Posted on 10/09/2012 7:07:02 AM PDT by marktwain
It has long been possible to make a gun at home. But what happens when it no longer takes knowledge and skill to build one?
It won't be long before a felon, unable to buy a gun legally, can print one at home. Teenagers could make them in their bedroom while their parents think they are "playing on their computer." I'm talking about a fully functional gun, where the schematic is downloaded free from the Internet and built on a 3-D printer, all with the click of a button.
Hit print, walk away, and a few hours later, you have a firearm. There are no background checks. No age limits. No serial numbers etched on the barrel or sales receipts to track the gun.
It might sound like science fiction, but 3-D printers are quickly becoming a consumer product. These printers, which now cost about $1,000, can print objects by spraying thin layers of plastic, metal or ceramics that are built up into shapes. Long used by industrial companies to make prototypes and parts, 3-D printers are becoming faster and less expensive almost weekly. One manufacturer, MakerBot, has set up a retail store in Manhattan. Chinese companies have started making them, and prices are falling to about $500.
Hobbyists have printed fairly rudimentary objects: prosthetics, iPhone cases, cat statues and missing luggage clasps.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
This sounds a lot like a hand-wringing article I read when inexpensive color laser printers were on the horizon. It was all about how the use of that technology for counterfeiting would mean the end of paper currency.
The point is that the article spreads around the knowledge that gun control cannot be effective without technology control.
Technology control makes nations poor and unable to compete in the world markets.
So are we upset that people have easy access to a Constitutional Right? Imagine if one had to get a background check every time one posted a blog or even a comment and had to pay for that background check as well?
Throwing in the towel?
You gotta be careful with these guys. They could be simply throwing a challenge to the liberal integentia to “fix” this problem with more regulation. You know, anything from building anti-gun provisions in the printers to ... banning them. Not unlike the way communists used to ban or register typewriters.
No, you’re uninformed.
There’s a new technology emerging called “3d printing” which allows a computer to construct physical objects with plastic (and, just emerging now, metal). We’re talking fully three-dimensional stuff of practically any shape and increasing sizes. “Printing” a plastic toy gun is now trivial; the controversy is over improvements in the material leading eventually to “printing” an actual gun.
Star Trek’s “replicator” technology is approaching.
What you've described is the wet dream of every government bureaucrat in the country. You and I exist for only one reason (in the government mind) to fund their pipe dreams and idiotic ideas.
Yes, I’m sure a felon would never have the connections to buy a hot gun.
So it makes sense that they would go to college to learn how to design a weapon, and work forever to be able to afford one of these printers.
Now that’s a complicated plan. Where’s the step where they make, profit?
“Homemade guns make the idea of gun control as crime control ridiculous.”
It is ridiculous, but as long as we have governments and people that feel government should be everyone’s mommy and daddy, there will be people that insist that government take guns away from individuals.
Mr. Wilson, who runs a Web site called Defense Distributed.
He calls the gun the Wiki Weapon. In a video explaining the projects goals, he describes the Wiki Weapon as the worlds first 3-D printable personal defense system.
Whats great about the Wiki Weapon is it only needs to be lethal once, Mr. Wilson says in the video, in a monotone voice.
C’mon. Think larger. It might be dangerous if you are about to use existing plans for conventional weapons made using standard technology.
Adjust it a little bit to overcome limitations of new technology and you can easily build a pretty safe 22 cal gun.
And if you have some engineering background you can think out a way to make it in larger caliber as well.
Ever hear of a “Zip” gun. Piece of wood, small metal tube(auto antenna), door bolt and rubber bands
I looked up ‘polypragmatons’ on google and your post came up first.
Or one of these, the phaser "AK-47" according to the media...
Nothing like setting it to level 16 to leave behind no evidence.
But anything that makes the antis give up and go away is fine by me.
I have heard of a FLIT gun, works wonders on dirty smelly hippies!
when there are replicator level printers, what does that do to the Chinese ecconomy? will obama blame printers for stealing jobs like he blames the ipad for stealing jobs?
Try firing a bullet by holding it between your teeth ;-)
Teeth are not as strong as the tempered steel of barrels.
A gun could survive several shots.
I would like to see a "printable" plastic capable of withstanding even one shot. Not all plastics are created equal and printable plastics are not the hardest of those types.
Yeah, and it can be plastic [Remember that little myth boys and girls?] so it can go through metal detectors yeah sure.
Michael Guslick, an amateur gunsmith who has written extensively online about the considerable challenges of 3-D printed guns, said people had been experimenting with homemade guns for some time. He said the most notable example was the zip gun, which is made from off-the-shelf plumbing parts. (Not surprisingly, the schematics and instructions can be downloaded online.)
"This is just applying a different technology to something that is already being done," he said. "But making one on a 3-D printer is a lot of work when your local plumbing department is so close by."
So the bottom line is making a barrel or reciever with any accuracy still requires an experienced machinist....and wait, experienced machinists have ALWAYS been able to make guns.
Any thing has a good and evil component.
Credit goes to Lindsey Cooper, daughter of gun guru Jeff Cooper (aka “father of modern handgunning”).
polypragmonocracy = government by busybodies
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