Interesting to note that the required 3.7 oz converts to roughly 100 grams. Quite a lot of mass to impose on gun designs, I imagine.
I don't have any experience with gun-smithing so I don't know how much metal is strictly technically required, but I imagine it to be less or the legislature wouldn't be necessary to begin with, of course. Also, the minimum metal mass is probably a moving target (heh).
Eh, if you like you hand(s), you really want a fair amount of mass so it's just not your hand, arm, etc. providing the inertia resisting recoil. Also makes a difference for followup shots.
But there is a niche for the single shot or so derringer, or quasi "zip guns" like the Defense Distributed or original Liberators. Just not my kind of thing, I carry a full albeit aluminium alloy frame, 4 inch barrel M1911 that weights 1.75 pounds empty, which is very much at the other end of the spectrum except for being narrow, which is important for concealablity.
Now I wonder how hard would it be to create a weighed wrist guard style item which snaps firmly onto custom extra-light gun. Still takes the recoil, but technically not a part of the weapon. Maybe someone can explain why it's a bad idea.
Not so much a bad idea but one with very limited applications, like squeezing through TSA security guidelines and actual practice, and then wanting to/to be able to fire a lot of rounds afterwords.
Not ideal in general if for no other reason than more complicated ergonomics. I recently read an interesting observation that the shape and weight of a full sized service pistol got established more than a century ago; that, plus e.g. my observations of how many ill trained people in the US still manage to effectively and responsibly wield handguns in self-defense suggests we've achieved an ergonomic optimum.
So radical deviations like your idea are not likely to be good even before we examine details, like how you don't want to limit yourself to only one wrist, it probably decreases the gains from the bracing that can be applied by your other hand, the coupling mechanism is likely to be problematic, slow if nothing else, etc.
The pressure-containing and mechanical operating components of a gun need to withstand a considerable amount of physical stress. Removing too much material will result in a gun that is not very durable and potentially dangerous to its user. Furthermore, in most semi-automatic pistols, the mass of the slide is part of the system that keeps the cartridge in the chamber until the pressure has dropped to a safe level. Reducing mass there requires a stiffer spring, longer slide travel or both.
The smallest commercially made gun I could find currently available weighs 4 ounces: http://northamericanarms.com/firearms/s/s.html Being very low-powered, I doubt it has unbearable recoil, but it doesn't appear to have much in the way of practical use. Maybe concealment in undergarments?
Yes, but whether it's covered or not doesn't matter, because just like we have security theater, we have security politics. The important thing isn't enacting a new law to address a need; the important thing is to find a cause that energizes enough of your base to vote and then appear to be doing something.
Bonus points if the thing you're trying to do has no chance of being enacted. If you get a lot of attention and appear to be doing the right things to the right folks? You can support actions that you personally believe would be dangerous to the republic. Your personal feelings or the end result of what you're supporting don't really matter.
Apologies for the cynicism, but people should know that the political calculus plays out in this fashion. Perhaps that's the situation in this case, perhaps not. The political calculus is still what it is and we should acknowledge it.
1. Politicians are rational actors with regards to getting into and staying in office.
2. Voters are thoroughly ignorant and what sounds good to voters is not the same as what is actually the best policy.
#1 makes a whole lot of sense because people who don't compete to their fullest extent will be out-competed by people who do, and the goal of getting into political office is a necessary part of fixing the government (which most politicians genuinely want to do).
#2 makes sense when you look at people in the middle ages, and understand that we haven't fundamentally changed from them, we just have ACCESS to more information, which most people haven't read. Loads of people don't know jack shit about economics 101, and yet they have strong opinions on how to fix the economy.
*
We can extend, from these two axioms, that most politicians will not have TOO much respect for public opinion, and will therefore try to sneak through some bills that are unpopular, but (in the politician's opinion) will do a better job of actually fixing whatever they're trying to fix. That suggests that if you have enough politicians on-board with your way of "improving" the world, you can fix it in spite of the idiot public.
I don't even think you need #2. Since voters are emotionally predisposed to certain parties or candidates anyway, regardless of past history, it's easy to continue this pattern with extremely intelligent and involved voters.
When the politician is posturing yet has no chance of getting anything passed, they are "Making a bold statement" or "starting a discussion that needs to be had". i.e., the symbolism is more important than the results.
When the politician is taking direct action, yet action that's at odds with the voters, it's "politics is all about compromise", "a flawed deal is better than no deal at all", "a move in the right direction", or "a politician that's brave enough to make choices other politicians won't"
The trick is just to keep slowly alternating between these two perceptions over the segments of the electorate that you can turn out come election time. At the end of the day you can pretty much do whatever you want. So your end result remains the same regardless of any qualities inherent in the electorate, sadly. It's just a numbers game.
At the end of the day you can pretty much do whatever you want.
Eh, I'd say the history of "gun politics" in the last two decades suggests that's not true, or a bunch of politicians who passed or supported (Al Gore) gun control and ended up spending more time with their families just aren't good at playing this game. Assuming you believe they wanted the office more than the gun control bills, which in the case of the sunsetting and now sunset Federal "assault weapons" bill would seem to be particularly pointless.
I doubt they would have to be, even a low powered non metal gun would provide an attacker with a significant advantage and if used on an airplane it would not take much to breech the hull. As for encounters on the ground I am pretty sure drones are past the point of threat that plastic guns have.
I would think resins, ceramics, and some composites, would be sufficient for creating a projectile. Still like the article states, only those who wish to obey the law would be affected
> if used on an airplane it would not take much to breech the hull
This is a myth. There are already holes in an aircraft's hull - shooting through one at altitude would make a hissing sound, and you could plug it with your finger if it annoyed you too bad.
> I would think resins, ceramics, and some composites, would be sufficient for creating a projectile
The problem isn't so much the projectile, as it is the cartridge case, primer, and the operating components.
> Still like the article states, only those who wish to obey the law would be affected
All good points, e.g. I seem to remember reading that a 747 can maintain pressure with up to 6 windows being open (not that you'd want to be next to any of them!), but I think bullets still wants fairly dense, and that tends to make them more X-ray opaque, right?
Hmmm, if we're just talking about single shot guns, you don't need to align cartridges in the characteristic rows of magazines, or the cylinder of a revolver, making them easier for the TSA to miss. Of course, you could just load a magazine once on the plane.
FWIW you can absolutely pass normal bullets through most airport metal detectors. The typical threshold meant to not flag basic jewelry/etc... will let 1-2 9mm rounds pass through.
SOURCE: flying after being at the range with two 9mm rounds forgotten in my pocket.
I think there's a sliding scale of effectiveness for any laws banning stuff - like, if you want to stop piracy then for some people you'd need to somehow destroy all Tor-related infrastructure, but for your steretypical grandmother all you'd have to do is DMCA the one website they've used.
Similarly, if it merely makes it HARD to do something, that's often worth the effort.
Of course, when you're trying to prevent professional aeroplane hijackings, that's basically useless and not worth the effort.
I can imagine a shotgun shell using ceramic pellets (probably with non-spheroid polygonal shapes, for extra damage). The shell base could be a problem, I'm not familiar with what you could use similar to brass to withstand the gasses and form a seal at the breech. Primers are such a tiny amount of metal, I don't think they would get picked up - I have more metal in the screws from when I broke my foot.
TSA already misses full metal guns and in some airports guns are completely legal in the USA.
Why even pretend to have gun laws in this country.
But I'll tell you what, we better make mental health care available like going to the supermarket and without stigma in our society or one day there is going to be a mass-murder anniversary for every day of the year.
> TSA already misses full metal guns and in some airports guns are completely legal in the USA.
Outside the 'security' cordon, yes. Why not?
> Why even pretend to have gun laws in this country.
Why indeed? They're almost as bad as the drug laws. It's not whether folks are high or carrying weapons which matters, or should be illegal; it's what they do while high or with those weapons which matters.
He was responding to the "guns are legal in the airports", which in many places in the US they are outside of the 'secure' area. I don't think he was disputing that TSA misses guns.
>But I'll tell you what, we better make mental health care available like going to the supermarket and without stigma in our society or one day there is going to be a mass-murder anniversary for every day of the year.
Implying that anyone who needs mental health care is going to go on a murder spree is a great way to break that stigma.
I believe OP is only implying that those who end up going on murder sprees are in need of mental health care and that it could have prevented them from going on such sprees.
"All mass-murderers would have benefited from mental health care" does not imply "All people who could benefit from mental health care will be mass murderers"
This is where we could benefit from making formal logic a mandatory requirement in schools.
There are. The simplest is to have a database of file hashes and compare. Further methods wouldn't likely apply to the 3d printing files because they tend to be specialized around images (making it so that resizing the image, changing the format, or even changing pixels does not defeat the detector), but it would be possible to create new systems that could detect the 3d printing files even after some effort has been made to obscure them.
That said, it is and always has been whack a mole, with each side overcoming the advancements of the other only to have their own advancements outdone.
Depends what was the intended use for the law. It's not always about enforcing it on the spot. Take another example - declaring you never joined a war on some visa applications. Of course they're not going to check that. But if it ever comes up and is discovered for some (un)related reason, you're out without further discussion.
Same can be applied here. Found to have one during some checks? You're charged.
These "plastic or otherwise undetectable" guns are already illegal and have been for decades, since GLOCK and some yellow journalism put the fear in Congress around the time Lethal Weapon came out.
I'm sure there was some genuine fear, e.g. I'm thinking about NY Republican gun grabber Peter King, who after fellow Representative Gabby Giffords was shot (with a Glock...) proposed a law that would create a floating, 1,000 foot bubble around important people like him in which it would be illegal for normal people like us to possess a gun (!).
But like what this discussion is about, there's a strong pattern by the serious gun grabbers to try to ban anything new, be it the first wildly successful polymer frame handgun (the Glock of course has a steel slide and barrel, but the original proposal was to ban it despite it being easy to detect), or these newfangled printed guns.
Is "Gun Grabber" some kind of derogatory but catchy term for someone proposing gun-regulation? I've never heard it before, wondering if it's common (perhaps in some geographical areas more than others).
The Techcrunch piece links to the original article[1], which provides more information. Rep. Steve Israel is a gun control crusader from way back, as is the Connecticut delegation and a few others. But the ban he proposes, obviously, won't stop anyone from printing a weapon and smuggling it onto a flight; it's just more so-called security theater, intended to assuage the anti-gun segment of the electorate and reassure air travelers that they are still going to be safe.
In my opinion, the only true way to ensure air security is to arm the pilots and plant more armed Air Marshals on flights.
Banning particular types of objects from being 3-D printed seems like an exercise in futility at best, and instills a false sense of security at worst.
We haven't had a successful hijacking since 9/11, in spite of the TSA being grossly incompetent and ineffectual. The terrorists aren't chomping at the bit. The current system of aware passengers, Air Marshals, and reinforced doors is doing the job. Mostly the passengers. We need regulation of 3-D printers like we need regulation of flower arrangers. Bureaucracy, the fear that somewhere someone is doing something without permission.
We haven't had a really successful hijacking since the passengers on Flight 93 heard what was happened with the other 3 and realized the rules of the game had been changed. As others have noted, this has to rate as one of the shortest effective periods for a terrorist gambit, only a couple of hours.
Agreed. I believe there are two major threats to air safety, neither of which has been sufficiently addressed.
1. crazy pilot scenario - as illustrated recently by Germanwings Flight 9525. All we can do is make sure one pilot can't lock out the other pilot, and screen more carefully for mental illness. There's no room for political correctness and fairness in this picture; someone with depression and suicidal tendencies, as this 9525 pilot was known to have, should never be in the cockpit, period full stop.
2. Stinger scenario - one man with a shoulder launched anti-aircraft weapon could take down a jet liner. The world is flooded with these weapons and it's just a matter of time. Someone tried to take down an Israeli passenger jet in Sinai a few years ago, but fortunately missed. It seems unlikely in the U.S. but think of the thousands of airports all over the Middle East, Africa, central Asia, etc. It's bound to happen sooner or later, unfortunately. The only solution is to install defensive systems on jets, an expensive necessity in today's world.
So if they're going to ban liquids & gels over 3oz, why don't they ban plastics over a certain volume? At least be consistent. Detecting it might be a bit tricky and would require a pat-down, probably, but I'm sure in the name of "safety", that can be dealt with.
Banning plastics over a certain volume is roughly equivalent to banning objects over that volume. I really don't want a policy adopted simply because it is consistent with pre-existing asinine policies.
50 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 91.6 ms ] threadhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undetectable_Firearms_Act
I don't have any experience with gun-smithing so I don't know how much metal is strictly technically required, but I imagine it to be less or the legislature wouldn't be necessary to begin with, of course. Also, the minimum metal mass is probably a moving target (heh).
But there is a niche for the single shot or so derringer, or quasi "zip guns" like the Defense Distributed or original Liberators. Just not my kind of thing, I carry a full albeit aluminium alloy frame, 4 inch barrel M1911 that weights 1.75 pounds empty, which is very much at the other end of the spectrum except for being narrow, which is important for concealablity.
Not ideal in general if for no other reason than more complicated ergonomics. I recently read an interesting observation that the shape and weight of a full sized service pistol got established more than a century ago; that, plus e.g. my observations of how many ill trained people in the US still manage to effectively and responsibly wield handguns in self-defense suggests we've achieved an ergonomic optimum.
So radical deviations like your idea are not likely to be good even before we examine details, like how you don't want to limit yourself to only one wrist, it probably decreases the gains from the bracing that can be applied by your other hand, the coupling mechanism is likely to be problematic, slow if nothing else, etc.
The smallest commercially made gun I could find currently available weighs 4 ounces: http://northamericanarms.com/firearms/s/s.html Being very low-powered, I doubt it has unbearable recoil, but it doesn't appear to have much in the way of practical use. Maybe concealment in undergarments?
Bonus points if the thing you're trying to do has no chance of being enacted. If you get a lot of attention and appear to be doing the right things to the right folks? You can support actions that you personally believe would be dangerous to the republic. Your personal feelings or the end result of what you're supporting don't really matter.
Apologies for the cynicism, but people should know that the political calculus plays out in this fashion. Perhaps that's the situation in this case, perhaps not. The political calculus is still what it is and we should acknowledge it.
1. Politicians are rational actors with regards to getting into and staying in office. 2. Voters are thoroughly ignorant and what sounds good to voters is not the same as what is actually the best policy.
#1 makes a whole lot of sense because people who don't compete to their fullest extent will be out-competed by people who do, and the goal of getting into political office is a necessary part of fixing the government (which most politicians genuinely want to do).
#2 makes sense when you look at people in the middle ages, and understand that we haven't fundamentally changed from them, we just have ACCESS to more information, which most people haven't read. Loads of people don't know jack shit about economics 101, and yet they have strong opinions on how to fix the economy.
*
We can extend, from these two axioms, that most politicians will not have TOO much respect for public opinion, and will therefore try to sneak through some bills that are unpopular, but (in the politician's opinion) will do a better job of actually fixing whatever they're trying to fix. That suggests that if you have enough politicians on-board with your way of "improving" the world, you can fix it in spite of the idiot public.
QED, lobbying.
When the politician is posturing yet has no chance of getting anything passed, they are "Making a bold statement" or "starting a discussion that needs to be had". i.e., the symbolism is more important than the results.
When the politician is taking direct action, yet action that's at odds with the voters, it's "politics is all about compromise", "a flawed deal is better than no deal at all", "a move in the right direction", or "a politician that's brave enough to make choices other politicians won't"
The trick is just to keep slowly alternating between these two perceptions over the segments of the electorate that you can turn out come election time. At the end of the day you can pretty much do whatever you want. So your end result remains the same regardless of any qualities inherent in the electorate, sadly. It's just a numbers game.
Eh, I'd say the history of "gun politics" in the last two decades suggests that's not true, or a bunch of politicians who passed or supported (Al Gore) gun control and ended up spending more time with their families just aren't good at playing this game. Assuming you believe they wanted the office more than the gun control bills, which in the case of the sunsetting and now sunset Federal "assault weapons" bill would seem to be particularly pointless.
I would think resins, ceramics, and some composites, would be sufficient for creating a projectile. Still like the article states, only those who wish to obey the law would be affected
This is a myth. There are already holes in an aircraft's hull - shooting through one at altitude would make a hissing sound, and you could plug it with your finger if it annoyed you too bad.
> I would think resins, ceramics, and some composites, would be sufficient for creating a projectile
The problem isn't so much the projectile, as it is the cartridge case, primer, and the operating components.
> Still like the article states, only those who wish to obey the law would be affected
Like all gun laws - or laws in general :)
Hmmm, if we're just talking about single shot guns, you don't need to align cartridges in the characteristic rows of magazines, or the cylinder of a revolver, making them easier for the TSA to miss. Of course, you could just load a magazine once on the plane.
SOURCE: flying after being at the range with two 9mm rounds forgotten in my pocket.
I think there's a sliding scale of effectiveness for any laws banning stuff - like, if you want to stop piracy then for some people you'd need to somehow destroy all Tor-related infrastructure, but for your steretypical grandmother all you'd have to do is DMCA the one website they've used.
Similarly, if it merely makes it HARD to do something, that's often worth the effort.
Of course, when you're trying to prevent professional aeroplane hijackings, that's basically useless and not worth the effort.
Why even pretend to have gun laws in this country.
But I'll tell you what, we better make mental health care available like going to the supermarket and without stigma in our society or one day there is going to be a mass-murder anniversary for every day of the year.
Outside the 'security' cordon, yes. Why not?
> Why even pretend to have gun laws in this country.
Why indeed? They're almost as bad as the drug laws. It's not whether folks are high or carrying weapons which matters, or should be illegal; it's what they do while high or with those weapons which matters.
Implying that anyone who needs mental health care is going to go on a murder spree is a great way to break that stigma.
This is where we could benefit from making formal logic a mandatory requirement in schools.
I guess some orientations of bits are already illegal. Is there a(n automated) way to check if a file is illegal?
That said, it is and always has been whack a mole, with each side overcoming the advancements of the other only to have their own advancements outdone.
Same can be applied here. Found to have one during some checks? You're charged.
But like what this discussion is about, there's a strong pattern by the serious gun grabbers to try to ban anything new, be it the first wildly successful polymer frame handgun (the Glock of course has a steel slide and barrel, but the original proposal was to ban it despite it being easy to detect), or these newfangled printed guns.
In my opinion, the only true way to ensure air security is to arm the pilots and plant more armed Air Marshals on flights.
Banning particular types of objects from being 3-D printed seems like an exercise in futility at best, and instills a false sense of security at worst.
1. http://thehill.com/regulation/legislation/244319-dems-move-t...
1. crazy pilot scenario - as illustrated recently by Germanwings Flight 9525. All we can do is make sure one pilot can't lock out the other pilot, and screen more carefully for mental illness. There's no room for political correctness and fairness in this picture; someone with depression and suicidal tendencies, as this 9525 pilot was known to have, should never be in the cockpit, period full stop.
2. Stinger scenario - one man with a shoulder launched anti-aircraft weapon could take down a jet liner. The world is flooded with these weapons and it's just a matter of time. Someone tried to take down an Israeli passenger jet in Sinai a few years ago, but fortunately missed. It seems unlikely in the U.S. but think of the thousands of airports all over the Middle East, Africa, central Asia, etc. It's bound to happen sooner or later, unfortunately. The only solution is to install defensive systems on jets, an expensive necessity in today's world.