also thought this article was trash, but they also have plenty of articles that seem pretty well researched and informative. If you know of a news organization where every article is high quality, I'd love to hear about it!
king_nothing 8y ago
I already have AR and Glock lower CAD files. What’s new?
codedokode 8y ago
Doesn't it make sense to restrict selling of bullets? This plastic gun is pretty useless without them.
- drtyolmck 8y ago
  bullets are way easier to make than guns.
  - codedokode 8y ago
    Can you print them too?
bb88 8y ago
It's still vastly easier and cheaper to go to a gun show and buy a gun with cash. Also the gun you will get will be more reliable than the plastic PLA that you print out.
- somebodynew 8y ago
  You can pay in cash, but you're still going to get the same background check you would get at a retail location. If you're trying to do something shady you would be buying from a private individual in a parking lot somewhere.
  - bb88 8y ago
    Sellers in gun shows in most states aren't required to do background checks. Hence the name, "Gun Show Loophole." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole
    - somebodynew 8y ago
      Anyone who is in the business of selling firearms is required by federal law to have a federal license which requires them to perform a background check on all sales, whether they're at a dedicated store or a gun show. The only "loophole" is that you might be able to find a private individual willing to sell something from their closet. Some guy in an F-150 in the parking lot will sell you an old gun without a background check. An actual gun seller with stock at a gun show will perform a background check just like they would anywhere else.
      - bb88 8y ago
        Nope. Private people can have stock at gun shows and not be required to have a Federal Firearm License. I'll put a link here, not that you'll check it. http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/gun-show-firearms-bankground-checks-state-laws-map.html http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/gun-show-fi...
kozikow 8y ago
In my opinion, the effects of this are overblown by both pro and anti-gun crowds. The gun at the core is a relatively simple mechanical device, especially manual action. Barebones essentials include just a rifled tube and a little hammer to strike the primer. Ammo is much harder to "DYI".
ghaff 8y ago
I'm not sure why this case even made it to the point it did. This seems in The Anarchist Cookbook or even MIT Guide to Lock Picking territory. There are probably folks on here who feel differently but in the US this wouldn't even seem to be an edge case regardless of political leanings.
- j16sdiz 8y ago
  I think those books are restricted by export law too. Doesn't it?
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Given that they're all over the web that would be kind of amusing.
ChrisSD 8y ago
So how well can a printed gun really work? The plastic in a 3D printer is surely, by design, very malleable. That's the opposite of the material needed for an effective gun.
- em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
  The articles fails to mention that the Ghost Gunner machine which makes the new guns is a CNC mill and uses 7075 billet aluminum, which is strong enough for multiple shots.
colemannugent 8y ago
The worry about this being a new avenue for "ghost-guns" is absurd. All you need for a gun is some metal pipe from a hardware store. These "downloadable guns" would be about as effective. Plus it's perfectly legal to make your own firearm from readily available parts. And it's not like the fed tracks guns anyway, so what's new? The debate on this issue seems to be centered around the fact that these plans are downloadable online, which I think is silly since Google happily provides you with most of what you need already: https://patents.google.com/patent/US984519A https://patents.google.com/patent/US984519A https://patents.google.com/patent/US6279258 https://patents.google.com/patent/US6279258 https://patents.google.com/patent/US4539889A https://patents.google.com/patent/US4539889A https://patents.google.com/patent/US5827992A https://patents.google.com/patent/US5827992A
- kozikow 8y ago
  > make your own firearm from readily available parts I am not a legal expert and it's not a legal advice, but in case of a bolt-action rifle, I think the action is still legally treated as a firearm. So you can buy most parts without hassle (barrel, trigger, stock), but you need to go through the FFL to buy the action. Reference: https://www.brownells.com/aspx/general/faqdetail.aspx?fid=1083 https://www.brownells.com/aspx/general/faqdetail.aspx?fid=10...
  - dark_glass 8y ago
    To be a firearm dealer you need an FFL license, but there are no federal laws against making your own firearm (as long as it is not restricted by the ATF, such as select fire, or destructive device or something). States may have their own laws against firearm manufacturing.
  - asdsa5325 8y ago
    Yes- but if you make the part that is legally the gun yourself, it's fine. Anyone is allowed to manufacture a gun, as long as they don't sell it. If you want to sell it, you'd need a license.
    - deleted 8y ago
bnolsen 8y ago
so criminals steal guns and buy them black market already and (here's the key) USE them to do something illegal. Just leave us normal citizens alone please and don't punish us for people who have ill intent regardless of the tools at hand.
hirundo 8y ago
Say there's a class of objects that we want to prohibit to 3D printers. If not guns, then some WMD that meets whatever your risk threshold is. How, technically, do we accomplish that? There wouldn't seem to be any algorithm that could recognize any part that could be assembled into a device. A gun for instance can take on almost infinite forms and be divided into arbitrary unrecognizable modules. We could enforce pre-approval by a government engineer of any part that may possibly become such a device. But such an engineer would have to generate a large amount of false positives to be at all effective. And the requirement for skilled human intervention would make it slow and expensive. Bottom line, if there exists a device that you insist must be prohibited, then you will want to ban the free use of 3D printers that can make it. So what's that threshold for you? Keep in mind that a box cutter was used as a WMD, killing thousands. Do we ban 3D printers that can make a box cutter? Let's posit a lower limit of a box cutter and an upper limit of a fusion bomb. Are gunpowder projectile devices the right compromise? How dangerous does a printable device have to be before we must stand athwart technology, yelling Stop?
- ReverseCold 8y ago
  2D Printers have a feature like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
  - electrograv 8y ago
    That only works for a fixed set of items you specifically design. There is an infinite design variety of 3D-printable weapons or other dangerous items, so to prevent them all from being printed, you’d need to outright ban 3D printing. There’s really no other way — even if we had a hypothetical omniscient AI — because you can already construct weapons from a number of harmless existing parts with nonviolent uses, there’s no way of banning ALL possible weapon parts from being printed without also banning everything. And this isn’t even getting into inevitable circumvention of any such limitations placed on 3D printers. The only way to entirely prevent the construction of weapons is to build everything around us out of jello or styrofoam, and box everyone inside this soft padded universe permanently. But then I bet you even then someone will figure out how to terrorize others with the tools at hand; even if all they can do is hold you down and smother you in jello, someone, somewhere will do it, and copycats will appear everywhere thereafter.
wdn 8y ago
Gun don’t kill people, people kill people. Taking guns from law abriding citizen will not reduce gun violence. Criminals don’t care what your laws say. Beside, most killing happened in schools. Still puzzled me today why don’t they remove school from gun free zone. It is a killzone.

35 points by Anon1096 8y ago

Just curious, what if you wanted to register a gun that you made (put a serial number on it, etc)? Is there even a legal pathway to do that?

djsumdog 8y ago
US laws doesn't allow any way to register a firearm. Stores have to keep records, and tracing requests have to be forward to the store of purchase. There's a great documentary on this: https://vimeo.com/180763356 https://vimeo.com/180763356
- annerajb 8y ago
  Not quite correct federal law provides a method to serialize a gun if you are applying a tax stamp for registering with the federal government if you are adding a NFA regulated modification. states law as usual vary but only a few states have serial number database of guns. Ymmv if they will allow it or not.
- ReverseCold 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure you have to in California? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_California
AngryData 8y ago
If we are talking about the US yes and no. There is nothing illegal here about producing your own guns without any licensing until you start mass producing them to sell. It is fairly straight forward to stamp or engrave a serial number and submit the paper work of it. However we don't have a 'list of guns' to just submit some random new serial number too, they only want the serial if you are doing something not normally available like short barreled rifle, silencer, or selectfire/full auto. Technically you can even make your own machine gun legally if it is of your own design and manufacture, doesn't leave the state, and only really comes up against legal hurdles when you are producing them for the purpose of selling them to civilians (which you will of course be denied). You can however sell them to the military or law enforcement, well the prototype for the design anyways, you would still need to get federal licensing to produce them in mass to sell the actual finished product to the military but that just takes a bit of money to push the paperwork through. There is an even further legal/not-legal hole that allows you to sell that prototype machine gun you made to somebody else, you can sell it just because you don't want it any more or need the money, but only if producing it originally wasn't for the purpose of selling it which would make it illegal to even have in the first place. I don't think it has been challenged either way (I might be wrong) but the lack of legal clarification and the potential for losing all your gun rights is the only reason you don't see homemade machine guns being sold more often. If you sold more than one or two you would assuredly be investigated and likely charged. So tl;dr, you only need register a serial if you made something like a machine gun and hold a federal firearms manufacturing license, and you can only make one or two versions of each design without changing things, and the serial number only really matters when selling or trading it, which you both are and aren't allowed to do depending on what the courts feel your intentions were. Otherwise the mechanical design of the gun can be freely sold to law enforcement or the military. Also the rules change once you actually get a manufacturing license (you are signing away some rights in the process, similar to signing away your right to not have an ID while driving when you get your driver's license) but if you get your manufacturing license you should probably have an actual lawyer.
- gonzo 8y ago
  > Technically you can even make your own machine guns legally if it is of your own design and manufacture and only really comes up against legal hurdles when you are producing them for the purpose of selling them to civilians (which you will of course be denied). This is really poor advice. The BATF considers just having the parts without the requisite Class III license (really a tax stamp) to be a felony. The Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 prohibits civilians from owning any machine gun manufactured after May 1986. All the other 5 categories of Class III firearms (SBRs, SBSs, Silencers, AOWs and Destructive Devices) can still be made, even by an individual, if he/she first applies for and receives permission to do so. To do so, they must file an ATF Form 1 (maker form) and pay a $200 make tax fee. A civilian can still legally own any machinegun that was created PRIOR to May, 1986 as long as they get approval on an ATF form 4.
  - AngryData 8y ago
    There are exceptions to the rules for producing prototype weapons, that is why you have to be made 100% of your own design for them, you can't copy another machine gun and claim it is a prototype. In order to register or sell a new machine gun design you need to have a working physical version already existing. You also need to make something that could reasonably be considered a prototype weapon you were making to legit sell to the government, some pipegun hardware store contraption obviously wasn't produced with the intention of being sold to the military or law enforcement and would not qualify as a prototype. Regardless, you should definitely speak to a lawyer before attempting anything like this, there are tons of local laws that you can break even if you are following state and federal law. And once you break a local law it becomes an illegal weapon and negates any legal standing you had with the state or federally.
- somebodynew 8y ago
  > Technically you can even make your own machine gun legally if it is of your own design and manufacture, doesn't leave the state The only ways to legally produce a new machine gun in the US right now are to pay thousands of dollars a year for a federal firearms license and special occupation taxpayer license to manufacture, or to otherwise receive explicit permission from a US government agency to get the ATF to approve a Form 1 application to make and register an NFA firearm. See 18 USC 922 (o) regarding machineguns not registered prior to 1986. (Wickard v Filburn dispensed with the notion of claiming to avoid federal law by keeping activity within one state.)

AngryData 8y ago

Why be alarmed? You can do the same thing with a mill or CNC machine except its made of metal and not shitty plastic and it has been available for like 60 years. Gun technology is not secret nor are the mechanics unreasonably complicated, plans are easily available both in books and online and have been since before near everyone here was born.

_bxg1 8y ago
You have to be an experienced metalworker to make one that way. A computer doesn't do it for you (at least not yet). Whereas any idiot can download a file and send it to a 3D printer.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  And plastic isn't detected by a metal detector (there's a movie plot about this! [+]). [+] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Line_of_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Line_of_Fire
  - giancarlostoro 8y ago
    Also Hotel Artemis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Artemis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Artemis
  - woolvalley 8y ago
    I'm not sure if the entire gun can be made out of plastic without making the gun near useless or explode in your hands as you shoot it. Usually these 'homemade' guns buy a lot of professionally made gun parts such as the rifle barrel and just make their own lower receiver, which isn't exposed to the explosive high pressure part of a gun.
    - king_nothing 8y ago
      DemoRanch, Taofledermaus or iv8888 fired shotgun shells bare, ICRW. They’re the lowest chamber-pressure lethal (22LR and .25 are difficult but not impossible to make lethal) rounds.

cellularmitosis 8y ago

The article says the alarm is over a perceived increase in the ease of obtaining an unregistered and untraceable gun. If that’s your goal, isn’t it still lucky easier to obtain a manufactured firearm, grind off the serial number, and then (somehow) modifying or distort the refiling? Even excluding that option, I’d imagine it’s essier for these types to find a buddy who owns a mill and lathe and make a gun the old fashioned way than it is to build or obtain a working metal-capable 3D printer (and the result will still need finish machining on a mill and large anyway, right?)

CapitalistCartr 8y ago
The 3D printed guns aren't metal; they're plastic, and this is as good an idea as it sounds.
- em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
  The guns made with the Ghost Gunner CNC mill are made out of 7075 billet aluminum, which is strong enough for multiple shots.
niij 8y ago
Tampering with a firearm serial # is a felony (up to 10 years in prison).
- bnolsen 8y ago
  because definitely people died due to the filing.
AngryData 8y ago
Yes, it is done very commonly although filing the number isn't 100% effective. As for changing other parts of the gun, matching the rifling on bullets or marks on the shell or primer is 99% of the time impossible unless you got some significant manufacturing defects or wear marks. They could possibly tell it came from a certain certain manufacturer's model, but mostly they just know what caliber it was, and there are tens of thousands of identical guns of that model all over too, it's like having the fingerprint of 1 of 20,000 clones. Some of them you can rule out due to unique defects or scars, but at least half of them are going to be too closely indistinguishable from another to tell.

ioquatix 8y ago

This is a very tricky situation. I generally abhor guns in society. However, I'd be more concerned about living in a society where creating and disseminating information, such that no crime is committed, is a crime in and of itself. On a more practical note, I'd be surprised if any 3D printed gun was actually strong enough without metal components/reinforcing. I'm reasonable experienced with 3D printing... and I'd personally expect such a device to at least blow a few fingers off.

mushufasa 8y ago
Society already criminalizes disseminating information, such as national security secrets, and nuclear weapons technology. Though information itself wants to be free, I am very much in favor of increasing friction for world-ending technologies like nuclear weapons. There was a good documentary on 3D printing guns a few years ago where the plastics were essentially good for a few rounds and then wear out. They've improved since then, and will keep improving. Plastics don't need to compete directly with metal to be formidable.
- DuskStar 8y ago
  >Society already criminalizes disseminating information, such as ... nuclear weapons technology Have you ever heard of the Nth Country Experiment? Keep in mind that this was conducted in the 1960s. Suffice to say, designing a nuclear weapon is not a problem. Neither is manufacturing one. The difficulty lies in obtaining sufficient nuclear material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment
  - GW150914 8y ago
    If all you care about is a low-yield, wasteful, heavy bomb? Yes. If you want an advanced dial-a-yield thermonuclear device capable of leveling a city, and fitting on a missile? Not so much.
- mygo 8y ago
  > information itself wants to be free That never made sense to me. Information desiring something of itself would imply that information is sentient. I think it is people who want information to be free. And not all people want that, at least for not all information.

delbel 8y ago

Title saids Activists Are Alarmed, but it doesn't quote or say a single activist. Also, this happened during the Obama administration (who didn't have anything to do with it) and the article trys to slam it as a Trump administration with totally separate subject. New York Times is NOT a reputable news organization. Yes, they once were, but ever since the whole WMD 2002 Iraq war, to me, they've been horrible. Yes occasionally they might have something good, that's how propagation works: you hide your agenda with things that make it neutral so that you can't distinguish between facts and agenda narratives, it also gives plausible deniability against critics. So whatever.

bittercynic 8y ago
I also thought this article was trash, but they also have plenty of articles that seem pretty well researched and informative. If you know of a news organization where every article is high quality, I'd love to hear about it!

king_nothing 8y ago

I already have AR and Glock lower CAD files. What’s new?

codedokode 8y ago

Doesn't it make sense to restrict selling of bullets? This plastic gun is pretty useless without them.

drtyolmck 8y ago
bullets are way easier to make than guns.
- codedokode 8y ago
  Can you print them too?

bb88 8y ago

It's still vastly easier and cheaper to go to a gun show and buy a gun with cash. Also the gun you will get will be more reliable than the plastic PLA that you print out.

somebodynew 8y ago
You can pay in cash, but you're still going to get the same background check you would get at a retail location. If you're trying to do something shady you would be buying from a private individual in a parking lot somewhere.
- bb88 8y ago
  Sellers in gun shows in most states aren't required to do background checks. Hence the name, "Gun Show Loophole." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole
  - somebodynew 8y ago
    Anyone who is in the business of selling firearms is required by federal law to have a federal license which requires them to perform a background check on all sales, whether they're at a dedicated store or a gun show. The only "loophole" is that you might be able to find a private individual willing to sell something from their closet. Some guy in an F-150 in the parking lot will sell you an old gun without a background check. An actual gun seller with stock at a gun show will perform a background check just like they would anywhere else.
    - bb88 8y ago
      Nope. Private people can have stock at gun shows and not be required to have a Federal Firearm License. I'll put a link here, not that you'll check it. http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/gun-show-firearms-bankground-checks-state-laws-map.html http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/gun-show-fi...

kozikow 8y ago

In my opinion, the effects of this are overblown by both pro and anti-gun crowds. The gun at the core is a relatively simple mechanical device, especially manual action. Barebones essentials include just a rifled tube and a little hammer to strike the primer. Ammo is much harder to "DYI".

ghaff 8y ago

I'm not sure why this case even made it to the point it did. This seems in The Anarchist Cookbook or even MIT Guide to Lock Picking territory. There are probably folks on here who feel differently but in the US this wouldn't even seem to be an edge case regardless of political leanings.

j16sdiz 8y ago
I think those books are restricted by export law too. Doesn't it?
- ghaff 8y ago
  Given that they're all over the web that would be kind of amusing.

ChrisSD 8y ago

So how well can a printed gun really work? The plastic in a 3D printer is surely, by design, very malleable. That's the opposite of the material needed for an effective gun.

em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
The articles fails to mention that the Ghost Gunner machine which makes the new guns is a CNC mill and uses 7075 billet aluminum, which is strong enough for multiple shots.

colemannugent 8y ago

The worry about this being a new avenue for "ghost-guns" is absurd. All you need for a gun is some metal pipe from a hardware store. These "downloadable guns" would be about as effective. Plus it's perfectly legal to make your own firearm from readily available parts. And it's not like the fed tracks guns anyway, so what's new? The debate on this issue seems to be centered around the fact that these plans are downloadable online, which I think is silly since Google happily provides you with most of what you need already: https://patents.google.com/patent/US984519A https://patents.google.com/patent/US984519A https://patents.google.com/patent/US6279258 https://patents.google.com/patent/US6279258 https://patents.google.com/patent/US4539889A https://patents.google.com/patent/US4539889A https://patents.google.com/patent/US5827992A https://patents.google.com/patent/US5827992A

kozikow 8y ago
> make your own firearm from readily available parts I am not a legal expert and it's not a legal advice, but in case of a bolt-action rifle, I think the action is still legally treated as a firearm. So you can buy most parts without hassle (barrel, trigger, stock), but you need to go through the FFL to buy the action. Reference: https://www.brownells.com/aspx/general/faqdetail.aspx?fid=1083 https://www.brownells.com/aspx/general/faqdetail.aspx?fid=10...
- dark_glass 8y ago
  To be a firearm dealer you need an FFL license, but there are no federal laws against making your own firearm (as long as it is not restricted by the ATF, such as select fire, or destructive device or something). States may have their own laws against firearm manufacturing.
- asdsa5325 8y ago
  Yes- but if you make the part that is legally the gun yourself, it's fine. Anyone is allowed to manufacture a gun, as long as they don't sell it. If you want to sell it, you'd need a license.
  - deleted 8y ago

bnolsen 8y ago

so criminals steal guns and buy them black market already and (here's the key) USE them to do something illegal. Just leave us normal citizens alone please and don't punish us for people who have ill intent regardless of the tools at hand.

hirundo 8y ago

Say there's a class of objects that we want to prohibit to 3D printers. If not guns, then some WMD that meets whatever your risk threshold is. How, technically, do we accomplish that? There wouldn't seem to be any algorithm that could recognize any part that could be assembled into a device. A gun for instance can take on almost infinite forms and be divided into arbitrary unrecognizable modules. We could enforce pre-approval by a government engineer of any part that may possibly become such a device. But such an engineer would have to generate a large amount of false positives to be at all effective. And the requirement for skilled human intervention would make it slow and expensive. Bottom line, if there exists a device that you insist must be prohibited, then you will want to ban the free use of 3D printers that can make it. So what's that threshold for you? Keep in mind that a box cutter was used as a WMD, killing thousands. Do we ban 3D printers that can make a box cutter? Let's posit a lower limit of a box cutter and an upper limit of a fusion bomb. Are gunpowder projectile devices the right compromise? How dangerous does a printable device have to be before we must stand athwart technology, yelling Stop?

ReverseCold 8y ago
2D Printers have a feature like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
- electrograv 8y ago
  That only works for a fixed set of items you specifically design. There is an infinite design variety of 3D-printable weapons or other dangerous items, so to prevent them all from being printed, you’d need to outright ban 3D printing. There’s really no other way — even if we had a hypothetical omniscient AI — because you can already construct weapons from a number of harmless existing parts with nonviolent uses, there’s no way of banning ALL possible weapon parts from being printed without also banning everything. And this isn’t even getting into inevitable circumvention of any such limitations placed on 3D printers. The only way to entirely prevent the construction of weapons is to build everything around us out of jello or styrofoam, and box everyone inside this soft padded universe permanently. But then I bet you even then someone will figure out how to terrorize others with the tools at hand; even if all they can do is hold you down and smother you in jello, someone, somewhere will do it, and copycats will appear everywhere thereafter.

wdn 8y ago

Gun don’t kill people, people kill people. Taking guns from law abriding citizen will not reduce gun violence. Criminals don’t care what your laws say. Beside, most killing happened in schools. Still puzzled me today why don’t they remove school from gun free zone. It is a killzone.