The 3D-Printed Gun Threat Is Getting Weird and Scary [Nope, no bias there]

Gizmodo ^ | 06/20/2019 | Adam Clark Estes

[BenLurkin]

Wired UK reported on a new wave of 3D-printed gun enthusiasts sharing plans for firearms on places like Discord and online gun control forums. These would-be gunsmiths are sharing plans for everything from Glock 17 handguns to AR-15s with a renewed enthusiasm for the lawless dissemination of digital firearms blueprints. They call their group Deterrence Dispensed, which is an obvious reference to Defense Distributed, the organization that started the 3D-printed gun debate in the United States

So it sounds like a like game, but it’s a game that revolves around the creation and dissemination of 3D-printed gun blueprints. The actual manufacturing or selling of 3D-printed guns has already been banned by the New York state legislature and is also illegal in the United Kingdom. It is, however, troubling to see an international outgrowth of the 3D-printed gun movement find its way back into the headlines.

We don’t know where the recently convicted Muswere got the plans to 3D-print a gun of his own, but we do know that he was able to do it. That’s the next scary phase of this threatening technological movement. There’s not an organization that one can necessarily connect to the discovery of a 3D-printed gun. The plans are out in the open, on the internet. People with means can use them to print firearms and maybe more will come up with obscure

[marktwain]

Certainly the Tribal Areas are famous around the world, for the skills of locals, using the most basic tools. But the wonder of it is that any such guns work at all, not that they can come anywhere close to issue arms from industrial sources. Better than nothing, of course; but strength, service life, and accuracy are something else.

Just a few days ago, I examined a couple of pistols that were very likely made in the tribal areas. There were in a gun shop in Australia, and were a cap lock and a flintlock. They were identified by the variable handwork, the lack of precision, the crude lettering that characterize such items. The master craftsmen at Adams or Hollis would never have allowed them to pass their doors.

Exactly how they arrived, or when, in Australia, is uncertain, but there was commerce throughout the empire, and a number of men from the tribal areas worked in Australia as camel drivers and tenders.

A point worth considering is that 3D printed guns, or homemade guns, or small shop guns, do not need to work as well or last as long as the superbly made industrial items you refer to.

They only "need" to work to fire a few dozen shots, to be more than sufficient to accomplish the crimes those pushing for citizen disarmament say they will prevent with "gun control".

The fear those wishing to disarm us show over 3D printing does much to validate its efficacy to derail the arguments of our opponents.

[schurmann]

“...A point worth considering is that 3D printed guns, or homemade guns, or small shop guns, do not need to work as well or last as long...They only “need” to work to fire a few dozen shots, to be more than sufficient...” [marktwain, post 41]

This is the central point, and I’m glad you made it. Can’t be emphasized often enough, nor strongly enough.

Plastic guns made by 3D printing can serve as “guns to get a gun” - used by citizens to “neutralize” hostile occupying troops and armed security forces, after which the citizens take the weapons of the occupiers, and employ same to continue/expand the citizens’ response.

Weapons of any sort are only one factor in the total equation; great obstacles and greater unknowns still exist. The outcome still depends on subterfuge and raw courage on the part of citizens.

The Liberator pistol of World War Two was designed and built with the “gun-to-get-a-gun” ploy in mind. Some 1,000,000 of the simple, inexpensive single-shot smoothbore weapons were made by GM’s Guide Lamp division, but they were never distributed to resistance forces in truly large quantities; the record of their use in action remains very sparse and spotty.