Funnily enough, it is actually very hard to print plastic drinking straws. If you print them vertically they’re too fragile because of the layer orientation, and very tall skinny prints tend to fail for various reasons. If you print them horizontally, the unsupported “roof” side will collapse, unless you print support material inside the straw, which would then be very hard to remove because of the shape.
3D printing will never really be “push-button manufacturing”, even with designs specifically made for 3D printing. That’s why printed-gun mania is so silly (and why you should suspect the motives of anyone trying to direct your attention towards it). Most guns will always be bought from a manufacturer, and it doesn’t change much if a couple of tiny manufacturers can operate out of their apartments.
Trump was never considered a 2nd Amendment advocate by most people who are. So not really surprised.
Well that certainly is an interesting idea that is probably fun for a project but completely not practical beyond that. IMO. You now what maybe would work - Gyrojet rounds. The Gyrojet used - get this - tiny rocket propelled bullets. Fun fact, if you got shot with one up close it would bounce off, as it needs some time to get up to speed. They weren’t accurate at all and hella expensive, and the guns felt like they were toys, made of stamped metal mainly. But they are an interesting foot note in design.
I agree and even those who want more gun control should begrudgingly agree on this. You’re right about that garage made how tos have been around for decades, and actually put into use in places like Ireland.
From what I understand, Ricin and Sarin and the like are not very effective at all. When used by the military you have a saturation of a whole area (i.e. a city). When used by terrorists even if the amount they have is enough to kill thousands, they generally only effect a small area and people aren’t dumb enough to just stand around and die. They move away.
In the Japan attack, they end up killing less people than if the 20 perpetrators had just gotten on a subway and each stabbed two people.
I think your curiosity right there is the basic movitivation of MOST people into this hobby. In fact I would dare say EVERYONE not just pumping out an existing design is doing this because they makers. Some of the most brilliant gun designers like Browning more or less started out like this, making designs in some back water shed until they came up with something new and better.
I still contend that if you want something usable long term, just use an available barrel. Because that is where the rifling is and rifling affects accuracy so much, you really need something straight and that won’t wear.
Interesting you mentioned carbon fiber wrapped - they make those! You still have a base metal barrel, but most of it is wrapped with carbon fiber. This makes it strong but much lighter, and it is supposed to dissipate heat better. They are for the long rang shooting crowd and hella expensive.
Just to clarify, Trump said he was worried about sales of these home made guns. Selling a gun, no matter who made it, is well covered under federal and state laws. He simply has no idea what he’s talking about… as usual.
I’d also like to point out that guns are cheaper than 3d printers.
Ammunition is not really an issue. The most complicated step is making the charcoal correctly. And as for numbers, an armed robber might need only a few rounds. The people who buy thousands of rounds are target shooters, or hunters who go to the range to practice.
Ammo also lasts for centuries if properly made and stored.
This whole issue is a pandora’s box, which was opened a long time ago. The knowledge is already out there. If you have people wandering around who have ideology or temperament to murder people, they are going to find the means to do so. I think the real answer is to intervene with those people before they develop the will to kill. Any of us who drive have the means to crash into a crowd or T-bone a school bus. It would not even involve much effort or planning. The reason we don’t do so, is that the idea of harming innocent people is abhorrent to us. That is why published plans for guns or bombs or poison pose little threat.
Some people express themselves by pouring gasoline on the carpet. That’s generally frowned upon.
Some people express themselves by walking on the street completely nude. Also frowned upon.
In other words, because you like to express yourselves that way doesn’t mean it isn’t good for society as a whole. (and laws are rather random. Because to me, walking nude seems a lot less harmful than owning guns, but oh well.)
But of course I’m from europe, so everybody owning guns is extremely weird for me.
Getting the 3d printer genie back in the bottle is more or less impossible, so trying to legislate the problem away is pointless.
copying machines and printers do indeed prevent you from printing. there are some basic image detection algorithms present in commercial printers.
There are some well publicized hilarious failures. but there are also instances where casual counterfeiting have been thwarted. I’m not saying that it’s a great technique, but it has been used in the past and there isn’t much reason why governments won’t assume that it can still be effective.
You could probably detect certain classes of trigger assemblies with some very basic pattern recognition. But it might prevent you from printing a rubberband gun. If such designs had to be authorized and licensed by a third party you could print anything you want, but you couldn’t create things on your own. That would suck, but it is potentially the direction of things.
Saying “it is potentially the direction of things” ignores the agency of authoritarian shitbags like this state attorneys general and their supporters who are making it the direction of things.
Note: most existing 3d printers are too stupid to understand what they are creating. They have “move head to XYZ at rate R while pushing the extruded motor M”, that and “fanN to RPM S”, and also “heaterN to tempature T”.
They are simple 8 or maybe 16bit CPUs with a few K bytes of RAM.
They really can’t reconstruct the command sequences into a 3D shape let alone analyze it to figure out what it is.
So I don’t think locking down 3D printers is an option. You would need to take a run at the slicer software, and that is just software. Many good (and popular) ones are already open source. Tough genie to shove back into the bottle, but at least technically feesable, if not politically so?
