3D Printed fully functional guns. As an engineer I am fascinated by technology and I always loved the idea of 3D printing as the possibility to custom build anything at home is just great. However, as it is the case with a lot of tech innovations, 3D printing has a potentially evil use as well.
What do you guys believe could/should be done in this scenario?
The blueprints have been taken down from the Defense whatits site, but they still floating around on other sites so we’ll have even more guns, this time untraceable. Someone’s going to realise it’s worth their while to spend $5,000 to buy the printing machine and materials and it’s not as if criminals are going to care a hoot that the guns are banned. Welcome to America.
a search on "3d print" showed up NOTHING
Now, I know the lower receiver is restricted, but I'm not sure about the barrel or bolt for most of these.
There's no way that plastic pos will take more than a couple of rounds before exploding, whereas the assault rifle components are under very limited stress, thus actually functional. That means that anyone so inclined could purchase bulk quantities of non-restricted parts, simply print out the restricted ones, and assemble an arsenal.
Tom
So you don’t think there’s a market for untraceable guns to be used in robberies, killings, etc? I would have said it was every criminal’s dream and they’d be queuing up to buy from some business saavy operative.
Who else but the Americans have been trying to make a plastic gun? Unfortunately, now the plans are out they’ll be available to the rest of the world as EP Mike says. At least the NRA will be happy, after all with their logic more guns mean more safety.
Still far cheaper and better to buy one illegally, and far less risky for the user.
Tom
Point 1.
How is this any more untraceable than any other gun? In every case, the gun is only "traceable" after it's found and the serial number is run. Or if a bullet from the found gun is matched to one from a crime scene.
Point 2.
Glock - an Austrian Company
Sig Sauer - a Swiss Company
Actually, if you must know- the Austrians did it first, and back in 1982!
(EDIT: Desert Rat beat me to it, but I'll leave the link up.)
Pretty much everyone who has an army wants this technology. This would mean potential tremendous savings in manufacture if they develop the materials technology. Again, not unique to America.
Let's invest all this high-tech into a 3-D printer to build (essentially) a musket? I don't get it...
Sure, if you're going to 3D print a long gun, rifling would be needed.
Tom
How many times have you fired a weapon at any distance in a high-stress environment, like a carjacking, robbery, mugging etc? Even at a few meters (inside of 10ft for an American like myself) and with a rifled weapon, a hit isn't guaranteed in these situations.
Further, criminals are generally less intelligent and also tend to be lazy. Many would be unlikely to think of this, and others, even when aware, would choose more proven rifled designs.
But, again to the materials technology, there would be no consistent scoring pattern because each firing would cause significant erosion of the plastic barrel, meaning each bullet would have a unique rifling pattern that may not be able to be matched to a gun that may not even exist after it has been fired only a few times.
1. Plastic one shot throw away gun with an accurate range of maybe 1.5 meters. Not an airport security concern, since the bullets are, you know....metal.
2. Plastic gun barrel can't have rifling because of the physics of a compression fit between a lead or copper bullet and a plastic bore.
3. Comparing the rifling marks from a found bullet to a known gun has been around for at least 40 years, so CSI New York is a little late to the game. Also, contrary to what you see on TV, the FBI stopped using this technique in 2005 since it was so inaccurate.*
4. It became harder and harder to bullet match to an individual gun barrel because of the precision mfg. techniques used by companies like Glock, that have very little variation between individual gun barrels.
* correction- the FBI is still evaluating individual bullet striations, with limited success. The metallurgic comparison program was suspended in 2005. note to self- double check accuracy of my middle age brain recall before posting next time...