Also, you can really only 3d print the bottom half of a gun, the actual part that makes it a gun has to be made of metal and ordered online, then snapped on to the 3d printed plastic handle part.
The problem isn’t the plastic part you make at home… Literally, just make people print serial numbers on the important, metal part, and the whole problem goes away… But lazy journalists want to conjure images of people making anonymous guns at home cos it’s scary.
AFAIK, 3d printed guns still need machined metal components to not, y’know, explode in your hand?
You can buy all those parts online without registration. The only thing you can’t buy is the receiver, which can be manufactured at home very easily. That’s the part that houses the trigger and connects the barrel, etc.
Obviously, the more advanced the gun gets, the more difficult it is to make, but a single shot could be made with stuff from the hardware store.
The headline doesn’t really match the article which actually points out that the US doesn’t have a 3D printed gun problem because firearms are already readily available there. The 3D printed gun problem in Europe originated in Europe, it didn’t spread from the nonexistent problem in the US. The US has a problem with weapon modifications that break or sidestep existing restrictions, but despite the article’s take, this isn’t limited to 3D printed mods.
Dumb question: how do the Europeans get ammo for these 3d-printed guns? Isn’t ammunition also tightly controlled / regulated over there?
No clue to the answer to your question but it’s not difficult to load your own ammunition. Gun powder, shells and slugs aren’t usually as heavily regulated in the US I’d assume to some degree that’d be true elsewhere. Can prolly buy it off eBay or craigslist if you really looked.
Then it’s just a matter of measuring and packing it all into a single bullet with a special fitted hand press. Super tedious and time consuming but easy to do. Wanna say old timers did it back when it was cheaper but the only people I know who still do it do it to controll their ammo consistency for either competition shooting or rifle hunting.
This is Tetsuya Yamagami, moments after he shot Shinzo Abe. I think this guy and it happening in Japan are what people mean by the problem is getting worse and spreading to the world.
Further, I think the unspoken part of this is that so much of world’s so-called liberal order is quickly turning towards more authoritarian ways to control their populations, and what’s happening is you’re having small pockets of people starting to feel like they have no political voice or way to get their voice heard politically, because the systems are slowly shutting more and more real citizens out from democratic choice.
I think about this guy a lot, because what happened to Yamagami’s family was straight fucked up and I wouldn’t have heard anything about it at any point if it hadn’t been for him committing a horrible crime which he felt was justified because a fucking cult had ruined his family. Considering the cult of personality we’re dealing with in the US when it comes to unhinged freaks, I really feel like there’s gotta be more disaffected and ignored people around the world like this, because it’s definitely not just happening here. Now, with 3D printed weaponry, they have a chance to violently make their voice heard in a way that is undeniable.
As liberal democracies turn more and more authoritarian to keep control of their societies, you will see more and more of this from the disaffected who bought into the promises of a better society with more security but instead found themselves in an authoritarian hell-hole with no voice or control.
I want to call out something, since I feel a connection is being drawn here that is not valid. His gun was not 3D printed.
Investigative sources said that the gun used in the incident consisted of two metal cylinders wrapped in vinyl tape, which could fire six projectiles when the trigger was pulled. When prefectural police examined the seized weapon, they found it was equipped with an electrical cord and battery and that it was designed to ignite the gunpowder with an electrical current.
Sourced from this site: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220725/p2a/00m/0na/021000c
I’m not taking issue with most of what you said, but FDM 3D printers aren’t the issue here. Making a gun can be done at home with essentially no tools. I don’t think we should get pulled in to blaming societal issues on a single piece of technology.
I’m in a hurry so I’ve left this comment short, I may come back and edit it with more thoughts later.
I find these articles funny. A glock switch can be made out of almost anything from a bit of bent metal sheet to carved wood. 3d printing one is irrelevant. When it comes to guns, the arguments are usually idiotic. I can making nearly anything with a small lathe and mill. The gun problem is a multifaceted cultural problem. Their misuse is largely the result of hopeless disenfranchisement of the poor and average person, along with politically leveraging ignorance and corporate capitalist abuses.
How you doing Squid? Any progress on the food health front?
I’m working with an eating disorder clinic at the moment. We’ll see what happens. Thanks for asking.
Residential printers typically can’t copy money.
Can’t something be built in where it does not allow printing a gun?..
Two different things. Money’s usefulness is in its scarcity and authenticity. So, making fake money identifiable by making real money harder to reproduce renders the fake money worthless.
Unfortunately, adding a watermark to a gun doesn’t really stop it from being a gun.
Let me introduce you to RepRap which is how all home 3D printers were built before there were commercially available printers that didn’t cost $25,000.
It’s like saying “maybe we can stop lathes from turning gun barrels”, which frankly is more of a concern than someone blowing their fingers off printing a plastic gun, but equally impossible to regulate.
