Wait, you’re saying the Invisible Hand will correct for the literal missing hand?
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As I’ve said before, lots of new phantom limbs to go along with the Invisible Hand.
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Never go full malkovich.
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I can’t wait to see the web flooded with altered files for 3D printed guns. Think most of these jokers can tell if the plans are off by a millimeter or two? Or recognize that a structure has been altered to be weak and fail? Imagine a few provocateurs joining the ammosexuals’ discussion boards and spreading bad files. And with these files being sooo temping to the types that want to print them, they will shortly become the favored carriers of spy/ransome/mal-ware of every “Russian hacker”. The storm of FUD will be glorious to watch!
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And what sells firearms? FUD.
The more I read over these comments the more I wonder if the fear of hypothetical “bad guys” with untraceable extra dangerous homemade assault rifles isn’t just another great way to get more people to go out and buy “safe” definitely legal commercial firearms.
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Time For America To Freak Out About 3-D Guns Again
Don’t hold your breath…
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Correction: you can’t sell it legally. And as we know; people never do illegal things for money.
I agree that these files are not the big issue. In most states I can buy a gun and then resell it with no record, no questions asked of the seller. Combined with the federal definition of a “dealer” being: “obtains a significant portion of their income selling guns”, being a cut-out is a lucrative cash business that no one is tracking and we have no way to prove who is doing it. I can buy as many guns as I want. I can sell as many as I want and when asked (if there is even a record that I purchased it) I can say I didn’t know the seller and kept no records. How are they going to prove that I sell hundreds a year? And once it leaves the actual FFA dealer’s hands, it’s as good as gone.
We need federal laws that go back to defining a dealer by how many guns they sell, require records of all sales and proof of ID of buyer, and define who is a gun manufacturer. i.e. if you make more than a few in your lifetime, or you are selling whole or parts, you are a manufacturer. Will it stop everyone? No, but it will put a big dent in the “hobbyists” who are actively contributing to the problem.
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And that’s where sensible FEDERAL firearms laws come into play. I’m not talking about stopping people from buying guns from the manufacturers (there are other ways to do that), I’m talking about “poisoning the well” for the 3D printer ammosexuals and how much I will enjoy seeing that happen.
I agree sowing doubt is not a bad way to curtail some of this. But I feel like people actively handing out the Darwin awards is not really in the spirit of the competition.
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Oh, there are rules and a “spirit” to this competition? How quaint. Actually given the people doing this and their intent, I think it is EXACTLY in the spirit of this particular competition.
Plastic guns are mainly a danger to the idiots using them. Real firearms can be had a lot cheaper than 3D printers in the US. Typically, if the NRA is against something, it’s probably not making it easier to kill people.
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Won’t work. Anti-counterfeiting measures rely on making money sophisticated enough that you can’t print it and need special paper, not on restricting what printers will print. Attempts to prevent users from using computers by limiting their control over them have a long and august history of massive fail. There’s a word for doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
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Did you write both that, and this?
Now THIS below is the first plausible idea I’ve heard, the first one that does not require that people who want to commit crimes with guns will suddenly become law abiding:
Allrighty then…
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Ammunition is made out of metal. A hunk of plastic without ammunition isn’t much of a problem.
This is what actual machinists do to stop people from copying their parts if special.
I work as a tool-and-die machinist, but I started about 10 years ago in a shop that has since been bricked up. That shops claim to fame was making the very first night vision scopes for the military when Desert Storm came around.
Since the shop no longer exists I feel like I can mention this. And the equipment is long since obsolete.
There was a special thread on that part that was generated in a special way that could not be copied without extreme care even if you had CNC at your disposal. I cannot remember exactly how it was done but I remember it was some form of curve generated by an equation and somehow the lathe that cut the threads had a outside mechanical computer input the amount that the gears turned 4 thread cutting and there was an intermediate gear somewhere that modified a normal thread pitch if I remember right.
Basically it was something you could never easily copy even if you had measuring equipment even Optical comparators.
The only way the real details of that thread were kept secret was by changing dimensions on the blueprint for the shop so that if someone took a picture of the blueprint or someone came through on a tour there is no way of glancing at the blueprint would ever make a functional copy of the item.
The man that developed the thread was my first boss in Machining and he’s probably passed away by now but he explained that it used to be a common practice among Department of Defense and other hush-hush jobs that blueprints often had incorrect dimensions on them for use on shop floor for this very reason and only one set of prints had the true dimensions- or none of them had all of them correct and you had to know which ones to reference for certain dimensions. Often these master prints were under lock and key and the real dimensions were only known by the owner of the shop.
While I personally have never produced anything for anyone I’ve worked for using such a system I am aware that it exists because of my first boss disclosing this to me. Even if you know this and for some reason were wanting to copy what I described it is impossible because I can’t even remember how he explained it was done and good luck even finding one.
The point to all of this is you are absolutely right- unless this file is verified by the creator with some sort of hash that it is unchanged, it is entirely possible for someone nefarious to change a single dimension and not even very much- perhaps 0.001"- and an otherwise functional 3D printable gun could become a time bomb to somebody trying to shoot one and it blows up in their hand because the compression in the barrel is no longer correct for the round. The margin of error when you do this with the correct metal is a little greater- but the margin of error with plastic unless you add a lot more of it then the design calls for may be far less until something is dangerous if it is changed.
As far as I’m concerned the only people who can make a so-called plastic gun safely are Glock. I’m not saying it’s impossible to 3D print a working gun but only someone really desperate would ever be crazy enough to try this in my opinion.
Buy a small precise mini Mill with ball screws for $3,000 and learn basic manufacturing and gunsmithing techniques and you can mill your own legally out of metal. There are even books that walk you through this, with dimensions- to build a falling block rifle. I know everybody wants to 3D print everything but this is kind of the wall I see functionally to show people very quickly why everything being plastic is just never going to work. And I’m sure some people argue this with me but they probably don’t have a machining background as I do and they are probably stupid enough to try doing this with a standard printer.
If you want to lose your hand- go right ahead. Ill pass.
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Neat story 
Thanks.
Edit: pedantic nit excised
I know that. I knew it when I was typing too.
I figured someone would read it that way- and I’m sure my boss often meant it to sound that way, but I believe what he meant was that he was the first contract at the start of the war for a specific compact night vision scope that was used in the war.
The part was real and I did see them while I worked there and it was one hell of a crazy thread that I still couldn’t copy if I wanted to
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