I thought they were just approved for download a few weeks or months ago. I guess this is judge #374 in the appeals process.
It needs a metal firing pin, but technically it can fire with a plastic barrel.
But, of course, this means that the barrel is pretty huge, in order to not just blow up in your hand… Which makes the “undetectable” gun a giant blocky thing. And it still has a decent chance of just blowing up in your hand.
In order to actually make reliable firearms, you aren’t using some kind of maker bot 3d printer. You need pretty hard core stuff, to be able to print stuff flawlessly enough with materials that can handle the stress.
At which point you could just buy a gun for a trivial fraction of the effort and price of 3d printing one.
Folks are freaking out over crap like “instructions for printing an AR15!”
It’s literally a high resolution laser scan of an AR15. You can’t print that in plastic and have it work. You would need a metal printer, which costs a fortune.
So it’s a zip gun. Which, as I’ve mentioned before, means no rifling. The actual bullet tumbles and can make a real nasty wound. Keyhole wound. And the second shot, if there is one will most likely destroy the gun. It reminds me of the gun that John Malkovich used in the movie In the Line of Fire.
Yeah, the one all plastic gun i saw, “the liberator” which was one if not the first ones made, is huge and bulky, and has what are effectively disposable barrels, since they are either gonna blow up on the first shot, or the second.
A more reasonable option would be a hybrid, where you use actual metal parts, but use a printer to make a housing assembly for them… But at that point you are effectively just making cosmetic crap.
Effectively a crappy Glock. I remember when those first came out we heard the same stuff about sneaking them onto planes and crap.
To me the funny part here is that everyone seems focused on it as a gun issue, when I consider it a First Amendment issue. Computer code is speech (it sure as hell must be, if companies are people and money is speech). Its a recipe, just like publishing a recipe for apple pie on the Internet.
Not according to the International Traffic in Arms Regulation. All sorts of software is classified as armaments; in this case, I’m not sure that is incorrect.
And it absolutely is.
All the gun issues are essentially trivial. They don’t actually matter or affect anything.
But the first amendment issues are pretty key. The government should not be allowed to censor speech on the grounds that it poses a risk to the public, because a tyranical government would use that justification to ban any kind of speech that threatened their power.
ITAR restrictions are generally applied to stuff that the government played a role in developing.
Oh now I remember. The feds allowed this to protect the rest of their regulations. I finally read the article and I see this is the states seeking a ban.
I’m very angry I had to read the article. I was forced to read the new nonsense phrase “3D ghost guns.”
But you can still print the part that usually requires being serial numbered and registered, which gets around some requirements federally but not necessarily in every state. I’m referring to the lower receiver. There are also supposed 3D printed bump stocks, which again would run afoul of some state laws.
Really I’m in semi-agreement with Tin:
Perhaps not making them illegal, but the lack of registration for them illegal with stiff penalties. Why still allow them? Because if there is one lobbying block that we have repeatedly heard about as nearly completely evil, it’s the fucking gun manufacturers lobby.
Are we talking about printing a fully automatic lower receiver for like, an AR15?
Because while you could do that, it’d be totally illegal.
Yeah, you would be allowed to work a paper about such a thing.
You understand that while the designs for a 3d printed weapon like a fully automatic rifle would be legal, but actually making one would be illegal, right?
I mean, if you created a deadly virus and killed people with it… Obviously that would be illegal.
I guess I don’t. Say I design a virus that makes cognitive dissonance fatal. Ok, that’s legal. It sits on a AWS server, but I can’t distribute it? Is that the argument being made here for 3D guns? People can design them but not distribute them? (Not trying to be snarky, I’ve not followed the issue.)
How is that different from publishing methods to culture HIV or Staphylococcus? Because there are tons of papers on those and similar subjects.
Because most people don’t have centrifuges, but 3D printers are accessible (i.e. affordable) to (many).
Edit: Made some edits
You don’t need a centrifuge to culture dangerous pathogens.
You can make ricin, one of the most deadly poisons there is, with basically no equipment.
Hell, you can make a tin of chewing tobacco into a super deadly poison just through extracting the nicotine using plastic bottles and filters.