6 ms·

People print guns and gun parts. More than you think. Now even more since metal printing is starting to become affordable. I print grip and grip attachments for

by pjbk 8mo ago

People print guns and gun parts. More than you think. Now even more since metal printing is starting to become affordable. I print grip and grip attachments for my 9mms and my AR15, trigger guards, barrel clamps, etc. I also find it stupid since, as the article suggests, what kind of algorithm can you implement to do smart detection of something that could be potentially dangerous? Will it also detect negative space? I print inserts in elastic filament with my gun outlines instead of foam (or as foam templates) for my carrying cases. Will the "algorithm" prevent me to do that too? What about my plastic disc thrower toy gun, or my PKD Blaster prop? Both look like guns to me. What about a dumb AI algorithm that lacks common sense? Printing barrels and FCUs -- the fire control unit, which is the only thing tracked and serialized in a gun at least in the US -- is more difficult but not impossible. Actually, building a functional FCU that can strike a bullet primer, or a barrel that can be used once is not difficult at all and if you look around you can find videos of people that have tested that with a mixture of 3d printing and rudimentary metal working skills. The major issues on designing those parts are reliability and safety. In the Philippines there is a full bootleg gunsmith industry dedicated to build illegal guns that match commercial ones in those aspects too. Sadly, instead of having better laws we get fallacy rhetoric by people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives.

hyperbovine 8mo ago
> Sadly, instead of having better laws we get fallacy rhetoric by people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives. Why is this the litmus test for being qualified to write gun legislation? Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities?
- some_random 8mo ago
  You're welcome to come up with a better litmus test, but it's beyond clear that lawmakers writing gun control regulation have less than a wikipedia level understanding of the topic. See "shoulder thing that goes up", the weird obsession with the Thompson, the entire concept of an Assault Weapon, etc.
  - zdragnar 8mo ago
    Wikipedia has much better information about guns than most of the people talking about them in politics, generally speaking. It's not too surprising, considering the way the rules are written at the ATF. There's basically zero logical thought that goes into pistol vs rifle vs felony: https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/a4gnr3/makes_perfect_sense_guys/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/a4gnr3/makes_perf... (Sorry for the reddit link, it's a common image but that was the first url I found from a quick search that had it up front and center).
    - some_random 8mo ago
      ATF rulemaking can be unintuitive and arbitrary but there really is a level below it occupied by people who have dedicated a significant chunk of their lives to trying to restrict firearm ownership, who genuinely seem to believe that Die Hard, Rambo, and Spaghetti Westerns are real life. Politicians who can't answer basic questions about their legislation, who have to be told live on air that magazines can be repacked, that just make up impossible crime statistics. Yeah it's stupid that the ATF has decided that vertical grips are a rifle feature but angled grips aren't, but it gets worse.
      - zdragnar 8mo ago
        A bit like Joe Biden complaining that a 9mm bullet will blow the lung out of a body, and crazier things from others, yeah.
    - voidUpdate 8mo ago
      What's the difference between a "pistol brace" and a "stock"? Don't they both go into your shoulder to stabilise the weapon?
      - some_random 8mo ago
        A "pistol brace" is designed and "intended" to be braced against your forearm to stabilize the "pistol" in a way that allows you to shoot a particularly large and heavy "pistol" with one hand. The ATF said this was fine, although I think they really regret that now.
- SR2Z 8mo ago
  This is a bad example. I've been notionally pro-ownership but also pro-regulation my whole life, and one of the major problems with gun legislation in the US is that it's incredibly poorly written and does not reflect the technical reality of guns. The government allows private ownership of automatic weapons, but hasn't issued any new tax stamps for 50 years. You can convert any semiauto gun into a full-auto gun for a few cents of 3D printed parts (or a rubber band). The hysteria over "assault weapons" basically outlawed guns that _looked_ scary, while not meaningfully making anyone safer. I think yes, it is reasonable for Congresspeople to fire a gun before they legislate on it, because otherwise they are incapable of writing good laws. Good gun regulation in the US would probably look like car insurance, where gun owners need to register and insure their weapons against the possibility of crimes being committed with them. There are so many guns compared to the amount of gun crime that it would probably not end up terribly expensive, especially if you own a gun safe.
  - butvacuum 8mo ago
    Thats defacto gun registration- and worse: registration with a private entity not beholden to due process. Given current realities, anybody who registers their firearm in such a manner can expect a no-knock raid because they were nearby when somebody phoned in an engine backfire as a gunshot.
    - avidiax 8mo ago
      So make it allowed that the insurance is tied to the gun. You buy a lifetime policy for that serial number, provide payment, and you're done. Payment can be provided anonymously at a window in cash, if that's your thing. If you want discounts because you live in a low-crime area, have a gun safe, have many guns, etc. then obviously the storage location for the weapon needs to be declared to the insurance company.
    - wombatpm 8mo ago
      ATF is not allowed to digitize any of its records around gun sales or transfer of ownership.
- freeopinion 8mo ago
  In this specific discussion familiarity does seem relevant. I don't think shooting is so relevant, but printing and assembling are. You don't have to be a life-long user to regulate heroin, but if you start legislating second-hand heroin smoke, people might look at you sideways. You kinda need to know a little even if you've never actually ever seen heroin. If you demonstrate severe ignorance, people are going to call you on it.
- wellthisisgreat 8mo ago
  It’s more like people who barely use computers regulating software features and development.. oh wait I don’t own a gun, and think guns should be regulated more and better, but the heroin let alone another one are just flawed. There are no legitimate, non-life-ruining use cases for either of those analogies.
- 8note 8mo ago
  litmus test wise, regulators of 3d printing should be able to create strong parts with a variety of 3d printing mechanisms. they should at least be able to understand that a 3d printer is akin to a turing machine and what the real limits are - strength of the printed material vs length of the strip of memory.
- heavyset_go 8mo ago
  > Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities? It would be nice if they delegated to experts, instead of think tanks or populism, when it came to dealing with these. Both are examples of rampant regulatory failure.
  - galangalalgol 8mo ago
    Knowing the difference between a think tank and experts might be hard without some rudimentary knowledge to spot nonsense? I don't know, actually asking. It seems to me that the primary skill we need in our leaders is that of spotting experts talking within their field and actually listen to them while ignoring others. The primary trait, which is even more important, is character so that they act on what they here in our best interests instead of their own.
  - rpmisms 8mo ago
    At this point, I do expect that of them.
  - alt227 8mo ago
    Having first hand experience in contraband, and having the knowledge to create and pass laws are very different things. If you think that current lawmakers dont know enough about contraband to regulate effectively, what makes you think someone who knows loads about drug use and porn would be able to contruct decent watertight legislation?
- rolisz 8mo ago
  Well didn't they? From the Epstein files, it looks like "all" the elite is involved....
- andrewflnr 8mo ago
  Having a clue about how guns work, or the general reality of any other field one may be attempting to legislate, is absolutely crucial. With guns it just happens that actually firing them is a good way to gain (some of) that understanding.
- 83 8mo ago
  I don't think its unreasonable to ask politicians to be familiar with how the machinery they are regulating functions and is used. To use your heroin example, this is akin to banning spoons or needles because they heard those are tools of the heroin addict. It shows a lack of understanding on the part of the regulator and has a far reaching effect on people legally using the items.
torginus 8mo ago
I don't get it - afaik you can get every single part of a gun except for the lower receiver/pistol frame without any restriction - as those parts are legally defined as the 'gun' - the rest are just replacement parts. Even for those, you can get 80% finished parts for those - just drill a few holes, and file off some tidbits, and you get an almost factory-spec gun. I'm no expert on US gun law, but afaik, some states even allow you to make your own guns without registration, as the law defines gun manufacturing as manufacturing with the intent of selling them. So there's plenty of options, many of them better than making a gun with a printer. But even all this is typically overkill, I dont think criminals go to these lengths to make their own guns, they just get them from somewhere.
- Neeek 8mo ago
  The only usable part a plastic 3D printer will make for you is the receiver, which is the whole point, to circumvent that very narrow legal classification. You're right about alternative lawmaking avenues, but given the 2a pushback on controlling "replacement parts" Americans are kind of stuck with the bed they made.
  - int_19h 8mo ago
    That was the case like 3 years ago. Things have advanced significantly since then.
  - throw3e98 8mo ago
    > The only usable part a plastic 3D printer will make for you is the receiver this hasn't been true for like 5 years now
    - Neeek 8mo ago
      Well over a decade actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberator_(gun) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberator_(gun) but of course just ignore the context of the parent comment about what's legally considered a firearm.
- jhallenworld 8mo ago
int_19h 8mo ago
FCUs are not tracked in US (aside from full auto trigger groups, which however are classified as "machineguns" in their own right). Receivers are tracked.
- hrimfaxi 8mo ago
  That depends entirely on the gun. Sig "receivers" are just frames and the FCU is the controlled element. At least in the p320.
ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
In the 1980s, my dad machined a lot of replacement parts for a gunsmith, right here in the UK. All legal, all perfectly legit. I will say it took a hell of a lot more skill than just "download file from thingiverse, press print" - but there's nothing stopping you doing it. And no-one is (yet) suggesting banning lathes, hacksaws, or files.
- alt227 8mo ago
  The difference is this takes years and years of skill learning and hard graft. Downloading a gun file and pressing print requires nothing.
mayhemducks 8mo ago
This is my attempt to answer your question about "what kind of algorithm can you implement to detect something dangerous". Disclaimer though, I agree that the proposed regulation is way too broad and will have unintended consequences as written. If you look at how Apple detects contraband imagery, they hash every image that gets uploaded into the photos app. Those hashes are transmitted to servers that compare them to hashes of known contraband. A similar system could theoretically be used for STL files. So it isn't about detecting exact shapes, it's about preventing printing of STL files that are already known to be dangerous. This would make it harder to illegally manufacture parts for weapons because it would make it much harder to share designs. If you didn't have the knowledge or skill to design a reliable FCU, you would have to find a design someone with that knowledge and skill created - which the printer could theoretically detect with a cryptographic signature. As the original author of the post pointed out though, this could and would be bypassed by actual criminals. As with most things like this, it's probably impossible to prevent entirely, only to make it more difficult.
- pfranz 8mo ago
  > If you look at how Apple detects contraband imagery, they hash every image that gets uploaded into the photos app. Those hashes are transmitted to servers that compare them to hashes of known contraband. You're spelling out a specific process in detail--which is the only reason I'm picking on details. Do you have anything documenting what you're describing? From what I remember, Apple's system was proposed, but never shipped. They proposed hashing your photos locally and comparing them to a local database of known CSAM images. Only when there was was a match, they would transmit the photos for manual confirmation. This describes Apple's proposal [1]. I believe what did ship is an algorithm to detect novel nude imagery and gives some sort of warning for kids sending or receiving that data. None of that involves checks against Apple's server. I do think other existing photo services will scan only photos you've uploaded to their cloud. I'm happy to make corrections. To my knowledge, what you're describing hasn't been done so far. [1] https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-One-Bad-Apple.html https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-On...
  - 8mo ago
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
alt227 8mo ago
> people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives People should not have to have great experience with killing machines to be able to regulate them.

by pjbk 8mo ago

hyperbovine 8mo ago

> Sadly, instead of having better laws we get fallacy rhetoric by people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives. Why is this the litmus test for being qualified to write gun legislation? Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities?

some_random 8mo ago
You're welcome to come up with a better litmus test, but it's beyond clear that lawmakers writing gun control regulation have less than a wikipedia level understanding of the topic. See "shoulder thing that goes up", the weird obsession with the Thompson, the entire concept of an Assault Weapon, etc.
- zdragnar 8mo ago
  Wikipedia has much better information about guns than most of the people talking about them in politics, generally speaking. It's not too surprising, considering the way the rules are written at the ATF. There's basically zero logical thought that goes into pistol vs rifle vs felony: https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/a4gnr3/makes_perfect_sense_guys/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/a4gnr3/makes_perf... (Sorry for the reddit link, it's a common image but that was the first url I found from a quick search that had it up front and center).
  - some_random 8mo ago
    ATF rulemaking can be unintuitive and arbitrary but there really is a level below it occupied by people who have dedicated a significant chunk of their lives to trying to restrict firearm ownership, who genuinely seem to believe that Die Hard, Rambo, and Spaghetti Westerns are real life. Politicians who can't answer basic questions about their legislation, who have to be told live on air that magazines can be repacked, that just make up impossible crime statistics. Yeah it's stupid that the ATF has decided that vertical grips are a rifle feature but angled grips aren't, but it gets worse.
    - zdragnar 8mo ago
      A bit like Joe Biden complaining that a 9mm bullet will blow the lung out of a body, and crazier things from others, yeah.
  - voidUpdate 8mo ago
    What's the difference between a "pistol brace" and a "stock"? Don't they both go into your shoulder to stabilise the weapon?
    - some_random 8mo ago
      A "pistol brace" is designed and "intended" to be braced against your forearm to stabilize the "pistol" in a way that allows you to shoot a particularly large and heavy "pistol" with one hand. The ATF said this was fine, although I think they really regret that now.
SR2Z 8mo ago
This is a bad example. I've been notionally pro-ownership but also pro-regulation my whole life, and one of the major problems with gun legislation in the US is that it's incredibly poorly written and does not reflect the technical reality of guns. The government allows private ownership of automatic weapons, but hasn't issued any new tax stamps for 50 years. You can convert any semiauto gun into a full-auto gun for a few cents of 3D printed parts (or a rubber band). The hysteria over "assault weapons" basically outlawed guns that _looked_ scary, while not meaningfully making anyone safer. I think yes, it is reasonable for Congresspeople to fire a gun before they legislate on it, because otherwise they are incapable of writing good laws. Good gun regulation in the US would probably look like car insurance, where gun owners need to register and insure their weapons against the possibility of crimes being committed with them. There are so many guns compared to the amount of gun crime that it would probably not end up terribly expensive, especially if you own a gun safe.
- butvacuum 8mo ago
  Thats defacto gun registration- and worse: registration with a private entity not beholden to due process. Given current realities, anybody who registers their firearm in such a manner can expect a no-knock raid because they were nearby when somebody phoned in an engine backfire as a gunshot.
  - avidiax 8mo ago
    So make it allowed that the insurance is tied to the gun. You buy a lifetime policy for that serial number, provide payment, and you're done. Payment can be provided anonymously at a window in cash, if that's your thing. If you want discounts because you live in a low-crime area, have a gun safe, have many guns, etc. then obviously the storage location for the weapon needs to be declared to the insurance company.
  - wombatpm 8mo ago
    ATF is not allowed to digitize any of its records around gun sales or transfer of ownership.
freeopinion 8mo ago
In this specific discussion familiarity does seem relevant. I don't think shooting is so relevant, but printing and assembling are. You don't have to be a life-long user to regulate heroin, but if you start legislating second-hand heroin smoke, people might look at you sideways. You kinda need to know a little even if you've never actually ever seen heroin. If you demonstrate severe ignorance, people are going to call you on it.
wellthisisgreat 8mo ago
It’s more like people who barely use computers regulating software features and development.. oh wait I don’t own a gun, and think guns should be regulated more and better, but the heroin let alone another one are just flawed. There are no legitimate, non-life-ruining use cases for either of those analogies.
8note 8mo ago
litmus test wise, regulators of 3d printing should be able to create strong parts with a variety of 3d printing mechanisms. they should at least be able to understand that a 3d printer is akin to a turing machine and what the real limits are - strength of the printed material vs length of the strip of memory.
heavyset_go 8mo ago
> Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities? It would be nice if they delegated to experts, instead of think tanks or populism, when it came to dealing with these. Both are examples of rampant regulatory failure.
- galangalalgol 8mo ago
  Knowing the difference between a think tank and experts might be hard without some rudimentary knowledge to spot nonsense? I don't know, actually asking. It seems to me that the primary skill we need in our leaders is that of spotting experts talking within their field and actually listen to them while ignoring others. The primary trait, which is even more important, is character so that they act on what they here in our best interests instead of their own.
- rpmisms 8mo ago
  At this point, I do expect that of them.
- alt227 8mo ago
  Having first hand experience in contraband, and having the knowledge to create and pass laws are very different things. If you think that current lawmakers dont know enough about contraband to regulate effectively, what makes you think someone who knows loads about drug use and porn would be able to contruct decent watertight legislation?
rolisz 8mo ago
Well didn't they? From the Epstein files, it looks like "all" the elite is involved....
andrewflnr 8mo ago
Having a clue about how guns work, or the general reality of any other field one may be attempting to legislate, is absolutely crucial. With guns it just happens that actually firing them is a good way to gain (some of) that understanding.
83 8mo ago
I don't think its unreasonable to ask politicians to be familiar with how the machinery they are regulating functions and is used. To use your heroin example, this is akin to banning spoons or needles because they heard those are tools of the heroin addict. It shows a lack of understanding on the part of the regulator and has a far reaching effect on people legally using the items.

torginus 8mo ago

I don't get it - afaik you can get every single part of a gun except for the lower receiver/pistol frame without any restriction - as those parts are legally defined as the 'gun' - the rest are just replacement parts. Even for those, you can get 80% finished parts for those - just drill a few holes, and file off some tidbits, and you get an almost factory-spec gun. I'm no expert on US gun law, but afaik, some states even allow you to make your own guns without registration, as the law defines gun manufacturing as manufacturing with the intent of selling them. So there's plenty of options, many of them better than making a gun with a printer. But even all this is typically overkill, I dont think criminals go to these lengths to make their own guns, they just get them from somewhere.

Neeek 8mo ago
The only usable part a plastic 3D printer will make for you is the receiver, which is the whole point, to circumvent that very narrow legal classification. You're right about alternative lawmaking avenues, but given the 2a pushback on controlling "replacement parts" Americans are kind of stuck with the bed they made.
- int_19h 8mo ago
  That was the case like 3 years ago. Things have advanced significantly since then.
- throw3e98 8mo ago
  > The only usable part a plastic 3D printer will make for you is the receiver this hasn't been true for like 5 years now
  - Neeek 8mo ago
    Well over a decade actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberator_(gun) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberator_(gun) but of course just ignore the context of the parent comment about what's legally considered a firearm.
jhallenworld 8mo ago

int_19h 8mo ago

FCUs are not tracked in US (aside from full auto trigger groups, which however are classified as "machineguns" in their own right). Receivers are tracked.

hrimfaxi 8mo ago
That depends entirely on the gun. Sig "receivers" are just frames and the FCU is the controlled element. At least in the p320.

ErroneousBosh 8mo ago

In the 1980s, my dad machined a lot of replacement parts for a gunsmith, right here in the UK. All legal, all perfectly legit. I will say it took a hell of a lot more skill than just "download file from thingiverse, press print" - but there's nothing stopping you doing it. And no-one is (yet) suggesting banning lathes, hacksaws, or files.

alt227 8mo ago
The difference is this takes years and years of skill learning and hard graft. Downloading a gun file and pressing print requires nothing.

mayhemducks 8mo ago

This is my attempt to answer your question about "what kind of algorithm can you implement to detect something dangerous". Disclaimer though, I agree that the proposed regulation is way too broad and will have unintended consequences as written. If you look at how Apple detects contraband imagery, they hash every image that gets uploaded into the photos app. Those hashes are transmitted to servers that compare them to hashes of known contraband. A similar system could theoretically be used for STL files. So it isn't about detecting exact shapes, it's about preventing printing of STL files that are already known to be dangerous. This would make it harder to illegally manufacture parts for weapons because it would make it much harder to share designs. If you didn't have the knowledge or skill to design a reliable FCU, you would have to find a design someone with that knowledge and skill created - which the printer could theoretically detect with a cryptographic signature. As the original author of the post pointed out though, this could and would be bypassed by actual criminals. As with most things like this, it's probably impossible to prevent entirely, only to make it more difficult.

pfranz 8mo ago
> If you look at how Apple detects contraband imagery, they hash every image that gets uploaded into the photos app. Those hashes are transmitted to servers that compare them to hashes of known contraband. You're spelling out a specific process in detail--which is the only reason I'm picking on details. Do you have anything documenting what you're describing? From what I remember, Apple's system was proposed, but never shipped. They proposed hashing your photos locally and comparing them to a local database of known CSAM images. Only when there was was a match, they would transmit the photos for manual confirmation. This describes Apple's proposal [1]. I believe what did ship is an algorithm to detect novel nude imagery and gives some sort of warning for kids sending or receiving that data. None of that involves checks against Apple's server. I do think other existing photo services will scan only photos you've uploaded to their cloud. I'm happy to make corrections. To my knowledge, what you're describing hasn't been done so far. [1] https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-One-Bad-Apple.html https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-On...
- 8mo ago

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

alt227 8mo ago

> people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives People should not have to have great experience with killing machines to be able to regulate them.