A lot of work is being put into such guns, but the technology applies to everything. I wonder what happens when functional designs for many things are available online, and anyone with a decent printer can make one for themselves. It doesn't need to be great, just useful enough.
A gun is a fairly complex device to make. If one can make that, most other basic devices become practical. A vacuum cleaner with hundreds of people contributing patches to the design, or forking it . . . How long before the design can compete with the better commercial designs. The gun crowd is doing it first, but hardly last.
Far from it. It takes me a day to build an off the books AK pattern rifle out of a blank receiver. I have a lot of tools for working on my car, and that got me enough stuff (basically a hydraulic press and a drill press) to make them.
It's even easier to make a zip gun. If you're curious, take a look at the /r/guns subreddit for what they call the "gunnit rust" competition. It's basically a showcase of home made weapons.
Or if you want to get into the really interesting stuff, check out Khyber Pass firearms
"It's not uncommon to see Khyber Pass rifles with numerous errors and particular identifying factors, notably: Spelling errors in the markings (the most common of which is EИFIELD for ENFIELD)"
It's just like Chinese knockoff electronics, except instead of phone accessories it's deadly weapons.
Khyber Pass guns are even a different class than Chinese knockoffs. The Chinese actually have QC'd factories for pushing out pretty damn good AK's. Norinco is a well known Chinese AK manufacturer.
Khyber pass stuff is all hand-made in primitive conditions. By now Norinco has probably produced more AK and variant rifle than Russia both for the chinese army and for export to every 2nd and 3rd world country out there.
Guns like this one are actually stupid simple - The complexity and actual power come from the gun powder contained in the bullet. To fire the bullet you just have to hit the back of the casing in the right way with enough force. All the gun like this one needs is some type of firing pin to strike the casing of the bullet - And reading the article it seems that part isn't actually 3D printed. A revolver is slightly more complicated then a single shot, but really it's just a single-shot with multiple 'barrel inserts', in a way.
A vacuum cleaner design is unlikely to be a thing within the foreseeable future - The complexity is actually much higher then the gun here because you need a motor, which probably can't be 3D printed and wouldn't be as easy for someone to get a hold of.
Don't mean to be a pedant, but this bothers firearms people to no end, and we're on a technical site. A "bullet" is just a projectile - a dumb chunk of material. The "cartridge" contains the bullet, propellant (likely gunpowder in this context), and some other stuff.
So the gunpowder is emphatically not contained in the bullet; rather, both the bullet and the gunpowder are contained in another thing, called the cartridge. [0]
Dude. He was talking about "gun powder", which I gather is created by grinding up old guns in some sort of mill. Ripping into the technical jargon isn't worth the effort.
My impression is that this pedantry -- see also terminology disputes about rifles, assault rifles, long guns, magazines, clips, etc. -- is often gun enthusiasts finding a pretext for mocking anyone outside the group who expresses an opinion.
In many cases, as in this one, the meaning was perfectly clear and raising the terminology issue is just a distraction.
Not entirely. It's like someone calling RAM a "hard drive" - while we could infer what they mean perfectly, I think there's benefit in using correct terminology.
This issue is easy to blow off as "you know what I mean" but it's an important signal that someone has formed an opinion without being fully educated on the topic.
Climate scientists would prefer to debate global warming with people who have actually read a few papers and know the actual implications of global warming (as opposed to uneducated people on either side of the argument that say that it either doesn't matter or that it will be the end of humanity).
Doctors would prefer to debate vaccinations with people who have read up and learned that the chance of a negative reaction to a vaccine is very tiny compared to the chance of people dying from a disease in an unvaccinated society (see polio) as opposed to listening to people who swear that their child got paralyzed because of a flu shot (maybe they did, but they don't make a convincing argument).
And gun owners would prefer to debate gun control with people who actually understand guns as opposed to people who have only seen their children firing 900 rounds/min death machines in video games.
Using the proper terminology is an easy way to say, "I've done enough homework to understand how guns work in a general sense and have at least considered that I should know about something before I make a decision on it."
No, people often use less-formal language when addressing an audience containing subject matter lay-persons and non-experts. Other people also just prefer informal prose; it's less intimidating.
Everyone's favorite faux pas, clip vs magazine, is a mostly useless distinction. Both items offer a similar functionality to decrease the reloading time of their respective guns^W firearms; and there is rarely a case where both a magazine and a clip exist for a particular gun^W firearm so it shouldn't be a cause for much confusion. It doesn't help the gun-nomenclature pedant's case that magazines are commonly marketed by gun/shooting retailers as "clips". Another one is bullet vs cartridge vs round but depending upon context bullet is the only one that is unambiguously connected to guns^W firearms.
I'm a gun^W firearm owner, and TBH I don't see a lot of diversity of opinion among firearm-rights activists; so while it might be easy in some cases to debate only those who share my interests, it isn't particularly productive. It's up to firearm-rights activists to accommodate debate from laypersons (and politely educate them if needed), just as doctors, scientists, and other experts must do so for respective laypersons they encounter in each of their fields.
Do you really need to know anything about guns to be able to figure out good policy? It's a device that you can point at things and make them die; if the internals were magic pixie dust would that make any difference to how we would want to regulate them?
Knowing that an "assault rifle" is just a gun would probably help.
Banning assault rifles would ban guns that look scary, while leaving many actually scary guns (just as, if not more, capable of killing) in hnds of gun owners.
People who want a gun for defense or hunting probably don't care what it looks like, whereas people who want a gun to commit crimes with want it to be as intimidating/scary as possible. So maybe a ban on scary-looking guns makes sense?
All of the "scary" features are more than cosmetic. Straight line recoil pretty much requires a vertical pistol grip for ergonomics, that tends to go along with vertical forgrips, detachable magazines are anything but purely cosmetic and must be outside pistol grips for serious rifle cartridges, and flash hiders help preserve your night vision.
Heck, even bayonet lugs are functional, not that that a fixed bayonet has been used in more than one US "gun crime" to my memory.
So now you're reduced to being an ignorant foot soldier in a culture war following people who complain about "that shoulder thing that goes up" instead doing anything to actually help with what are some real problems.
Me: I don't want to take away dog owners' rights. But we need to do something about Rottweilers.
You: So what do you propose?
Me: I just think that there should be some sort of training or restrictions on owning an attack dog.
You: Wait. What's an "attack dog?"
Me: You know what I mean. Like military dogs.
You: Huh? Rottweilers aren't military dogs. In fact "military dogs" isn't a thing. You mean like German Shepherds?
Me: Don't be ridiculous. Nobody's trying to take away your German Shepherds. But civilians shouldn't own fighting dogs.
You: I have no idea what dogs you're talking about now.
Me: You're being both picky and obtuse. You know I mean hounds.
You: What the fuck.
Me: OK, maybe not actually ::air quotes:: hounds ::air quotes::. Maybe I have the terminology wrong. I'm not obsessed with vicious dogs like you. But we can identify kinds of dogs that civilians just don't need to own.
You: Can we?
Unless your agenda is compete and total confiscation, unless you want to be routinely dismissed by those who actually know something about the target, you'd best learn the basics, the sort of thing any grade school child who's a member of the US gun culture routinely picks up.
Come to think of it, this actually equals a "my mother and sister know more than you!" sort of thing, and they were never a fraction as serious about it as my father and the male siblings.
I'm not persuaded by this and other arguments by analogy (several are nearby), because the analogies can be stretched so they clearly favor one side or another.
We were talking about bullet vs. cartridge and magazine vs. clip, and my point is that petty terminology disputes are used to mock reasonable opinions.
Yeah, I was thinking of that when I wrote it. Where I live that "complete and total confiscation" has already happened (ish - a few farmers have shotguns, a few people shoot as an athletics-type thing), and thus we have hardly any gun crime. The idea that the "productive" position necessarily means some specific divide rather than a general ban looks really weird from over here.
I also agree that you have a point about the arbitrary distinction. Presumably you agree that accidental / criminal / insane / unnecessary shootings are a problem. What do you propose as a solution?
The four things I can think of are:
1) tighter registration and controls, GPS tracking
2) better training and education for gun owners, mandatory, free
3) arming more citizens so they can take out mass shooters
4) better training in non-lethal methods for police
First you really need to go back to the issue of bad will on the gun control side, I mean, when both Obama and Hillary publicly call for outright confiscations ("Australian style gun 'buy-backs'") that shouldn't be open to question.
Then perhaps a return to the issue of dog control. More specifically:
In practice, registration accomplishes nothing good.
What controls?
GPS tracking ... how??? Especially for the 350+ million legacy guns in our hands? And what would it accomplish? At most it would snare criminals stupid enough to legally buy guns before they have a disqualifying record, wouldn't address the other problems.
2) Mandatory is non-negotiable given the bad will, unless you make it a required middle or high school thing for everybody. As for free, the other side's vapors about Eddie Eagle, shutting down of high school rifle ranges (even in Arlington, Virginia, home of the US military! ), and so on suggests that's non-negotiable on their side. But I most certainly support it, did my part of it in JROTC (the members of the rifle team helped the teachers run the winter safety and marksmanship unit).
3) Now you're on to something. But it's not going to happen in 5 of the 15 most populated states (California, New York, New Jersey. Massachusetts and Maryland), and we think the bigger problem is the proliferation of the Orwellian named "gun free zones". With the exception of the shooting of the Arizona congresswoman, all the modern ones have happened in such. And of course the likely stoppings of mass shootings by armed citizens have by definition happened outside these zones.
4) Really doesn't exist. At least if you're talking guns or edged weapons, I would not ask any police officer to use anything less than lethal force from a gun once combat begins. Google Tueller Drill for some sobering videos.
Perhaps better would be real and much more certain sanctions for truly abusive police; going back to the Tueller Drill, in what circumstance is in necessary to shoot a man in a wheelchair if you think he might have an edged weapon? (http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bf5_1348711197&comments=1) If it was just incompetence in allowing yourself to get cornered as the police allege, that should be worth condign including being expelled from ever having a job in law enforcement. Whereas these police officers should all have been publicly executed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Johnston_shooting including every member of the coverup.
But in the current BlackLivesMatter environment which lumps murderous thugs like Michael Brown together with virtuous tax evaders like Eric Garner, I don't see that happening.
Echoing the Eric Garner case, I've been told by police officers that anytime things go hand to hand a tragic outcome is very possible. In fact, we don't talk about "non-lethal" methods at all, just "less-lethal".
Anyone suggesting "GPS tracking" with any degree of seriousness doesn't demonstrate the ability to form rational thought: discussion should not continue.
> Mandatory ... free
Anything less than free is exactly a poll tax. This is also a great way to backdoor a registry of individuals, since, you generally need to track which people have completed the feel-good training.
Only in so far as the same can be said about "computer enthusiasts" being pedantic about people calling programs "codes" or calling hash algorithms "encryption".
But at least "bullet" is not entirely wrong as it is merely labelling the whole by one of its parts ("pars pro toto" is even a stylistic device).
Making a gun might be easy, but making a gun that's robust enough not to fall apart when force of the bullet firing is dissipated through it is quite hard, especially considering 3D printed materials are inherently quite weak for shearing forces.
Motors are everywhere if you look for them. I pulled one recently out of a garbage disposal that stopped working but the motor was still fine (some seals gave out and slicer was damaged as well).
The open source vacuum would be a really cool project. I imagine you could pick a cheap vacuum on amazon.com that could serve as the init project and then slowly evolve from there to one day replace all the plastic parts.
The application he uses is interesting. Does anyone know what it is? It looks like it simulates parts being held in place, turning around axes, pull-to-rotate transfer from the trigger to the chamber, and fun other things.
You can also do that with SolidWorks. Sadly this kind of kinematics/CAD software is hugely expensive and still too complex and narrow-market for open source to offer any good alternatives to :(
Actually, Autodesk has a version that is free for hobbyists. I don't think the interface is quite as intuitive as Solidworks. But for a free CAD software, it's far beyond any other options. They even include simple stress analysis tools (FEA). I've been using it on my personal computer for a little while for personal projects.
This is more of a First Amendment exercise, similar to the publishing of the PGP source code in a book to export it (otherwise classified as a munition) outside of the US. Basically, we all know that human-readable instructions on manufacturing a firearm are protected under 1A. The people involved in this project are trying to see if the same is true where the instructions are machine-readable. And if you get a usable firearm out of it, that's cool too.
Actually, the State Department is in the process of trying to ban "human-readable instructions on manufacturing a firearm" and the like if they're on the Internet, so we're already there.
The law is about preventing mass manufacture of undetectable firearms, I don't think that necessarily points to magical thinking about people always following it.
> It remains to be seen whether this inclusion of detectable metal will be enough render the gun legal or whether the authorities will seek to have the blueprints for the gun removed from the Internet as it did with Wilson’s Liberator gun when it debuted in 2013.
That is silly. Getting stuff "removed from the Internet" is entirely nontrivial. But they can "seek" as much as they like, I suppose ;)
Sort of. The author is ignorant, confounding the silly "no plastic guns!" law with ITAR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_...) controls on "exporting" arms information, which is being played out in the courts and the State Department.
So, yeah, once it's released that's it for "removing it from the Internet", but that's unrelated to State forcing the author to remove his official copies on the net unless and until the above is resolved.
Not sure about this one, but the Liberator is fairly durable. The frame lasted indefinitely while the barrel needed replacing after just a few shots. It is pretty easy to print a dozen replacement barrels in a night.
The design of this gun looks similar, with the cylinder looking like it is replaceable. I wouldn't expect to reload each cylinder more than once before losing any semblance of accuracy. But again, the part that wears out can be easily replaced with a new printed part. The frame should last quite a while since the .22 that you are shooting with this gun makes minuscule amounts of recoil (compared to a "full-sized" round like the 9mm).
It looks like there are at least 11 plastic parts. I'm completely unqualified to even make these guesses, but as a "Just Some Guy on the Internet", I will anyway.
part uses until failure? possible failure mode?
--------------------------------------------------
cylinder body 10^1 melting/fouling in barrel holes
upper frame 10^3 cracking/melting around exit hole
firing pin retainer 10^3 misalignment of firing pin
cylinder axle 10^3 shearing fracture in axle
trigger 10^4 elastic band breaks, cylinder rotation arm breaks off
firing pin carriage 10^4 elastic band breaks, sear-catching arm breaks off
trigger sear ? elastic band breaks, rounded-off pawl
cylinder ring ? cracking, wear on rotation teeth
lower frame ? crud accumulates inside
frame assembly pin(s) ? pin retainers break off
trigger assembly pin ? shearing fracture
I'm not sure about the frame parts, as the article had no disassembled detail pics. The cylinder body has metal tubes inserted as barrel reinforcement. Presumably, those could be drilled out and replaced, if necessary, rather than recycling the whole thing down to filament and re-manufacturing the part on the printer.
Plastic guns get the attention, but it's not to hard to make (much better) metal guns at home.
Milling the lower receiver is a popular way to make AR-15s, etc.
Of course, that requires equipment which is several times more expensive than a 3D printer (over $1k). But if you really want to make your own firearm, it's well worth it.
You can make the lower receiver with one of those, but you'll still need access to a workshop with a bunch of expensive equipment to turn a lower receiver into something that actually fires bullets.
Nope, that just finishes an "80%" receiver, to which you then attach various finished parts. Note also that AR-15 pattern rifles don't seriously stress lower receivers in firing, people have cobbled together working ones out of plastic, scrap aluminum, etc.
If you want to efficiently make one out of plain metal, you'd want at minimum a milling machine and lathe, and the knowledge of how to use them. A furnace for heat treating would also be handy, and making a good long barrel requires from what I've read more specialized machinery.
Right. Nobody (or mostly nobody) makes their whole gun from scratch.
The idea is that the gun parts can be obtained with fairly ordinary efforts, just as plastic for a 3D printer can be obtained with fairly ordinary efforts.
(Naturally, there is a big cost difference between these two.)
Yes, those of us living in gun-controlled hellholes where we don't wonder if our kids' school will be the 20th shot up this year, or where gun nuts with AR-15 can legally show up to intimidate us at our mosques, surely crave the freedom of America's gun culture.
Statistically, you're more likely to get hit by lightning than have your child's school shot up.
Irrational fear of firearms seems to be overwhelmingly centered in those that haven't used them, and don't understand them. It's just a chunk of metal, wood and polymer.
72 people are killed by firearms each day in USA. So, if you have 500 Facebook friends from America, you can expect just over 4 of them to be killed by firearms during your lifetime.
43 of those people stuck the gun in their own mouth and pulled the trigger[1].
I don't find it particularly unlikely that over the course of my lifetime, four out of 500 people I know would commit suicide.
The problem is, we don't really know. Even with the reporting bias, there more reported legal defensive uses of guns than injuries by gun violence. But how many uses actually saved a life? Hard to tell.
By definition you can't really know. But the reported number of uses are huge, 1 million/year some years ago, based on a survey taken by a gun grabbing outfit that didn't count multiple times per year for respondants. 2.5 million/year nowadays is the best effort estimate.
Counterwise, just like in self-defense, guns are used in crimes a whole lot of times without them being fired, or hitting someone if fired, or killing if so.
And that's not even counting things like the burglar who carries one just in case, but never sees another human during the crime, although I suppose an estimate of that could be made. Which in principle is just like my carrying concealed almost every time I walk outside my home, just in case, although my odds are much lower.
That we already have, although you really need to look at the surveys as well as the FBI's Uniform Crime report, since there's a lot of falsification in various localities to lower the severity of reported crimes to make it look like the police are being effective.
I'm just wondering about putting together statistics on the number of uninterrupted burglaries and what burglars say about how often they're armed. I know an number avoid it to avoid the sentencing enhancements if they're caught in the act, and that from all the ones that go really bad, plenty carry weapons with them.
It's a canard that this sort of thing only happens in the US, even if you restrict the opposite to "the developed world". In incidents and casualties, we're in the middle of the pack.
I wonder if he took his grooved cylinder design from the Cobray Pocket Pal[1] or the earlier Mauser C78 “Zig Zag” revolver[2].
He's definitely wrong about it being the "first functional 3D-printed repeating firearm that has been printed using a consumer 3D printer", though. In May 2014, a Japanese man made a pepperbox revolver[3], and an even earlier metal-lined-barrel pepperbox revolver was built in September 2013 [4].
It's up to firearm-rights activists to accommodate debate from laypersons (and politely educate them if needed), just as doctors, scientists, and other experts must do so for respective laypersons they encounter in each of their fields.
No it's not. At least in the US, our patience has been exhausted by decades and decades of bad faith on the other side, going back to the '50s at minimum, arguably the '20s to 1934. We have nothing to discuss, especially since we've politically won for the foreseeable future, and after we keep telling the other side the same thing over and over without effect. Now the proposition is simple:
The blanket threats of violence you make in these threads are starting to get tedious.
I realize you don't care, because your assertions that you don't care, often followed up with more threats of violence, against people who argue with you in these threads, are also getting tedious.
Well, until the message gets though your thick skulls, I'll just have to keep repeating them, won't I?
Consider it fair warning, something I feel morally obliged to give.
It's also clear that few in these discussions have a glimmering of how far they've pushed gun owning America. Many don't even acknowledge the culture war portion of it.
TL;DR: If you want me to stop pointing out this fact, stop saying stupid shit.
You don't speak for "gun owning America," though, so don't presume to. Not every American with a gun is a violent neo-reactionary.
I don't know what message you're actually trying to get across other than "hga will kill you under the following circumstances." Are you trying to create a chilling effect on this forum? Threaten people into not even discussing gun control? That is a very toxic way to behave in a medium meant for discussion.
Whenever have you seen me threaten violence for mere words?
Certain actions, and only actions, "the following circumstances" as you put it, will result in me and mine hunting you and yours, retail and wholesale.
I don't see any chilling effect, except on, you know, those who are actually contemplating inflicting violent actions on me and mine, actions they've been/are being told very clearly, and hardly just by me, that will spark a 2nd American Civil War. In that, I'm comfortable that I'm speaking for enough of gun owning America, the putative "Three Percent".
Who here is so out of touch with reality that they don't think inflicting violence doesn't axiomatically come with a potential for violence in return?
So advocacy of confiscating my firearms is not "advocating violence against" myself? Or the many other restrictions entailing force that are advocated against me and my fellow US gun owners?
Implicit threats at the very least, I'm just unpleasant enough to make this all explicit. Because I really, truly, hope to avoid a civil war in the US, but see it inevitable as long as the other side won't stop attacking my side (in general, not on just this topic). We just want to be left alone to live our unenlightened lives, but that's not been enough for our betters for a century or more.
But consider for a moment how "really unpleasant" the other side is when they blithely advocate using murder to confiscate me and mine's Constitutionally protected property, protected for just this reason.
What gives your side a monopoly on saying "really unpleasant stuff"?
I don't think you're participating in bad faith but I do think your passion for this topic is causing you to break the HN guidelines, both about civility ("your thick skulls", "stop saying stupid shit") and about classic flamewar topics.
The sign of a classic flamewar topic is that it ends in a recognizable meltdown end state, of which the-culture-war-will-lead-to-a-new-U.S.-civil-war is surely one.
Is "your thick skulls" and "stop saying stupid shit" unreasonable incivility when you're responding to someone who's telling you to shut up because he doesn't like what you're saying?
A quick review of my comments, including on this topic, shows it takes rather a lot to push me that far.
That Hacker News hosts "classic flamewar topics" is an issue in your court. E.g. in this domain, you could declare as non-germane any discussion of gun control per se, and limit discussions like this to e.g. the intersection of the 1st and 2nd Amendment issues these printed guns are prompting.
(Although I suppose it's hard to say "this makes gun control obsolete" comments are off-topic, but I have no dog in that hunt, it's not an interesting topic except in how it causes the authorities to over-react.)
The sign of a classic flamewar topic is that it ends in a recognizable meltdown end state, of which the-culture-war-will-lead-to-a-new-U.S.-civil-war is surely one.
Then it's a good thing I didn't say that, only pointed out that this topic in the US context is a part of our culture war. And it clearly is, e.g. given the severe political costs to his party, it's hard to see why Obama is still prosecuting it other than as part of a culture war.
(Seriously, I've just read a couple of stark statistics about the RKBA in the Age of Obama: 100 million guns have been sold (not all are new ones, but we bought enough to equip the active US Marine Corps on 2015 Black Friday (!)), and US firearms manufacturing is up 140% in units. I know people have been saying he's the best firearms salesman ever, but this was way beyond my gut feeling.)
If you're referring to me specifically, I wasn't telling you to shut up, just trying to get you to reconsider your tone. You've made a number of civil and intelligent arguments for your point of view here, but when you resort to rhetoric about how violent you're willing to be it only serves to derail the topic at hand.
And "no" would be a vast improvement over "no" followed by a violent threat, even an implied one.
> Is "your thick skulls" and "stop saying stupid shit" unreasonable incivility
Yes, always and unconditionally on HN it is unacceptable incivility.
If someone is doing something which is itself uncivil which provokes you to want to respond this way, and you want to productively participate in the HN community, you should either use the flag/downvote buttons, or -- if you don't have them because the provocative post is a direct response to one of yours -- leave it to others to do so.
Good grief, someone go and tattle to the moderator...
This is just my opinion but I think that trying to bully or intimidate your way through arguments on this subject isn't going to be a useful tactic for gun rights in the long run. IOW, it's going to eventually end in a severe curtailment of gun rights. It works now because of the number of individuals with uncompromising positions on the matter and their voting habits, not because of the strengths of their arguments.
>But consider for a moment how "really unpleasant" the other side is when they blithely talk about using murder to confiscate me and mine's Constitutionally protected property, protected for just this reason.
I must have missed that part. Please consider how much you've overreacted to nearly everything in this subthread; and while you're at it, consider how much that kind of reaction re-enforces a negative stereotype of gun rights proponents as unhinged
people prone to making threats of violence.
The proposition that "if you do X we will kill you" is not a strong argument?
My reading of history indicates otherwise. As of late, look at almost all the West cowering before another subgroup's much more stringent censorship demands on pain of death (that's often enacted), when freedom of expression is supposed to be one of the West's most cherished values.
You may consider that the "Three Percent" of my side is overreacting the other sides' threats of naked force and murder, but they'll still be just as dead if we'd kept the "discussion" to the level of a faculty lounge. We simply don't care if you consider this truth (not "stereotype") as "negative". It is what it is.
105 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadA gun is a fairly complex device to make. If one can make that, most other basic devices become practical. A vacuum cleaner with hundreds of people contributing patches to the design, or forking it . . . How long before the design can compete with the better commercial designs. The gun crowd is doing it first, but hardly last.
Far from it. It takes me a day to build an off the books AK pattern rifle out of a blank receiver. I have a lot of tools for working on my car, and that got me enough stuff (basically a hydraulic press and a drill press) to make them.
It's even easier to make a zip gun. If you're curious, take a look at the /r/guns subreddit for what they call the "gunnit rust" competition. It's basically a showcase of home made weapons.
Or if you want to get into the really interesting stuff, check out Khyber Pass firearms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_Copy
I loved this part in particular:
"It's not uncommon to see Khyber Pass rifles with numerous errors and particular identifying factors, notably: Spelling errors in the markings (the most common of which is EИFIELD for ENFIELD)"
It's just like Chinese knockoff electronics, except instead of phone accessories it's deadly weapons.
A vacuum cleaner design is unlikely to be a thing within the foreseeable future - The complexity is actually much higher then the gun here because you need a motor, which probably can't be 3D printed and wouldn't be as easy for someone to get a hold of.
Don't mean to be a pedant, but this bothers firearms people to no end, and we're on a technical site. A "bullet" is just a projectile - a dumb chunk of material. The "cartridge" contains the bullet, propellant (likely gunpowder in this context), and some other stuff.
So the gunpowder is emphatically not contained in the bullet; rather, both the bullet and the gunpowder are contained in another thing, called the cartridge. [0]
[0] http://www.gunsandammo.com/gun-culture/9-misused-gun-terms/
Propellant.
In many cases, as in this one, the meaning was perfectly clear and raising the terminology issue is just a distraction.
Climate scientists would prefer to debate global warming with people who have actually read a few papers and know the actual implications of global warming (as opposed to uneducated people on either side of the argument that say that it either doesn't matter or that it will be the end of humanity).
Doctors would prefer to debate vaccinations with people who have read up and learned that the chance of a negative reaction to a vaccine is very tiny compared to the chance of people dying from a disease in an unvaccinated society (see polio) as opposed to listening to people who swear that their child got paralyzed because of a flu shot (maybe they did, but they don't make a convincing argument).
And gun owners would prefer to debate gun control with people who actually understand guns as opposed to people who have only seen their children firing 900 rounds/min death machines in video games.
Using the proper terminology is an easy way to say, "I've done enough homework to understand how guns work in a general sense and have at least considered that I should know about something before I make a decision on it."
Everyone's favorite faux pas, clip vs magazine, is a mostly useless distinction. Both items offer a similar functionality to decrease the reloading time of their respective guns^W firearms; and there is rarely a case where both a magazine and a clip exist for a particular gun^W firearm so it shouldn't be a cause for much confusion. It doesn't help the gun-nomenclature pedant's case that magazines are commonly marketed by gun/shooting retailers as "clips". Another one is bullet vs cartridge vs round but depending upon context bullet is the only one that is unambiguously connected to guns^W firearms.
I'm a gun^W firearm owner, and TBH I don't see a lot of diversity of opinion among firearm-rights activists; so while it might be easy in some cases to debate only those who share my interests, it isn't particularly productive. It's up to firearm-rights activists to accommodate debate from laypersons (and politely educate them if needed), just as doctors, scientists, and other experts must do so for respective laypersons they encounter in each of their fields.
Banning assault rifles would ban guns that look scary, while leaving many actually scary guns (just as, if not more, capable of killing) in hnds of gun owners.
Heck, even bayonet lugs are functional, not that that a fixed bayonet has been used in more than one US "gun crime" to my memory.
So now you're reduced to being an ignorant foot soldier in a culture war following people who complain about "that shoulder thing that goes up" instead doing anything to actually help with what are some real problems.
But then you encounter the problem of distinguishing real weapons from toy weapons.
[0] http://www.sanrio.com/pressrelease130306/
Me: I don't want to take away dog owners' rights. But we need to do something about Rottweilers.
You: So what do you propose?
Me: I just think that there should be some sort of training or restrictions on owning an attack dog.
You: Wait. What's an "attack dog?"
Me: You know what I mean. Like military dogs.
You: Huh? Rottweilers aren't military dogs. In fact "military dogs" isn't a thing. You mean like German Shepherds?
Me: Don't be ridiculous. Nobody's trying to take away your German Shepherds. But civilians shouldn't own fighting dogs.
You: I have no idea what dogs you're talking about now.
Me: You're being both picky and obtuse. You know I mean hounds.
You: What the fuck.
Me: OK, maybe not actually ::air quotes:: hounds ::air quotes::. Maybe I have the terminology wrong. I'm not obsessed with vicious dogs like you. But we can identify kinds of dogs that civilians just don't need to own.
You: Can we?
Unless your agenda is compete and total confiscation, unless you want to be routinely dismissed by those who actually know something about the target, you'd best learn the basics, the sort of thing any grade school child who's a member of the US gun culture routinely picks up.
Come to think of it, this actually equals a "my mother and sister know more than you!" sort of thing, and they were never a fraction as serious about it as my father and the male siblings.
We were talking about bullet vs. cartridge and magazine vs. clip, and my point is that petty terminology disputes are used to mock reasonable opinions.
Then again, someone who likes and respects Gundam SEED can't be all bad ^_^.
The four things I can think of are:
1) tighter registration and controls, GPS tracking
2) better training and education for gun owners, mandatory, free
3) arming more citizens so they can take out mass shooters
4) better training in non-lethal methods for police
Then perhaps a return to the issue of dog control. More specifically:
In practice, registration accomplishes nothing good.
What controls?
GPS tracking ... how??? Especially for the 350+ million legacy guns in our hands? And what would it accomplish? At most it would snare criminals stupid enough to legally buy guns before they have a disqualifying record, wouldn't address the other problems.
2) Mandatory is non-negotiable given the bad will, unless you make it a required middle or high school thing for everybody. As for free, the other side's vapors about Eddie Eagle, shutting down of high school rifle ranges (even in Arlington, Virginia, home of the US military! ), and so on suggests that's non-negotiable on their side. But I most certainly support it, did my part of it in JROTC (the members of the rifle team helped the teachers run the winter safety and marksmanship unit).
3) Now you're on to something. But it's not going to happen in 5 of the 15 most populated states (California, New York, New Jersey. Massachusetts and Maryland), and we think the bigger problem is the proliferation of the Orwellian named "gun free zones". With the exception of the shooting of the Arizona congresswoman, all the modern ones have happened in such. And of course the likely stoppings of mass shootings by armed citizens have by definition happened outside these zones.
4) Really doesn't exist. At least if you're talking guns or edged weapons, I would not ask any police officer to use anything less than lethal force from a gun once combat begins. Google Tueller Drill for some sobering videos.
Perhaps better would be real and much more certain sanctions for truly abusive police; going back to the Tueller Drill, in what circumstance is in necessary to shoot a man in a wheelchair if you think he might have an edged weapon? (http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bf5_1348711197&comments=1) If it was just incompetence in allowing yourself to get cornered as the police allege, that should be worth condign including being expelled from ever having a job in law enforcement. Whereas these police officers should all have been publicly executed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Johnston_shooting including every member of the coverup.
But in the current BlackLivesMatter environment which lumps murderous thugs like Michael Brown together with virtuous tax evaders like Eric Garner, I don't see that happening.
Echoing the Eric Garner case, I've been told by police officers that anytime things go hand to hand a tragic outcome is very possible. In fact, we don't talk about "non-lethal" methods at all, just "less-lethal".
Anyone suggesting "GPS tracking" with any degree of seriousness doesn't demonstrate the ability to form rational thought: discussion should not continue.
> Mandatory ... free
Anything less than free is exactly a poll tax. This is also a great way to backdoor a registry of individuals, since, you generally need to track which people have completed the feel-good training.
But at least "bullet" is not entirely wrong as it is merely labelling the whole by one of its parts ("pars pro toto" is even a stylistic device).
I think we all know someone who calls their entire computer tower a CPU
Motors are everywhere if you look for them. I pulled one recently out of a garbage disposal that stopped working but the motor was still fine (some seals gave out and slicer was damaged as well).
Not really. People were making guns on the American frontier in the early 1700's.
All you need is a little hammer to strike the cartridge primer and a barrel to guide the bullet down.
http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/overview
We've come a long way from "I don't agree with what you're saying, but I'll die for your right to say it," apparently.
Maybe they should just ask people if they're packing.
That'll stop em.
But if you wanted to mass manufacture something, I doubt it would be plastic guns.
The only point to plastic guns is that you can do it yourself without too much hassle.
That is silly. Getting stuff "removed from the Internet" is entirely nontrivial. But they can "seek" as much as they like, I suppose ;)
So, yeah, once it's released that's it for "removing it from the Internet", but that's unrelated to State forcing the author to remove his official copies on the net unless and until the above is resolved.
I wouldn't think it to be very much, but I'm curious.
The design of this gun looks similar, with the cylinder looking like it is replaceable. I wouldn't expect to reload each cylinder more than once before losing any semblance of accuracy. But again, the part that wears out can be easily replaced with a new printed part. The frame should last quite a while since the .22 that you are shooting with this gun makes minuscule amounts of recoil (compared to a "full-sized" round like the 9mm).
Milling the lower receiver is a popular way to make AR-15s, etc.
Of course, that requires equipment which is several times more expensive than a 3D printer (over $1k). But if you really want to make your own firearm, it's well worth it.
If you want to efficiently make one out of plain metal, you'd want at minimum a milling machine and lathe, and the knowledge of how to use them. A furnace for heat treating would also be handy, and making a good long barrel requires from what I've read more specialized machinery.
The idea is that the gun parts can be obtained with fairly ordinary efforts, just as plastic for a 3D printer can be obtained with fairly ordinary efforts.
(Naturally, there is a big cost difference between these two.)
Lower the suicide rate: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-owne...
The risk of you or family getting shot: http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full
And again, I don't think any serious argument in favor of some sort of gun control argues that it will eliminate the problem, just reduce it.
Irrational fear of firearms seems to be overwhelmingly centered in those that haven't used them, and don't understand them. It's just a chunk of metal, wood and polymer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
The problem is, we don't really know. Even with the reporting bias, there more reported legal defensive uses of guns than injuries by gun violence. But how many uses actually saved a life? Hard to tell.
Counterwise, just like in self-defense, guns are used in crimes a whole lot of times without them being fired, or hitting someone if fired, or killing if so.
And that's not even counting things like the burglar who carries one just in case, but never sees another human during the crime, although I suppose an estimate of that could be made. Which in principle is just like my carrying concealed almost every time I walk outside my home, just in case, although my odds are much lower.
So you can get some handle on gun use (even when not fired) in crimes.
I'm just wondering about putting together statistics on the number of uninterrupted burglaries and what burglars say about how often they're armed. I know an number avoid it to avoid the sentencing enhancements if they're caught in the act, and that from all the ones that go really bad, plenty carry weapons with them.
It's a canard that this sort of thing only happens in the US, even if you restrict the opposite to "the developed world". In incidents and casualties, we're in the middle of the pack.
This guy does some great extremely "scientifical" videos, as MattV2099 has would put.
He's definitely wrong about it being the "first functional 3D-printed repeating firearm that has been printed using a consumer 3D printer", though. In May 2014, a Japanese man made a pepperbox revolver[3], and an even earlier metal-lined-barrel pepperbox revolver was built in September 2013 [4].
[1]: http://www.angelfire.com/oh5/gunsfs/cobray.html [2]: http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2013/11/jeremy-s/history-ma... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zig_zag_revolver [4]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reprringer
No it's not. At least in the US, our patience has been exhausted by decades and decades of bad faith on the other side, going back to the '50s at minimum, arguably the '20s to 1934. We have nothing to discuss, especially since we've politically won for the foreseeable future, and after we keep telling the other side the same thing over and over without effect. Now the proposition is simple:
Come for them and we'll come for you.
The blanket threats of violence you make in these threads are starting to get tedious.
I realize you don't care, because your assertions that you don't care, often followed up with more threats of violence, against people who argue with you in these threads, are also getting tedious.
Consider it fair warning, something I feel morally obliged to give.
It's also clear that few in these discussions have a glimmering of how far they've pushed gun owning America. Many don't even acknowledge the culture war portion of it.
TL;DR: If you want me to stop pointing out this fact, stop saying stupid shit.
I don't know what message you're actually trying to get across other than "hga will kill you under the following circumstances." Are you trying to create a chilling effect on this forum? Threaten people into not even discussing gun control? That is a very toxic way to behave in a medium meant for discussion.
Certain actions, and only actions, "the following circumstances" as you put it, will result in me and mine hunting you and yours, retail and wholesale.
I don't see any chilling effect, except on, you know, those who are actually contemplating inflicting violent actions on me and mine, actions they've been/are being told very clearly, and hardly just by me, that will spark a 2nd American Civil War. In that, I'm comfortable that I'm speaking for enough of gun owning America, the putative "Three Percent".
Who here is so out of touch with reality that they don't think inflicting violence doesn't axiomatically come with a potential for violence in return?
Implicit threats at the very least, I'm just unpleasant enough to make this all explicit. Because I really, truly, hope to avoid a civil war in the US, but see it inevitable as long as the other side won't stop attacking my side (in general, not on just this topic). We just want to be left alone to live our unenlightened lives, but that's not been enough for our betters for a century or more.
every single thread about guns will have hga saying similar really unpleasant stuff.
But consider for a moment how "really unpleasant" the other side is when they blithely advocate using murder to confiscate me and mine's Constitutionally protected property, protected for just this reason.
What gives your side a monopoly on saying "really unpleasant stuff"?
The sign of a classic flamewar topic is that it ends in a recognizable meltdown end state, of which the-culture-war-will-lead-to-a-new-U.S.-civil-war is surely one.
A quick review of my comments, including on this topic, shows it takes rather a lot to push me that far.
That Hacker News hosts "classic flamewar topics" is an issue in your court. E.g. in this domain, you could declare as non-germane any discussion of gun control per se, and limit discussions like this to e.g. the intersection of the 1st and 2nd Amendment issues these printed guns are prompting.
(Although I suppose it's hard to say "this makes gun control obsolete" comments are off-topic, but I have no dog in that hunt, it's not an interesting topic except in how it causes the authorities to over-react.)
The sign of a classic flamewar topic is that it ends in a recognizable meltdown end state, of which the-culture-war-will-lead-to-a-new-U.S.-civil-war is surely one.
Then it's a good thing I didn't say that, only pointed out that this topic in the US context is a part of our culture war. And it clearly is, e.g. given the severe political costs to his party, it's hard to see why Obama is still prosecuting it other than as part of a culture war.
(Seriously, I've just read a couple of stark statistics about the RKBA in the Age of Obama: 100 million guns have been sold (not all are new ones, but we bought enough to equip the active US Marine Corps on 2015 Black Friday (!)), and US firearms manufacturing is up 140% in units. I know people have been saying he's the best firearms salesman ever, but this was way beyond my gut feeling.)
Yes, because the rule holds regardless of provocation. It has to, because everyone always feels like they are merely responding to provocation.
Well, I suppose a simple "No." suffices.
And "no" would be a vast improvement over "no" followed by a violent threat, even an implied one.
"No." ^_^
Especially when you should be thankful it's been reduced to 8 words.
Oh believe me, I am. It's a step in the right direction, at least.
Respecting the HN guidelines would have meant dropping this a long time ago, so please stop.
That's untrue. You very quickly resort to threats of violence in any gun thread.
What you claim is not what dang called me out on, rather incivility in choice of the language to express my thoughts.
Yes, always and unconditionally on HN it is unacceptable incivility.
If someone is doing something which is itself uncivil which provokes you to want to respond this way, and you want to productively participate in the HN community, you should either use the flag/downvote buttons, or -- if you don't have them because the provocative post is a direct response to one of yours -- leave it to others to do so.
Good grief, someone go and tattle to the moderator...
This is just my opinion but I think that trying to bully or intimidate your way through arguments on this subject isn't going to be a useful tactic for gun rights in the long run. IOW, it's going to eventually end in a severe curtailment of gun rights. It works now because of the number of individuals with uncompromising positions on the matter and their voting habits, not because of the strengths of their arguments.
>But consider for a moment how "really unpleasant" the other side is when they blithely talk about using murder to confiscate me and mine's Constitutionally protected property, protected for just this reason.
I must have missed that part. Please consider how much you've overreacted to nearly everything in this subthread; and while you're at it, consider how much that kind of reaction re-enforces a negative stereotype of gun rights proponents as unhinged people prone to making threats of violence.
The proposition that "if you do X we will kill you" is not a strong argument?
My reading of history indicates otherwise. As of late, look at almost all the West cowering before another subgroup's much more stringent censorship demands on pain of death (that's often enacted), when freedom of expression is supposed to be one of the West's most cherished values.
You may consider that the "Three Percent" of my side is overreacting the other sides' threats of naked force and murder, but they'll still be just as dead if we'd kept the "discussion" to the level of a faculty lounge. We simply don't care if you consider this truth (not "stereotype") as "negative". It is what it is.