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NY Congressman Introducing Ban On 3D-Printed High Capacity Gun Magazines
- ISL 14y agoIt begins!
- pejoculant 14y agoThis headline is pretty misleading. He just introduced a bill to renew an already existing ban on non-metallic guns and magazines.
- rflrob 14y agoMy read is that while non-metallic guns are currently illegal, the existing ban doesn't cover the magazines themselves.
- defilade 14y agoWho cares if a magazine can be picked up by a metal detector?
- el33tel33t 14y agoLet's see: Everyone who does screening. Everyone who poses a natural target (judges, DAs, federal officers, etc) whose protection depends on screening. Everyone who works in a federal building where they are not allowed to carry guns, and therefore relies on a metal detector to keep gun carrying people out. Everyone who flies. One could go on.
- jlgreco 14y agoA magazine that cannot be picked up by a metal detector is useless. It means that the spring, the ammunition, and the rest of the gun are all missing. I mean, if you threw it perhaps it could hurt, but if it's made of plastic probably not so much.
- cdjk 14y agoUntil someone figures out a way to make plastic bullets (pedantic edit: and cartridges) I'm not going to worry too much about it.
- travisby 14y agohttp://wideners.com/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=8699 http://wideners.com/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=8699 Plastic 308 rounds. Those are real projectiles, not dummy rounds. I do not know if the entire cartridge is plastic, though. That primer definitely looks like metal. And I'm going to assume steel for the cartridge body (wow, it was hard to think of another word than 'brass'). Now, a fully plastic gun is another story...
- jlgreco 14y agoHuh, very interesting. Those would definitely be deadly (considering that even "blanks" can be). I think the cartridge body might be plastic too, if I am reading that page correctly (probably not too odd, that is how shotgun shells are often made I think). Of course those rounds don't have enough recoil to cycle a semi-automatic rifle so I'm not sure how much of an advantage having a high-capacity magazine for those would really give anybody.
- damoncali 14y agoNever head of those before. Very odd. Looks like the whole base is metal, which you would expect, as I'm not sure plastic would be durable/stiff enough for extracting the spent cases reliably. Still trying to figure out what on earth these things are used for. Seems too dangerous to be used off a proper firing range. What good are they?
- cdjk 14y agoI think the cartridge is mostly plastic too, since it says "plastic case cartridge... steel base...." And if it were steel why would they bother painting the cartridge blue? The primer is definitely steel, however. In any event, the barrel at least has to be metal, so this seems similar to the risk of someone bringing gunpowder into a secure area.
- defilade 14y agoNewsflash: magazines aren't restricted items because they're useless without guns. Which are made of metal. Newsflash #2: we've had plastic magazines for years already.
- eridius 14y agoYou're conflating magazines and guns. A magazine can't fire bullets. It can't hurt people. So who the hell cares if they get picked up on metal detectors? You want to catch the gun, not the magazine.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoThings that can be picked up by metal detectors easily: bullets, ammunition casings, gun barrels, gun slides, recoil springs, magazine springs. Polymer cased ammunition exists but is very rare and not general purpose (e.g. flechette rounds), but even those rounds would show up quite easily on a magnetometer based metal detector due to the steel content in the flechettes. The idea of a "plastic gun" is a myth that has been advanced due to the extreme ignorance of the media inducing a moral panic in the 1980s after the introduction of the Glock 17, which merely had a plastic frame and still contained over a pound of metal in it.
- emeraldd 14y agoIf you ban plastic, someone will figure out a way to do it with metal. Besides, the only way a plastic magazine would be undetectable is if it were empty, which make it effectively useless anyhow.
- CWilliams1013 14y agoEven then, plastic magazines (such as those for Glocks, "Pmags" for AR-15s, any many others) still have metal components, most notably the spring.
- jlgreco 14y ago> announced he would be introducing legislation to renew a ban on firearms and magazines that can't be picked up by standard metal detectors. The current ban on plastic firearms expires this year. In other words, the only thing this has to do with printed magazines is that printed magazines are being used as a talking point to promote the bill. Printed magazines, when printed with plastic, would still be picked up by a metal detector since they need a large metal spring (yes, there are printed plastic springs. they suck). Printed magazines printed with metal would obviously be unaffected by this law. The concept of a "plastic gun" is (currently at least) largely an urban legend anyway. Glocks set off metal detectors just fine.
- pjungwir 14y agoThe idea of a plastic Glock appeared in one of the Die Hards. For all I know that's where it originated.
- jlgreco 14y agoDie Hard 2 I believe. That's where I first heard it too.
- cranklin 14y agothey called it the "glock 7"
- Zimahl 14y agoThere was also a composite gun used in 'In the Line of Fire', a Clint Eastwood movie from 1993.
- theorique 14y agoAccording to the Glock company's official story, that's correct. The Glock 7 is a fictional weapon, it doesn't cost as much as John McClane said, and a gun barrel is still made of metal to deal with the explosive pressure of rapidly expanding gases.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
- gojomo 14y agoThis will have about as much protective effect against the criminally-motivated as putting up "gun-free school zone" signs.
- badgar 14y agoI always thought school zone laws existed not for deterrence but to provide for stronger punishments, and that the signs are there to help law-abiding citizens carrying weapons from unintentionally breaking the law.
- smokeyj 14y ago> school zone laws existed not for deterrence but to provide for stronger punishments I imagine stronger punishment is supposed to be deterrence. When your only tool is a hammer..
- nthj 14y agoThat's really weird reasoning. If we applied that reasoning to highway construction areas, you'd see "vehicle-free zones" for fear of somebody speeding. But we don't, so instead, we just have "traffic fines double in construction zones." Which makes sense, and presumably people drive more carefully in construction zones. If you want to double the murder punishment in school zones, there is your deterrence. Preventing law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves & others in the statistically most-likely place for a mass-murder makes no sense whatsoever.
- scarecrowbob 14y agoWell, there are a lot of crimes that people engage in other than murder, and many of them involve weapons. It's a much different thing to be caught selling drugs, soliciting sex, etc. in a school zone from a punishment standpoint. All that aside, I don't trust other parents with handguns around my children, and am perfectly okay with laws preventing people from carrying around my kids. Most of the people I know who are deep enough in their fantasies about their handguns are, and this is just my belief, just as likely to accidentally shoot a child as they are to do any good with a weapon. You might disagree, but it isn't true that prohibiting weapons around a school has absolutely no sense about it.
- Zimahl 14y agoIt does bring up an interesting ethical scenario with respect to 3D printing. You can ban the sale of high-capacity magazines all you want, but if it's simple to just make one with a 3D printer the point of the law is completely moot. Since the law won't ban making these magazines (to not conflict with US manufacturers exporting these) and the law won't outlaw the existing magazines, this is a huge loophole. And magazines aren't anything special, definitely something that is perfect for 3D printing. Simple designs punctuated by slight one-offs - depending on cartridge size, cartridge count, and weapon fit.
- kennywinker 14y agoIt would be fairly trivial to outlaw non-licensed manufacturing of high-capacity magazines. The same way distilling alcohol is illegal in the US, but owning a still, owning alcohol, and purchasing distilled alcohol is not illegal.
- jmvoodoo 14y agoTrivial to write the law perhaps, but enforcing it would be another thing entirely.
- kennywinker 14y agoI hoped that implication would have been obvious by comparing it to home distilling. Just because it's illegal, doesn't mean nobody does it.
- Firehed 14y agoWhen that happens, I'm immediately printing off several high-capacity mags out of principle, and I don't even own a firearm (thought about it, but I don't have time to go to a range so the liability isn't worth it for me). While I understand the intent of the law, it's a totally impractical way to solve the problem. It sounds like the majority of weapons used in violent crimes are obtained illegally so it will do little to deter criminal activities; meanwhile, it increases the liability around owning a 3d printer.
- Spooky23 14y agoWow. I'm surprised that Rep. Israel beat Sen. Schumer... Usually he wins the race for getting this type of vapid thing out on a weekly basis.
- tsotha 14y agoHonestly, I don't understand the hysteria over 3-D printers when it comes to guns. For less than ten grand you can buy a 3-axis CNC machine and mill yourself a heavy machine gun in your garage. This has been possible for decades now. Hell, you can see youtube videos of CNC projects where someone takes a manual lathe and puts together his own computer control for a grand total of $600.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago>For less than ten grand you can buy a 3-axis CNC machine and mill yourself a heavy machine gun in your garage. I think CNC machines probably fall into the same category as 3D printers when it comes to things like this. The issue isn't that someone with a little money can manufacture a firearm. This has been the case since firearms were invented. The issue is that it's becoming easier and cheaper to do it, and as time passes it seems plausible that object fabrication equipment will become a staple home appliance. Which will make attempts to ban anything that such machines can produce about as effective as trying to stop people downloading pirated movies. The funny thing is that they think passing a law against it is going to do anything. The whole issue is that the widespread availability of the devices would make such laws unenforceable in practice.
- tsotha 14y ago>The whole issue is that the widespread availability of the devices would make such laws unenforceable in practice. Gun and explosive laws are already unenforceable. Explosives are easy to make - you can get recipes off the internet. And guns are easy to make, too, as I pointed out above. It's not clear to me that 3D printers will be any cheaper or more ubiquitous than milling machines, but in any case milling machines are already ubiquitous. What keeps people from making machine guns and bombs is the severe penalties associated with doing so. That won't change with the advent of cheap 3D printers, even assuming a printer that could make a gun is ever cheap.