5 ms·

I'm guessing that one can carry it through the airport security easily enough. It's not that it's printed, it's the fact that it's printed in plastic.

smsm42 14y ago
Have you been to any US airport recently? These guys grab my freaking nuts and touch me in places that usually only myself and my wife are allowed to access. And you say it'd be easy to get through them a piece of a size of a large brick without them noticing? Do you know what mayhem an explosive of a similar volume could create? Something does not add up here with your theory.
- huhtenberg 14y ago
  You put it in a bag, obviously. As a bonus, you redesign it into larger number of smaller pieces and spread them over several bags. You can stick your head in a sand as much as you want, but this is a game-changing development. If one can print a working gun, one can conceivably print other interesting things that to date were assumed to only exist in metal, the assumption that was the foundation of respective detection technology. The assumption that is no longer valid.
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    You put it in a bag, obviously. You mean the bag that goes through an X-Ray scanner which detects high density objects?
    - npongratz 14y ago
      Indeed, the same bag that is mysteriously devoid of valuables after it has arrived at its destination.
  - akama 14y ago
    How many other things would it be possible to print? I do think you are right about it being a game-changing development, but at this moment I don't think there is a lot of threat from it. I think for the next couple of years, we can assume that respective detection technology will be fine.
- fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
  Are you kidding? Airport security breaches are so commonplace that they don't always merit news coverage anymore. Here, another TSA pen-test failure. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-usa-security-airport-idUSBRE9270MM20130308 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-usa-security-ai... These are just the ones we hear about, and don't include incidences of undetected contraband carried by passengers, unwittingly and intentionally.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    So the argument is that since you already can bring a real bomb into the airport, creating one-shot un-concealable weapon that is useless in any practical scenario is a huge security threat requiring the government to ignore both 1st and 2nd amendment because of it? Could you expand this argument a little more, I don't see how exactly it plays out.
    - hga 14y ago
      Check out its namesake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator There have been plenty of "practical scenarios" where access to very minimal handguns has been used to gain access to more. E.g. handguns were quite significant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And its certainly concealable; a bit thick for my tastes, but otherwise almost every time I walk out the door I'm carrying concealed a 4" barrel standard length magazine M1911, which is not a whole lot different in the other dimensions, and plenty of people are able to conceal revolvers with thick cylinders or semi-auto handguns with double stack magazines. Have you ever personally carried concealed?
      - smsm42 14y ago
        You can use bare hands to gain access to handguns. Just surprise any armed person, hit him over the head with anything massive (or just with your bare hands if you're strong enough) and take his weapon. If you have a couple of accomplices you don't even have to be that strong - 2-3 reasonable strong men can hold a person down long enough to take his/her personal weapon, which is usually readily accessible. What plastic gun changes here? The idea of the FP-45 gun wasn't of course to be battlefield weapon - it was to convert unarmed population into armed and dangerous one. In the US, it doesn't change anything as whoever wants to be armed already is armed. >>> Have you ever personally carried concealed? No I have not, but from the dimensions of this one I don't see how you can reasonably keep it concealed on your person without people trained at detecting concealed things easily noticing it. You could of course disassemble it and hope nobody figures it out, but it's nothing new. If you don't need the weapon to survive more than a single shot, there are a lot of things that can be converted to a gun.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
gadders 14y ago
How do you transport the bullets?
- misnome 14y ago
  That's a different issue. Smuggling a small bullet past any security has got to be way easier than an entire gun.
  - gadders 14y ago
    Apart from the fact they're metal. I don't think (but I could be wrong) that a design for a plastic bullet has been perfected.
    - fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
      Rubber bullets have killed people before, and I reckon rubber bullets would be as deadly as any other at close range.
      - hga 14y ago
        Good point, and a blank is deadly at contact range. And the gun is aptly named after the WWII Liberator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator The objective of such crude and limited guns is to enable you to procure better ones, although of course this one is also an initial proof of concept, plus I gather intended to work though such issues as this takedown (I've read the guy or people behind this believe they've jumped through the required hoops to allow Internet publication). Although I'll note conventional ammo needs a metal case; there has been work on caseless ammo but it's not gotten beyond R&D, the G11 probably went the furthest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_G11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_G11.
      - gadders 14y ago
        But you can't fire a rubber bullet from a plastic gun. That gun as designed needs a propellant (cordite/gunpowder) to fire the metal slug at the end. And if you need a propellant, you can't use a plastic cartridge case. If you have a plastic "thing" firing a rubber projectile using a plastic spring or similar, then it is more like a crossbow than an actual gun.

smsm42 14y ago

Have you been to any US airport recently? These guys grab my freaking nuts and touch me in places that usually only myself and my wife are allowed to access. And you say it'd be easy to get through them a piece of a size of a large brick without them noticing? Do you know what mayhem an explosive of a similar volume could create? Something does not add up here with your theory.

huhtenberg 14y ago
You put it in a bag, obviously. As a bonus, you redesign it into larger number of smaller pieces and spread them over several bags. You can stick your head in a sand as much as you want, but this is a game-changing development. If one can print a working gun, one can conceivably print other interesting things that to date were assumed to only exist in metal, the assumption that was the foundation of respective detection technology. The assumption that is no longer valid.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  You put it in a bag, obviously. You mean the bag that goes through an X-Ray scanner which detects high density objects?
  - npongratz 14y ago
    Indeed, the same bag that is mysteriously devoid of valuables after it has arrived at its destination.
- akama 14y ago
  How many other things would it be possible to print? I do think you are right about it being a game-changing development, but at this moment I don't think there is a lot of threat from it. I think for the next couple of years, we can assume that respective detection technology will be fine.
fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
Are you kidding? Airport security breaches are so commonplace that they don't always merit news coverage anymore. Here, another TSA pen-test failure. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-usa-security-airport-idUSBRE9270MM20130308 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-usa-security-ai... These are just the ones we hear about, and don't include incidences of undetected contraband carried by passengers, unwittingly and intentionally.
- smsm42 14y ago
  So the argument is that since you already can bring a real bomb into the airport, creating one-shot un-concealable weapon that is useless in any practical scenario is a huge security threat requiring the government to ignore both 1st and 2nd amendment because of it? Could you expand this argument a little more, I don't see how exactly it plays out.
  - hga 14y ago
    Check out its namesake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator There have been plenty of "practical scenarios" where access to very minimal handguns has been used to gain access to more. E.g. handguns were quite significant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And its certainly concealable; a bit thick for my tastes, but otherwise almost every time I walk out the door I'm carrying concealed a 4" barrel standard length magazine M1911, which is not a whole lot different in the other dimensions, and plenty of people are able to conceal revolvers with thick cylinders or semi-auto handguns with double stack magazines. Have you ever personally carried concealed?
    - smsm42 14y ago
      You can use bare hands to gain access to handguns. Just surprise any armed person, hit him over the head with anything massive (or just with your bare hands if you're strong enough) and take his weapon. If you have a couple of accomplices you don't even have to be that strong - 2-3 reasonable strong men can hold a person down long enough to take his/her personal weapon, which is usually readily accessible. What plastic gun changes here? The idea of the FP-45 gun wasn't of course to be battlefield weapon - it was to convert unarmed population into armed and dangerous one. In the US, it doesn't change anything as whoever wants to be armed already is armed. >>> Have you ever personally carried concealed? No I have not, but from the dimensions of this one I don't see how you can reasonably keep it concealed on your person without people trained at detecting concealed things easily noticing it. You could of course disassemble it and hope nobody figures it out, but it's nothing new. If you don't need the weapon to survive more than a single shot, there are a lot of things that can be converted to a gun.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

gadders 14y ago

How do you transport the bullets?

misnome 14y ago
That's a different issue. Smuggling a small bullet past any security has got to be way easier than an entire gun.
- gadders 14y ago
  Apart from the fact they're metal. I don't think (but I could be wrong) that a design for a plastic bullet has been perfected.
  - fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
    Rubber bullets have killed people before, and I reckon rubber bullets would be as deadly as any other at close range.
    - hga 14y ago
      Good point, and a blank is deadly at contact range. And the gun is aptly named after the WWII Liberator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator The objective of such crude and limited guns is to enable you to procure better ones, although of course this one is also an initial proof of concept, plus I gather intended to work though such issues as this takedown (I've read the guy or people behind this believe they've jumped through the required hoops to allow Internet publication). Although I'll note conventional ammo needs a metal case; there has been work on caseless ammo but it's not gotten beyond R&D, the G11 probably went the furthest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_G11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_G11.
    - gadders 14y ago
      But you can't fire a rubber bullet from a plastic gun. That gun as designed needs a propellant (cordite/gunpowder) to fire the metal slug at the end. And if you need a propellant, you can't use a plastic cartridge case. If you have a plastic "thing" firing a rubber projectile using a plastic spring or similar, then it is more like a crossbow than an actual gun.