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Defense Distributed is an odd idea for a company. It’s a cooperative, non-profit organisation, designed to help create a blueprint for a 3D gun. It’s the Wikipedia of death and terror. And it says it’ll be ready to start testing its printable shooter before the end of the year.
Cody Wilson, a loose combination of boss of and spokesperson for the company, claims all it’s waiting on now is the relevant paperwork from US authorities, that will allow it to officially begin manufacturing firearms without everyone associated with it being banged up.
This formal approval is expected to arrive in the next few weeks, after which some test weapons will be printed up from a selection of blueprints the company has ready to go. And the required CAD files will eventually be made available for everyone to download and print themselves. [Guardian]
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Does anybody know how easy or difficult it is to get hold of gun powder? If it’s not readily available, it would make the gun pretty useless.
You can make it relatively easily, but I wouldn’t recommend it without any training as you can quite easily blow your hands off.
I’m pretty irresponsible when it comes to that kind of thing and even I wouldn’t want to mess around with it.
What about all the other parts needed to make one of theses thing fire a live round? Barrel, upper receiver, trigger assemble, bolt, firing pin and parts etc. All you are printing out is the lower receiver.
On top of that you’d also need the bullets, which I don’t know about you, but I’ve got no idea where to get any of that stuff in the UK, even if I did want to print out this gun.
Will somebody think of the children!!!
The point as that only the lower receiver is considered a firearm (yes, the single part) and so requires all the associated paperwork and costs to buy. Everything else is easily purchasable by anyone, ever through the mail.
That might be true in the US, but not in the UK. In the UK the barrel and bolt are also considered restricted items.
But the model is intended to be printed by American citizens, it just so happens that this was posted on Giz UK due to it involving tech (3D printing).
Apart from the firing pin, the other parts shouldn’t be too difficult to produce from a 3D printer, even the bullets. In fact, just print a bullet mould instead of the bullet itself. Lead is easy to buy and melt.
Isn’t this just a tad irresponsible ?
Not really. In America it’s perfectly legal to manufacture your own firearms as long as they’re not intended for sale, never will be sold, and you don’t give them away or trade them. Before you say that’s not the case in Britain (it might actually be the same as America, I haven’t really looked into it), it doesn’t matter because you can’t get ammunition without a firearms license (well, those that can would also be able to get the guns as well). A zip gun is much easier and cheaper to make.
You aren’t looking at the bigger picture. A 3D printer capable of making this gun is currently an expensive piece of kit and in any country were guns are legal or just widely available it’s probably cheaper to buy a gun off the black market than print your own. But 3D printers will within 10 years be a cheap as 2D printers now. Given that you don’t need to have a gun licence to buy Ammo in most US states and that these weapons will not be traceable in any way to a point of manufacture you are talking about a major escalation in the gun ownership situation in the US. This will not end well.
This isn’t for criminals at all, like you say 3D printers aren’t cheap and they won’t have them. This is aimed at “makers” who will have them and are also gun enthusiasts, just like machinists who also like guns could make the same receiver on a milling machine. This isn’t going to be a problem in the slightest unless some stupid maker thinks he can make some easy money by selling receivers, but that wouldn’t take long for him to be caught and like I said it’s been possible for machinists for ages without being a problem.
If a criminal wants to make a gun untraceable, all he needs to do is
a) steal one
b) file the barrel
c) use a smooth bore barrel
All of which is laughably easy to do.
Frangible bullets and a brass catcher would also work without sacrificing accuracy, or if you just want to be a bad arse use a muzzle loader (black powder revolvers for example are cheap and easy to get even in the UK).
Oh no, what have you made me search for on Google?! I was just about to close the search page when I realised that I typed “untraceable bullets gun”. Great. Now if I end up in some sort of gun crime my search history will be used against me. This is all your fault.
Suicide just got trendier.