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Kosh
We are all Kosh
Premium Member
join:2005-11-16
Z'ha'dum

Kosh to newster

Premium Member

to newster

Re: Feds ban 3D printable gun - what century are they living in?

I guess they felt the need to attempt a ban of course, even if the equipment costs to build one are prohibitive at the moment. IIRC it is already illegal, per the ATF, to build a weapon capable of bypassing metal detectors.

And as you mentioned there are several engineering challenges in making a completely plastic firearm. Plastics and even ceramics lack the tensile strength to withstand the barrel pressures of most common firearm loads. Not sure about carbon fiber but that is quite expensive to work with. The ammunition would be another challenge as I'm not aware of any plastic casing or bullet on the market (though like ceramic barrels the idea has been experimented with). You could try loading it with loose powder but airports have sniffers for explosives so that would likely be detectable.

tl; dr - An interesting proof of concept but too many engineering issues to be a safe, practical and fully concealable imo.
newster
join:2011-09-26

newster

Member

said by Kosh:

I guess they felt the need to attempt a ban of course, even if the equipment costs to build one are prohibitive at the moment. IIRC it is already illegal, per the ATF, to build a weapon capable of bypassing metal detectors.

Interestingly, it's not even per ATF regulations, which prohibit possession of a solid object. The ban is on the "blueprint" information itself (and only a ban on 'exporting' it outside US borders) which anyway includes the installation of a chunk of metal to make the plastic gun non-invisible to metal detectors.

I think it might not be long before metal detectors get "upgraded" to the airport-spec naked-body scanners that are so revealing they can tell whether or not a young boy is circumcised, making old-fashioned strip-searches completely redundant.

»www.foxnews.com/health/2 ··· ployees/

Therefore, no way to hide a gun made of 100% plastic or any other material from 21st-century x-radiation scanners.
said by Kosh:

And as you mentioned there are several engineering challenges in making a completely plastic firearm. Plastics and even ceramics lack the tensile strength to withstand the barrel pressures of most common firearm loads. Not sure about carbon fiber but that is quite expensive to work with. The ammunition would be another challenge as I'm not aware of any plastic casing or bullet on the market (though like ceramic barrels the idea has been experimented with). You could try loading it with loose powder but airports have sniffers for explosives so that would likely be detectable.

Shotgun shells are mostly made out of plastic. Also shotguns use low-pressure loads, allowing very thin walled barrels compared to a typical rifle. That's the key right there, using low-pressure ammunition that was designed way back in the black-powder days [like the old police-standard .38 revolver] so the pressures produced by the slow-burning gunpowder that meets the low-pressure [black powder] specs are only a fraction of the pressures produced by "modern" ammunition using powders with fast-burning chemistry. (but then maybe the goal is to prove it can be done using standard modern [high-pressure] ammo like 9mm.)
said by Kosh:

tl; dr - An interesting proof of concept but too many engineering issues to be a safe, practical and fully concealable imo.

I agree. I think this "printable gun" is really more of an academic proof-of-concept than a realistic firearm. Obviously having features such as a barrel 'insert' of a high-temperature material, as well as using high strength materials like kevlar or carbon fiber to reinforce the critical parts would make for a much more robust metal-free firearm. But then that would defeat the whole purpose of having a 100% printable gun that could be made by anyone with nothing more than a standard 3D printer, a common household nail, and a downloaded "CAD" file.
said by TOPDAWG:

downloaded the plans off the pirate bay already. will never use it but hey cool to have so called banned plans.

I hope you used a good proxy or VPN, just in case! You can never be too safe when dealing with the Feds, especially for content that's illegal and considered terrorist-oriented. Though on second thought, considering that all internet traffic is supposedly monitored and logged (along with all telecommunications and email) by DHS, it might not make any difference.
said by sandman_1:

I agree that this will have zero effectiveness.

Maybe I should have said "less than zero" since there have probably been a lot of people (like TOPDAWG) without a printer who just downloaded it from TPB since the news of the ban broke. But unlikely to be many people (definitely not among any of us file-sharing addicts) who owns a 3d printer and was already looking for the download but gave up upon seeing that the link had been removed from the official site, and looked no further.
said by ttfg:

I think I hear the sound of helicopters hovering over your house.

You know who was hosting these *banned* files? Kim Dotcom, who would certainly know a thing or two about attack helicopters and armed invasions. Dotcom is either very brave or very foolish to mess with the US government a second time. I don't know if the original links on Mega are still active.