Free Republic

More effective and sustainable firearms are on the horizon — but future technology is now banned before it can even come to fruition. For 63 years, the United States Congress has drafted and passed the National Defense Authorization Act. The purpose of this act: to pass the country’s defense budget for the following fiscal year. While Americans are focused on inflation and other trending topics, this bill passes every year under the radar. It’s Congress’s way of slowly chipping away at the constitutional rights of millions of Americans without any pushback — mainly because people don’t know about it. However,...

The man drove six hours to turn in the parts he made on a $200 3D printer A New York man claims to have made $21,000 during a gun buyback program by 3D printing over 100 lower receivers and turning them over to police. "I 3D-printed a bunch of lower receivers and frames for different kinds of firearms," the man, who would only identify himself as "Kem," told WKTV last week. Kem says he printed the gun parts on a $200 3D printer he received as a gift for Christmas and then made the 6-hour drive to Utica, New York,...

With all of the hype about 3-D printed guns, I've noticed a surge in interest in constructing your own guns. Not just assembling, but also building a rifle from scratch. The growing interest appears to be centred on making a political statement rather than evading rules. A declaration that the signal cannot be stopped. With a renewed interest in this type of build, I wanted to compile a list of all the guns that can be made from 80 percent receivers. 3-D printing guns is cool, but they aren't particularly good or effective weapons. 3D printers are costly, and the...

In a seismic decision from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and U.S. Department of State (DOS), Cody Wilson’s open-source 3D printed firearm file sharing site Defense Distributed is no longer banned from distributing 3D models of guns. In the legal battle it was deemed that the ban was in breach of the First Amendment – imposing censorship on a gun maker’s rights to expression. It was also decided on the basis that certain types of guns are not “inherently military” and, seemingly, present less of a threat to the population.

Austin could soon be home to 3D printed houses, if one company showing its model at South By Southwest is able to work with the city to get approval. The home at SXSW is the first permitted 3D printed house in the country. The Austin-based startup ICON plans to print 100 homes in El Salvador next year, and wants the creations to be part of the solution for communities with major housing needs, according to Alex Le Roux, ICON CEO and one of the co-founders... It currently costs about $10,000 to print a 650-square-foot single story house using cement. The...

3D printing technology has allowed us to print just about anything including a gun. In this article Youtuber Guy in a Garage built (printed) a Songbird 357 Magnum pistol that actually shoots a .357 cartridge. In the first test firing, the frame cracked at the top of the slide. To repair the pistol, he glued the crack and added a couple of zip ties to keep it together. Yes, this is homemade, so would you shoot a homemade 3D printed .357 Magnum pistol?, see the video here.

3D printing technology allows users to easily replicate small items like paper clips, coat hangers and broken refrigerator door handles. Unfortunately, some creative criminals have taken advantage of the declining price of 3D printers to make the lives of law enforcement officers extremely difficult. Security company G4S has discovered criminals are using 3D printers to aid in stealing shipments of goods. In as little as 10 minutes, criminals can print replacement cargo seals, decoy security devices and replica locks and keys. After breaking into cargo containers, the criminals use the 3D-printed items to help cover their tracks. For law enforcement...

In what may be one of the biggest stories we have covered this year, a new company, Carbon3D has just emerged out of stealth mode, unveiling an entirely new breakthrough 3D printing process, which is anywhere between 25 and 100 times faster than what’s available on the market today.The privately-held Redwood City, California-based company, Carbon3D, was founded in 2013, and since then has been secretly perfecting a new 3D printing technology which promises to change the industry forever. The technology that the company calls Continuous Liquid Interface Production technology (CLIP) works by harnessing the power of light and oxygen to...

While news on the 3D-printed gun front has been sparse as of late, that's less a matter of stalled development than of the new technology already becoming old hat in this fast-moving world of ours. How else to explain the lack of coverage even as repeating pistols are knocked out on desktop equipment? Consider, for example, the Hexen pepperbox, which has stainless steel liners for its six barrels and is undergoing constant strengthening and improvement as discussed over in the DefCad forum. The video below shows the Hexen successfully fired (actually, it appears to be a related five-shot model),...

As the race – and it’s basically a race – to release as many 3D-printed gun parts as possible heats up, it’s never been harder for me to come down on the side of the “Freedom To Tinker” crowd. Last weekend Defense Distributed, a group dedicated to releasing plans for a 3D printed gun, posted a video and description of their 3D-printed AR-15 thirty-round magazine. The video, which is, unnecessarily, full of snarky vitriol, shows that, on some level, the 3D printed gun isn’t very far off. It also shows that the call for 3D printer legislation could soon overpower...