3D-Printed Gun May Be Unveiled Soon 625
colinneagle writes "A 3D-printed gun capable of firing multiple rounds may be unveiled soon. Cody Wilson, the 25-year-old founder and director of nonprofit organization Defense Distributed, recently told Mashable that the end product of Wiki Weapon, the initiative to create an operational 3D-printed gun, may soon be ready to unveil to the public. In a March interview with CNN, Wilson said he hoped to have a printable gun ready by the end of April, so his most recent comments suggest that he may fulfill that promise. While Wilson was sparse with details, he did tell Mashable that the prototype would be a handgun consisting of 12 parts made out of ABS+ thermoplastic, which is known for its durability and is commonly used in industrial settings. The firing pin would be the only steel component of the 3D-printed gun, which will be able to withstand a few shots before melting or breaking. Wilson reportedly anticipates making an official announcement soon."
Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the barrel and/or the slide is made of even the best plastic, I wouldn't trust it to take the 35ksi of a normal 9mm round even once. That application requires properly heat treated 4130 or 4140 steel (or 316 stainless).
Re:Going to be a bit longer (Score:4, Insightful)
that's why you use caseless ;P
Winner! (Score:0, Insightful)
...of this year's Darwin award.
"It might blow up in your hand! But have fun!"
Re:Supply and demand. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except I don't think murder is as price-inelastic as you think. Only a small fraction of gun murders in the US are in, e.g., carefully planned heists by criminal masterminds who will acquire guns regardless of cost for a pre-planned murder. Gun deaths overwhelmingly come from heat-of-the-moment domestic disputes, drug-addled petty criminals, super-depressed suicide victims, etc.: folks not utilizing near-unlimited resources and careful long-term planning skills. If a (cheap, ubiquitously available) gun is on hand at the minute of bad decision making, it gets used; otherwise not.
Profits (Score:3, Insightful)
Teh hell (Score:1, Insightful)
How is this, in any sense of a safe, sane, rational world; a good thing?
I love building, creating, discovering. The first thing that the ability to self-produce a meaningful firearm, should produce though is a limitation on the right to do so.
No one needs the ability to exercise lethal force, much less the ability to casually produce the tools that do so.
Re:Teh hell (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. You think you live in a safe, sane, rational world? The mind boggles.
Re:Teh hell (Score:2, Insightful)
He's a crypto-anarchist and honestly believes that doing this showcases what a joke popular conceptions of "gun control" are. You can watch a documentary by Motherboard about him and this issue on YouTube, search: 3D Printed Guns (Documentary)
In a world where 3D printers will conceivably be a commonplace household item, gun control via the old practices simply will not work.
It also draws attention to the limitations of how freely information is distributed and exchanged across the 'net.
While I agree this is a troubling trend, I am even less comfortable with the government (and the rest of us) policing what is and is not "appropriate" speech.
What is clearly " going too far" for some of us might be perfectly acceptable to someone else, and the right to believe different is at risk when powerful issues like this take center stage....
Re:Teh hell (Score:2, Insightful)
No one needs the ability to exercise lethal force, much less the ability to casually produce the tools that do so.
The Sherriff of Nottingham and Ghengis Khan didn't need guns to exercise lethal force.
Hammer, knife, iron pipe, strangulation, pushed from a roof-top.
I would rather be robbed by a guy with a gun than a guy with a tire iron. The guy with the gun probably won't shoot if I cooperate, besides it is noisy and he can flee without worrying I would follow him.
The guy with the tire iron might crack me over the head before making his getaway.
Re:Supply and demand. (Score:3, Insightful)
In crimes of passion almost any weapon will do.
Any weapon will inflict injury. Guns make it especially easy to rapidly inflict death (point and click!), even for people who would not be mentally prepared to keep hacking away with a knife once the blood starts spurting, or would be restrained by others around.
70-85% of those murdered the US every year have a criminal record. Most major cities track close to 80% of there homicides resulting from gang violence.
And the availability of guns makes murder easier and more efficient, even in gang violence situations. It's a lot harder to kill someone with a baseball bat than a gun --- no quick drive-by pot-shots at kids wearing the wrong colors, you've got to stay around and pummel until the target's buddies show up with their own weapons.
Cody Wilson can go fuck himself (Score:3, Insightful)
This man is single-handedly ruining 3D printing for EVERYONE, just because he's a gun nut obsessed with firearms. He's pushing into a gray area and setting a very early precedent that will impact the availability of 3D printing for the rest of America.
Cody Wilson is just what you'd expect from a 25-year old, gun nut, pothead, government conspiracist. He's afraid of having his weapons taken away, he's afraid of having his weed taken away, and he's afraid of his rights being taken away. His entire life is ruled by fear. So how does Cody respond? He perverts a revolutionary technology to make _more_ fucking weapons with them in violation of the law.
Fuck Cody. This is why scientists and engineers fucking hate people that take what they pour their lives into and deform for their own fucked up needs. When the 3D printer was invented people envisioned a technology that could help, that could make development rapid, that would improve our lives. Now Mr. Wilson has ruined all that and made it a tool to create weapons.
Cody Wilson is a fucking asshole.
Re:Teh hell (Score:5, Insightful)
No one needs the ability to exercise lethal force, much less the ability to casually produce the tools that do so.
This isn't about "need" this is about being inevitable. 3D-printed weapons are the inevitable result of improving 3D printer technology. No amount of idealism about what should and shouldn't happen will change that.
Everything in life is a trade-off. If we don't want 3D-printed weapons, the only way to effectively stop that is to ban 3D printers. Is that a price you are willing pay? There really is no other choice. You can outlaw 3D printed weapons but as long as the printers exist, people are going to be printing weapons.
Just look at how well the MAFIAA has done trying to stop piracy, it is basically the same set of trade-offs. If you want personal computers and an internet, piracy is going to happen. If you want good 3d printers and an internet, then most forms of physical contraband are going to be 3d printed. Weapons, bongs or whatever. You want 3D printers, that's the price.
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:5, Insightful)
The people working on 3d printing guns are mostly interested in the idea because it'd be very difficult to regulate - they believe that access to firearms is a fundamental constitutional right, even a human right, that no government should be permitted to take from the people. The manufacture of guns by conventional means requires large factories and an organised distribution chain that make it fairly easy for any government to regulate, keeping the guns in the hands of only the police, army, and the criminals well-connected enough to access a shadowy underworld of illegal imports and stolen guns. Guns made with 3d printing would be accessible to anyone able to buy some perfectly legal hardware and download a model file.
Re:Teh hell (Score:2, Insightful)
this doesn't actually affect your ability to make an usable firearm(google for history of zipguns, or even m3 or the british ww2 mp) nor your right to make one(getting a license in usa isn't a big deal). point being that you already have the means to "casually" produce something that shoots and that these guys are just trolling for publicity in order to get money and fame.
buying abs+ fdm machine btw costs more than buying a semi-automatic rifle(to which you could print an extended magazine though with a cheapo printer, however you could build that extended magazine from wood or metal with trivial effort as well).
Re:He's crazy but... (Score:3, Insightful)
That you might actually believe your laughable, ridiculous argument is frightening.
By your reckoning, Australia should have turned into a fascist state by now; let me assure you, it hasn't. Those who hold the power do not become totalitarian by nature simply because there is less chance of armed revolution.
I will, however, counter your argument as simply as it ever could be by pointing out that regardless of how many rifles, handguns, etc. you own, you will never be able to defeat a military that has the ability to wipe you off of the face of the earth with a few keystrokes. The entire NRA could never hope to hold off the American military for more than a few hours at best when the 'enemy' has conventional bombs that can level a small city, and nuclear options that produce minimal fallout.
This is simply about personal empowerment -- the ability to shoot at those who 'threaten' you, the comfort that 'if you had to' you could take the life of another human being. It's thinly-veiled psychopathy that becomes blatant once you actually kill somebody.
Re:Supply and demand. (Score:4, Insightful)
I initially thought you were talking about gun shows when you said "ZERO massacres". Then I saw that you'd qualified that with a year, so you weren't talking about gun shows.
Funny how in all those gun shows full of guns and people who love guns, there's never a mass shooting. It's almost as though it's not possible for an individual to successfully massacre large groups of heavily armed individuals.
Re:Supply and demand. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hardly a valid criticism of my post.
You know, I can't solve all the problems in the world in a single post. Of course socioeconomic factors are huge, but it's possible to, you know, look at an issue and try to evaluate it critically without throwing up one's hands and saying, "welp, since this is only part of the problem, it's obviously not worth anyone's time..."
ANY single factor you try to adjust or optimize will be incremental. It takes a bunch of things working together to solve this problem of murder in this country. You're not helping any by criticizing a valid observation just because it isn't all-encompassing.
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:5, Insightful)
They require only generic parts that are obtainable off-the-shelf and needed in hundreds of applications - impossible to regulate (and also available as parts of generic appliances one can dismantle).
It's not about "do it without use of any factory products", it's about "do it with products the government is unable to restrict."
And what about outside the US? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Profits (Score:5, Insightful)
A 3D printed pistol is a great novelty item, but what are you really going to use it for? In a self defense situation, are you going to trust a weapon that's never been fired before? I ran about 300 rounds through my new Sig P226 before I was comfortable believing that I could hit what I was aiming at.
Re:Cody Wilson can go fuck himself (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not that hard. A $10K machine shop (all perfectly legal hardware) staffed by competent folks can churn out a few rifles per day, with exponential returns on more investment. Sure, engineers and craftsmen have better things to do at the moment, but if The Revolution came around, it'd be pretty easy to tool up. This is fortunate, because a militia armed with three-shot rifles which might explode at any moment wouldn't get very far.
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would I want to own a gun?
Guns are primarily weapons of offence.
They are not primarily defensive devices.
If I wanted to go out and kill someone tomorrow, sure, I can see a need to print my own gun.
For self defence though?
No thanks...
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:1, Insightful)
they believe that access to firearms is a fundamental constitutional right, even a human right, that no government should be permitted to take from the people.
No, they want to 'be the cool kid with the gun'. The rest is just the excuse.
You never see the gun-nuts up in arms when the government wants to create a police state. More often you see them cheering the government on.
They also don't believe in freedom, like the freedom to marry whoever you want regardless of gender.
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. The same army that gets bogged down for a decade doing reconstruction after decimating another state about which we care not at all is definitely going to be willing to massacre its own population.
I've said it before and i'll say it again. The point of an armed populace isn't to fight an army at full strength. It's to be able to escalate domestic oppression to levels which make the government think twice, rather than sitting around and letting the secret police disappear people one at a time.
And it doesn't take that much. The world economy is extremely sensitive. What do you think will happen to a nation's sovereign debt rating once it starts openly bombing its own citizens and industrial plants?
Re:Cody Wilson can go fuck himself (Score:0, Insightful)
And here we have a classic example of a stupid yank. Are you really that fucking stupid.
So you'r logic is that because the government might move to regulate 3D printing because some imbecile yank wants to create lethal, easily available, weapons, that take innocent lives it proves him right.
Do you know what, all your founding fathers, the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Adams... I'm pretty sure that if they could see what their country has become would disown you as a nation.
As a nation you've become self centered, greedy. You only ever seem to worry about your individual rights, fuck the good / rights of every one else. Heaven forbid you should all work together towards a common good. You are pathetic.
Re:Supply and demand. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter who you elect, it is not like they are running things anyway. The current President is in fact the holder of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him because he was not George W. Bush. In fact, although I am generally conservative politically the one thing I said when President Obama was elected was that at least the war on our personal freedoms would end now. Boy was I wrong. The man isn't even a good liberal. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, accidents happen. How about that. I don't know if you are aware but people die every single day from some of the most bizarre accidents imaginable. Owning guns isn't so much about being safe as being free. I know you don't get it and that's okay. I fully support your right to be unarmed.
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've obviously never had your home broken into. You need to understand that both side manipulate and distort stats to basically feed you lies. In most cases where a home owner defends his home with a gun, he doesn't shoot anyone. A relative of mine had someone break into his home in the middle of the night. He stepped into the hallway with a 12gauge shot gun, saw the intruder in the living room and fired one round into the floor. The intruder ran. The action with the gun was never recorded by police.
As the saying goes, guns make all men equal. a 60yr old man with a limp and a pistol is just as likely to win a fight as an equally armed 20yr old intruder.
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice bullshit story. My gunsafe unlocks with a 4 digit code. I can release the gun in under a second and it drops open to a 45 degree angle grip out so you're ready to fire. It's loaded and ready to go.
Guns require a commitment by the owner. My kid doesn't touch guns. Period. If he sees one, anywhere, he tells an adult immediately. If you don't take your kids to swimming lessons and they fall in a lake (a much more likely scenario than them finding a gun) they are likely going to die. Gun safety should be a part of any kids upbringing just like swimming. And just like swimming, just because you don't own beach front property doesn't mean you should skip the training. If your kid hasn't had proper gun safety training, YOU are putting your child in danger, not the gun owners of the world.
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:3, Insightful)
A militia armed with AR16s wouldn't get very far either. Remember those videos from Desert Storm showing Apache helicopters mowing down Iraqi soliders from 3 miles away? That's your militia, excepting that their enlarged girth would make them explode in a more amusing fashion.
First order of strategic thinking is: don't accept the battle in unfavorable conditions. Don't keep your mind inside the box. Fighting attack helicopters from the ground, using anti-infantry weaponry, while they are flying is not something you (should) want to do. Perhaps Iraqi conscript had their orders to stand their ground no matter what. Militia doesn't have to take no such bullsh!7.
Correct way to do it is:
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the hard truth: someone's irresponsibility is not my fucking problem.
Re:Barrel and slide/bolt too? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama is neither a very good liberal nor a very good conservative.