3 ms·

Surely the issue is that users of 3D printers will be able to manufacture guns at a lower time cost, material cost and with much lower skill required? i.e. buy

• debacle 14y ago
  The quality of a 3D printed gun would be abysmal using current technology, and a 3D printed gun would likely be single-use, therefore really only useful for terrorists. But it's not hard for the terrorist to make a single-use gun now. You could probably make a pretty lethal and reliable single-use gun from $20 dollars in parts from your local hardware store.
  • Dove 14y ago
    therefore really only useful for terrorists What? I'm finding it hard to believe that an odd-looking 3d-printed single-use gun would be useful to terrorists (or criminals in general, actually). What you need as a mugger, for example, is a recognizable threat. The gun doesn't necessarily need to work but it does need to look like a gun. Terrorists have it even worse, as they're generally looking to threaten a whole lobby full of people; what they're waving around had better look really automatic. And had probably better work. I can't imagine that a single-shot weapon that looked unrecognizable would suit their needs. A single-shot gun might be useful to a murderer, but hardly an ideal choice (what if you miss)? And it might be useful in a self-defense scenario, but the same caveat applies. In fact, they actually make single-shot guns. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derringer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derringer) And they aren't used by terrorists! They're used by pirates in movies. And in real life, generally, women carry them in purses. Which, to come full circle, means I would support the availability of 3D-printed guns, since I perceive the most likely use would be in a self-defense scenario as a "well, it's better than nothing" option.
    • debacle 14y ago
      I didn't say single-shot, I said single-use. It's very unlikely that it will be possible to make a safe, practical, reusable gun from a 3D printer in the foreseeable future.
      • Dove 14y ago
        You're probably right, though I'm always hesitant to bet against ingenuity. I'm sorry if I came off as aggressive in my criticism. It just struck me as silly that terrorists -- you know, the guys that buy military hardware from shady international arms dealers and have their own supply and manufacturing chains for explosives -- would be significantly enabled by crappy 3D-printed handguns.
        • debacle 14y ago
          I don't think anyone is going to be significantly enabled by crappy 3D-printed handguns, but if anyone could see utility from it it would be terrorists. My second point was an attempt to point out that it's probably cheaper and easier to create a single-use weapon now without the use of the 3D printer.
          • Dove 14y ago
            if anyone could see utility from it it would be terrorists. How do you figure that?
• wwwtyro 14y ago
  Probably several orders of magnitude lower.
• thechut 14y ago
  I haven't seen the final designs from the Defense Distributed project. But my understanding is that even with the almost all 3D printed parts it still requires a lot of putting together, assembly and doing. And even aftera ll that you still don't have a very functional gun. Especially on a low end 3D printer like a RepRap I would be more worried that the gun would blow up in my face. I don't see Defense Distributed as much different than the Anarchist Cookbook ball point pen gun or pipe bomb instructions. Of course that may not be the best comparison since governments don't exactly like the Anarchists Cookbook.
  • Karunamon 14y ago
    >Of course that may not be the best comparison since governments don't exactly like the Anarchists Cookbook. They should - anybody trying something out of the AC is likely to kill themselves in the process: http://www.righto.com/anarchist-cookbook-faq.html http://www.righto.com/anarchist-cookbook-faq.html