6 ms·

“Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.” With 3d printed guns already a reality (I have seen des

by vageli 6y ago

“Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.” With 3d printed guns already a reality (I have seen designs for completely printed models, including the bolt carrier), the cat is out of the bag.

alex_young 6y ago
Don’t 3D printed guns have a not insignificant chance of blowing the user up? Seems like a big commitment to using one.
- yc-kraln 6y ago
  No, actually, they don't. Typically the barrels are machined using electricity and the pressure-sensitive parts are hardened steel. Many firearms are made out of plastic anyway (Glocks, to name one you might be familiar with). It's not hard to build a reliable firearm with fairly little skill. In the United States, it's not even illegal to do so.
  - moate 6y ago
    I think we have a lot of people having very different discussions about what "3D printed gun" means. This can be anything from a fully plastic weapon like the Liberator to what you're describing (more 3D components and home assembled traditional components coming together which really just feels like the "80% receiver" style ghost guns) to a fully metal 3D printed 1911 off a machine that itself costs at least half a million dollars to acquire. Point being: Yes they do, but also no they don't, because you're having different conversations about different types of weapons. Are fully plastic weapons commonly used for anything? Doesn't seem to be, and I would suspect the reason is because they'd be inclined to blow up/warp after a single fire.
- m0ngr31 6y ago
  Typically you print the lower receiver - not the part where the explosion happens.
einpoklum 6y ago
The fact that it is possible to make a gun using 3D-printed parts does not make it a significant contributing factor to the prevalence of guns (for non-recreational use) in the US.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Correction: it's not a significant contributing factor yet. It takes a pretty advanced case of myopia to not be able to foresee home firearm manufacturing growing. At the current rate of development, I give it 10 years, tops, before European and Australian gun control measures are effectively meaningless.
  - notahacker 6y ago
    But they're not "meaningless", because the average person in Europe and Australia has no interest in owning a gun, never mind figuring out how to print one, and even the average hardened criminal has to consider the possibility that since it isn't necessary for them to preemptively shoot anybody who challenges them, possessing guns might not be worth the risk of additional penalties. Those are much bigger factors in low gun deaths somewhere like the UK than the difficulty of obtaining one on the black market
    - emteycz 6y ago
      Every tenth adult in Czechia carries a gun. Last time I checked, Czechia was safer than UK.
      - pauke 6y ago
        Nope on the first part. 8M adults, 300k gun permits. And that's including almost 100k active police/military. As for the latter part, maybe, but there is way more guns in US than in CZ. And last time I checked.. Let's say I don't think there is any correlation between the two statements.
        6y ago
snake_plissken 6y ago
Dank Alpha Centauri quote!
curryst 6y ago
> I have seen designs for completely printed models, including the bolt carrier Are these parts functional? I would be literally stunned if you could 3D print a bolt carrier group that lasts more than a clip. The last I looked (and it's been a couple years), the designs exist, but are largely non-functional and/or still require several parts to be made of steel. The barrel is another problematic piece. I get that with enough plastic, you might be able to make it handle the pressure (and that's a pretty big might). Even presuming you do, plastic is not hard enough to allow rifling, so we're back to smoothbore rifles, which practically haven't been seen since the Civil War. Worse yet, every time you pull that trigger, the heat and pressure will blast more of your plastic out the end of the barrel. That's going to ruin your accuracy, and at a certain point, you'll start losing muzzle velocity because the barrel no longer seals around the bullet.
- samatman 6y ago
  Let's put it this way: producing the parts of a gun which simply must be made of metal, in a machine shop, is substantially easier than synthesizing methamphetamine. 3d printing everything except the parts you mentioned is quite tractable, and constantly improving from an already acceptably-high standard. No, the chokepoint here is primers. Which are scarce on the ground at the moment, and I expect will receive significant regulatory encumbrance in the near future.
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    In addition to priners, smokeless powder is also difficult to home manufacture. Black powder is easy enough, but it's not powerful enough to cycle most modern semi-automatics and fouls up the barrel something awful. Something like ammonpulver would be comparable in power and cleanliness to modern smokeless powder, but is pretty corrosive and gets ruined if it absorbs too much water. The same types of people eho develop 3d gun models are also putting effort into developing alternatives for primers, powder, and cases. Homemade metal barrels were an issue a few years ago but ECM barrels made it easy to make them at home with only a couple hundred dollars in tooling.
- dirtyoldmick 6y ago

by vageli 6y ago

alex_young 6y ago

Don’t 3D printed guns have a not insignificant chance of blowing the user up? Seems like a big commitment to using one.

yc-kraln 6y ago
No, actually, they don't. Typically the barrels are machined using electricity and the pressure-sensitive parts are hardened steel. Many firearms are made out of plastic anyway (Glocks, to name one you might be familiar with). It's not hard to build a reliable firearm with fairly little skill. In the United States, it's not even illegal to do so.
- moate 6y ago
  I think we have a lot of people having very different discussions about what "3D printed gun" means. This can be anything from a fully plastic weapon like the Liberator to what you're describing (more 3D components and home assembled traditional components coming together which really just feels like the "80% receiver" style ghost guns) to a fully metal 3D printed 1911 off a machine that itself costs at least half a million dollars to acquire. Point being: Yes they do, but also no they don't, because you're having different conversations about different types of weapons. Are fully plastic weapons commonly used for anything? Doesn't seem to be, and I would suspect the reason is because they'd be inclined to blow up/warp after a single fire.
m0ngr31 6y ago
Typically you print the lower receiver - not the part where the explosion happens.

einpoklum 6y ago

The fact that it is possible to make a gun using 3D-printed parts does not make it a significant contributing factor to the prevalence of guns (for non-recreational use) in the US.

yellowapple 6y ago
Correction: it's not a significant contributing factor yet. It takes a pretty advanced case of myopia to not be able to foresee home firearm manufacturing growing. At the current rate of development, I give it 10 years, tops, before European and Australian gun control measures are effectively meaningless.
- notahacker 6y ago
  But they're not "meaningless", because the average person in Europe and Australia has no interest in owning a gun, never mind figuring out how to print one, and even the average hardened criminal has to consider the possibility that since it isn't necessary for them to preemptively shoot anybody who challenges them, possessing guns might not be worth the risk of additional penalties. Those are much bigger factors in low gun deaths somewhere like the UK than the difficulty of obtaining one on the black market
  - emteycz 6y ago
    Every tenth adult in Czechia carries a gun. Last time I checked, Czechia was safer than UK.
    - pauke 6y ago
      Nope on the first part. 8M adults, 300k gun permits. And that's including almost 100k active police/military. As for the latter part, maybe, but there is way more guns in US than in CZ. And last time I checked.. Let's say I don't think there is any correlation between the two statements.
      - 6y ago

snake_plissken 6y ago

Dank Alpha Centauri quote!

curryst 6y ago

> I have seen designs for completely printed models, including the bolt carrier Are these parts functional? I would be literally stunned if you could 3D print a bolt carrier group that lasts more than a clip. The last I looked (and it's been a couple years), the designs exist, but are largely non-functional and/or still require several parts to be made of steel. The barrel is another problematic piece. I get that with enough plastic, you might be able to make it handle the pressure (and that's a pretty big might). Even presuming you do, plastic is not hard enough to allow rifling, so we're back to smoothbore rifles, which practically haven't been seen since the Civil War. Worse yet, every time you pull that trigger, the heat and pressure will blast more of your plastic out the end of the barrel. That's going to ruin your accuracy, and at a certain point, you'll start losing muzzle velocity because the barrel no longer seals around the bullet.

samatman 6y ago
Let's put it this way: producing the parts of a gun which simply must be made of metal, in a machine shop, is substantially easier than synthesizing methamphetamine. 3d printing everything except the parts you mentioned is quite tractable, and constantly improving from an already acceptably-high standard. No, the chokepoint here is primers. Which are scarce on the ground at the moment, and I expect will receive significant regulatory encumbrance in the near future.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  In addition to priners, smokeless powder is also difficult to home manufacture. Black powder is easy enough, but it's not powerful enough to cycle most modern semi-automatics and fouls up the barrel something awful. Something like ammonpulver would be comparable in power and cleanliness to modern smokeless powder, but is pretty corrosive and gets ruined if it absorbs too much water. The same types of people eho develop 3d gun models are also putting effort into developing alternatives for primers, powder, and cases. Homemade metal barrels were an issue a few years ago but ECM barrels made it easy to make them at home with only a couple hundred dollars in tooling.
dirtyoldmick 6y ago