I understand the intent, but feel that there are so many other loopholes that put much worse weapons on the street than a printer. Besides, my prints can barely sustain normal use, much less a bullet being fired from them. I would think that this is more of a risk to the person holding the gun than who it’s pointing at.
There’s a community that builds 3d printed guns, and those don’t last very long either. They’re not printing barrels, they’re just printing the trigger housing and grip. They go out and buy the dangerous bits.
This is all a bit pointless.
Even more pointless when you consider that once you have a 3d printer, you can make a lot of the components for a second 3d printer, and go out and buy the other parts, without ever buying a 3d printer. Now you have two ghost gun machines!! Oh the horror.
This is the reason why I need education. CNc machines are the only tools you need. Fast food is probably just CNC assembled.
It’s all CNC. All the way down. Always was.
Seriously, 3d printers are just CNC machines, they use the same code the mill I use that was built in 1989 uses.
Yes, they added some new g codes for the extruder bit (even that is just used as an axis), but otherwise you could hand code a 3d print. Probably not a good idea, but could be done. CNC is cool
Not to mention the ammo. 3d printed guns are useless without real ammo.
Isn’t that an old Chris Rock line. Just make bullets cost $5k each
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Tbh, you print em right they’ll last a good 2k rnds and you can rifle the barrel with ECM at home these days, they’d get “the job” done, save an extended firefight, and then “NY reload.”
That said I agree this is pointless.
A self replicating 3D printer? I like it.
The reprap movement was exactly that. A self replicating rapid prototyper. While it never reached true replication, it got close enough to cause an explosive growth of the community. That, in turn led to the huge number of low cost suppliers and designs we have now.
Yeah it’s called RepRap
As others have said, the RepRap concept was trying to be that. At first the idea was to 3D print as much of the machine as possible, but what it realistically achieved was you would buy metal frame rails, nuts & bolts, the hot end assembly (a glorified hot glue gun), motors, and a controller board (in many cases literally an arduino) and 3D print connectors and bracketry necessary to hold the thing together. Josef Prusa took the “Mendel” pattern Reprap and simplified it into his now ubiquitous upright plate style “Prusa i3” pattern.
I’ve built several 3D printers from “scratch” and at least 20 from kits. My own 3D printer has printed many of its own parts.
They saw the x-files and got scared
Do I need a background check to buy a CNC? Or a lathe?
I mean, kind of, yes. CNCs have been one of the big items for export controls. Especially if they can be used to build weapons, parts for nuclear subs, etc.
Generally speaking, lathes and milling machines must be licensed for export if their accuracy exceeds six microns. Grinding machines are controlled at four microns. The Wassenaar Arrangement controls all machine tools capable of simultaneous, five-axis motion, regardless of machining accuracy.
In the US you don’t need a license to purchase a CNC. Even items with export restrictions like night vision goggles (Under ITAR) can be bought by anyone and shipped to your door. The export controls would only come into effect upon you exporting them.
Besides not needing a license for export controlled items within the country, you don’t need a 6 micron precision lathe
Until you want to replicate your dick
Just export controls though?
six microns
Given that human chromosomes are on the order of 5 to 10 microns, I am thinking this export regulation doesn’t apply to the hobby market. This is “use the machine in a clean room” level precision.
@FearTheCron @YourAvgDuckHead According to encyclopedia Britannica, I’d say a fairly reliable source, your out by a factor of 100. https://www.britannica.com/science/chromosome
A human blood cell is approx 10 micron long, according to this… https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2998922/
Apologies for the pedantry, I couldn’t help it.Hehe, I just grabbed the number off wolfram alpha’s size comparison. Wouldn’t surprise me if they are wrong, not sure where they scrape the data from. Anyway, my point stands, six microns is still stupidly small. Some dust or hair on the cutting edge and your precision is now out the window.
Oh wow, TIL! I guess I’m not surprised, consumer GPS is kneecapped at a lower accuracy for similar reasons
It used to be. It was called selective availability, where the DoD could dial up/down the accuracy for commercial receivers. However, it was discontinued in 2000.
No not at all
Not yet at the rate these clown lawmakers are going.
Will they require a background check for CNC machines and lathes as well?
They’re eventually just going to demand you’re under AI monitored video surveillance at all times, even while bathing.
Oh yes, AI Daddy, surveil me harder!
Kinky
On a positive note, you’ll be able to buy different subscriptions, so it’s not a complete loss for you. The medical subscription for the probe, which will notify you if it spots any polyps or rectal cancer. Or a “recreational” subscription, where you can engage the vibrating bit that’s near to your prostate.
Oh the joy when you get a notification on your phone saying “what did we find in your rectum? Pay 50USD to find out” and it’s a piece of corn.
Routers and lathes, both CNC and manual … and calipers! The name sounds like something to do with bullets and they look like tiny machine guns.
Pretty soon they would have to ban backyard foundries, aluminum cans, molding sand, metal files, and drill bits!
Why them flat bastards!
(A flatbastard is a common file type)
Is this a real problem? How many crimes are being committed with 3D printed guns?
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I’m reminded of Leland Yee. California politician who was in favor of gun control all while doing gun running stuff himself. Guess he felt gun control was good for business.
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No, but often gun control is an “if it stops even one” type of thing. Most of it is predicated on mass shootings which are .001% of gun violence in an attempt to ban the gun that kills <500 out of 60,000 people a year.
Owning a ghost gun is a crime, right?
Nearly 500 were recovered last year. https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/public-safety/2023/09/20/nypd-unit-combatting-the-growing-problem-of-ghost-guns
Owning a ghost gun is a crime, right?
(Ignoring the fact that “ghost gun” is a meaningless and intentionally emotionally charged term)
In New York, yes. In the vast majority of the US, no. It’s illegal to file the serial number off an existing firearm, but 100% legal in most states to manufacture your own unserialized firearms for personal use. Just cannot be sold/transferred.
I’d note the article you linked says nothing about how many of those are actually 3D printed, it is infinitely easier to deface the serial number on an existing firearm than it is to 3D print one.
Ignoring the fact that “ghost gun” is a meaningless and intentionally emotionally charged term
A ghost gun is what Emporio used to escape from Pucci in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean
From the picture in that article, those guns would blow up in the shooter’s hand.
What a shame that would be
I can kind of see the logic.
Like book piracy was never a huge thing because you’d need a hell of a set up to make a book from scratch. Music piracy however…
I’m sure a decently skilled craftsman could make a decent firearm with a short trip to Home Depot, but the average Joe can’t make that happen too easily. With a 3D printer, you could have a gun with next to zero skill. Like a decently motivated person is going to find a gun anyway, but this maybe addresses the less motivated people/crimes of passion, etc.
That being said, if these are the same people advocating for a waiting period, they obviously don’t know how long 3D printing a gun takes.
Edit: for those downvoting, I’m not saying this is a good idea. I think the same result could be had by going after whoever is hosting the design files. Like at least keep them off thingiverse and make them slightly hard to find.
Book piracy was huge I don’t know what you’re talking about. You could get professionally printed books or you could always just photocopy them.
Ebook piracy is a thing. Often done by the same professor who wrote the textbook.
I mean before ebooks we’re a thing. Like before music piracy was a thing.
In other news: virtue signaling politicians are considering banning [scary items that their core voters know nothing about] in order to appear tough on crime, while avoiding doing the logical things experts recommend, because that would look bad in the eyes of the voters. Instead the only consequence is extending the stigma related to excons resulting in greater recidivism
Googling 3d printed gun homicide returns a story from Rhode Island in 2020 (where the police can’t figure out if the gun was actually printed), an attempted murder in Reykjavík in 2022, and this story from 2022 that claims a total of 44 arrests were made related to 3d printed guns… world wide https://3dprint.com/291684/3d-printed-gun-arrests-tripled-in-less-than-two-years-3dprint-com-investigates/amp/
In contrast there were 48117 firearms related deaths in the US during the same period.
Maybe statistics and proportions should be a core part of math from an early age?
These guns are increasingly being found at crime scenes. You may not like NY’s solution, but the problem is growing.
I have two issues with your comment, and the tldr is this “I don’t think the problem warrants the resources needed” and “I don’t think the proposed bill will solve anything, problem or not”.
These guns are increasingly being found at crime scenes.
Probably, I don’t have a source for that, but I suspect that you’re not wrong. What I would like to know is the proportions of gun grimes involving 3d-printed guns vs gun crimes in total. I suspect what others have said in this post, about the percentage of gun related crimes that involve 3d-printed guns, to be within a rounding error, to also be correct.
You may not like NY’s solution, […]
It’s not that I don’t like the “solution”. It’s that I don’t accept the proposed ban as being a solution in the first place. I don’t want to come off as being snarky, I just wanted to make sure that my understanding of the word “solution” was correct. English not being my first language, I sometime miss the salient details. So, I took a moment and googled “definition solution”. According to “Oxford Languages” a solution is a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation.
Can you in all honesty claim, that you believe that limiting acquiring 3d-printing capabilities, in a single state, will reduce the use of 3d-printed parts in gun crimes?
[…] but the problem is growing.
Again, the occurrence of 3d-printed guns or gun parts may be growing, but is it actually a problem big enough that it has to be dealt with? And with the resources necessary to enforce this proposal? Isn’t gun manufacturing already limited? As others have pointed out, why not limit access to other tools you could use to make guns?
As OP pointed out, the intent may be noble, but the attempt is futile.
This is 'murica. we use Webster’s here.
(sorry. couldn’t resist. you are correct. this isn’t a solution.)
Sources please?
Some things cannot be effectively regulated in this manner. At all.
There is simply no way to stop people from building their own 3D printers. There are too many open source designs, and they can be built with very simple parts that are readily available at the hardware store. Most hobbyist-level 3D printers basically come as a kit that they have to assemble themselves anyways. What happens next? Background checks to buy stepper motors? Background checks to buy a microcontroller?
To me this is like trying to mandate government backdoors in encryption algorithms. There is literally nothing that would stop criminals from just using an open source encryption algorithm that doesn’t have a backdoor, so you end up just making it so all legitimate communications are less secure than they should be.
What the fuck? You dont even need that for buying a fucking knife
I think some people would say the ability to print a gun is more deadly then a knife.
But I kind of agree with you.
If we start licensing people to own stuff that has the potential to do harm, then eventually you are going to run into a never ending list of household items and laws of natural physics:
- Bleach
- Vinegar
- Salt
- Sugar
- Chlorine
- Gas
- Natural gas
- Methane
- Fertilizers
- Electricity
- Paper
- Fire
- Propane
- Etc.
A surprising enlightening read. Thank you for sharing.
99% of the what I’ve seen is more deadly to the user than to anyone on the receiving end. You’d really be better off with a pipe pistol or shotgun.
But yeah, almost anything could be dangerous depending on how it’s applied.
If you’ve only seen the liberator and the harlot, the hoffman lowers and FGC9_2 0s? Well…
Looked into the ones you mentioned, both require non-printed parts.
Those are better than what I had seen, but aren’t even on the same scale as what someone can make with a mil or a lathe casually in a couple days
Of course they do, but the serialized part that is run through NICs is printable, the rest you can order online or get at home depot.
Of course plastic, extruded or otherwise, is less strong than metal. That wasn’t the question. You can get a good few thousand rounds out of those before they crack and when they do, they crack along a layer and are not “more dangerous for the user” by any stretch of the imagination.
We already do that, with guns. Precendent is set.
The understandable difference being that a gun has but one purpose: Kill people.
Whereas everything else I have mentioned, including 3d printers are multi-purpose. Not intended to kill, but to serve multiple roles.
Though, it is a good point that few devices could be cobbled together to make infinite guns so long as you had material. So I am not saying it isn’t a class of it’s own, just where does the logic end with that point?
Is it only legal for a company to print guns? How does a license alone protect people? I don’t think that is something I could answer.
The thing is, banning guns is giving them an inch. NYC is already trying to grab 3d printers. Hell the ATF infamously made showlaces into unregistered machine guns, and a felony. https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2010/01/25/shoestring-machine-gun/
And abroad, the UK went after knives.
Never think they’ll stop at guns, because they won’t. Its slippery slope, but that slope is supported by historical evidence.
Isn’t it lucky where that slippery slope starts?
It doesn’t start before guns, with things like high explosives, despite them being arguably “arms” and inarguably more useful in a tyrant-overthrowing war.
And it doesn’t start after guns with knives and all the other things you’re sure they’re going to take, even though they could have taken them at any point in the past 20 years.
Nope, the slippery slope starts exactly at the point it cuts into the profits of the gun lobby and the convenience of reactionaries, the moment they “grab guns” by introducing things like “licenses issued at the completion of a background check, safety and operation test and demonstrated ability to store safely”.
The pro-gun community sure hit the jackpot there.
Edit: Oh also, it was the modified rifle that was considered a “machine gun”, or the specific device made from a shoelace designed to convert it to full auto. This is so fuckwits can’t circumvent laws against fully automatic weapons, carrying and selling devices to illegally modify the weapon and then claiming “but its not on the gun so it doesn’t count!”.
That entire linked blog post could be completely undermined by adding the word “part” to the initial letter.
People dismiss the slippery slope as a logical fallacy, but I think that’s a mistake. If there are enough people fighting for whatever is at the bottom of the slope, I think it’s a valid argument. Was repealing Roe the end of the abortion rights debate?
They dismiss it because it’s bullshit. Every stop on the slope is not inevitable.
In this particular case, why is the pro-gun community able to prevent changes to gun laws – despite those laws being deeply flawed and with only a minority of Americans supporting them – but somehow unable to prevent the floodgates after that?
The response the gun lobby wants to hear is “they gubbermint won’t do it because they’re scared we’ll shoot them!” but it’s pure bravado. Grossly negligent gun laws haven’t prevented the American government from doing things to its citizens that would make China blush and the pro-gun crowd didn’t even change their vote, let alone sacrifice their lives to prevent it.
Because everything is a bullshit slippery slope to them. “Oh you want to get rid of the second amendment? What’s next? The first amendment? The fourth?”
Nope. Just the second. It’s repealing an amendment, not dabbling with heroin. They’re not going to say “oh why not, maybe one more”.
Making the “responsible” part of “responsible gun owner” mandatory is not going to cause the collapse of civilisation.
Zip guns have existed for a long, long time, but nobody’s going to legislate serious controls for buying building supplies. I could walk into any hardware store and come out with the materials to build a gun that fires real bullets.
Don’t you just need a pipe of the right size capped at one end, and a nail?
Yeah, a 3/4 inch pipe will fit a 12 gauge shell pretty well, and some pipes will stand a lot of psi.
Luty SMG is an improvement on that. For 3d printers check out the FGC 9. Neither are hard.
People also build potato gun powerful enough to put on through a car door and then some
By that logic, they should ban water pipes to stop people from making water pipe shotguns
Must pass a background check before entering Home Depot.
You mean Crime depot
Hey congress, so uhhh… you can 3d print a 3d printer
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That’s hilarious, assuming they only regulate prebuilts or full kits, all you’d need to do is something like add everything from a voron parts list to your cart to get around it. I wonder if sellers would also be able to offer partial kits to bypass it too (like offering a frame kit, x axis kit, extruder kit, etc and you just add all to cart)
The thing is, if 3D printed guns were a significant problem (and not primarily just an excuse to do nothing about failing gun laws), your situation would still be a massive improvement.
Domestic terrorism is planned. At some point, every mass shooter has thought about how they could kill the most people, with the least effort and lowest chance of failure.
And of course when they can walk into a gun store and buy cheap, semi-automatic weapons on a whim – even with a long history of red flags – that’s exactly what they do.
Sure, maybe they could kill more people with a bomb. But they’d have to learn how to build one, then actually build it without being caught or blowing their hands off. On top of all of that, there’s no for-profit death cult for explosives so many of the most effective tools will bring men in suits to your door.
The reality is if they had to buy, build and tune a Voron, then print a gun, then clean up the spaghetti and print another gun, then test the gun wouldn’t explode in their hands many of them simply would just try and stab people instead (or better yet, just do their suicide without taking innocent people with them).
Means reductions has been proven to reduce suicide rates. Mass shootings are a form of suicide.
This proposal is just an awkward attempt to address an issue early, because they can do so without the gun lobby sicking their lawyers and reactionaries on them, who are the ones pushing "Why bother with gun control when you can just 3D print full auto weapons?“ in the first place.
Just with household items you could already come up with half a dozen options that are better than a gun, kitchen knife, or explosives.
Security is fragile and we are kind of lucky that there aren’t too many intelligent manicas.
If any of those (conspicuously unnamed) household items were used to kill even half as many people as guns, there would absolutely be legislation to reduce the public safety risk.
If that legislation failed as routinely as America’s gun laws do, it would be improved or replaced until it worked.
Say goodbye to your pipe clog cleaner.
Baking lye roll at home? That’s NaOH too.
Old car battery or battery acid somewhere? H2SO4
Chlorix? People have accidently killed themself by releasing Chlorine. That’s why there are warnings to not mix it with other cleaning agents.
There is far more in a normal household and don’t even touched on the old stuff still laying around.
You might say those are not lethal: Panic is a strong weapon and an attacker has the advantage that he chooses the where, when and how with as much planning/preperation as he likes.
Yet with all these amazing weapons of mass destruction in their pantry, every single domestic terrorist just goes and buys a gun instead.
I’m sure the executives over at Chlorox are thrilled to hear that if radicalised psychopaths started killing and maiming thousands of people a year with their products, you’d fight to protect their profits.
But I’m not interested in solving every vague act of violence you’re able to inflict on the people in your imagination, I’m interesting in solving the violence that is happening right now, to real people, using a specific tool.
You just described how guns are regulated.
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So it’s almost like the guns are the issue 😩 I can’t believe this
You wouldn’t download a gun
I don’t have a use for one. A car though? I’d download the fuck out of a car.
Make it a bicycle and I guess it’s almost feasible.
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I agree that this is a boogeyman law.
I don’t understand the threat to revenue streams. From gun manufacturers? Would anybody who is allowed to purchase a gun bother with a 3D printed one other than for the novelty of it?
My biggest gripe is that I feel that politicians usually don’t get involved in creating laws until way late. Think laws around the regulation of AI or cloning or genetically modifying humans. Is there a credible threat related to printed weaponry? I seriously doubt it.
I saw something similar a few weeks ago on the national news to allow local police to shoot drones around regulated airspaces. In this case it’s a football game. The stadium security said that a drone flew in and distributed pamphlets but could have easily carried in a bomb. Again, this is a theoretical threat, but they’re more likely concerned about illegal filming of a sporting event.
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3d printed guns are an excellent boogey man for manufacturers of not-gun things that 3d printers can make much better than guns.
Performant horseshit that will never pass.
Louis says NYC is stupid enough
I’m just waiting for him to get his first Texas property tax bill and realize he shat his pants, upped stakes, and ran away from one form of capitalist hellhole to another. Austin’s about to hit a brick frickin’ wall with all the tech and crypto bros realizing that maybe the brutal heat and humidity, high property taxes, high sales tax, shittier than you’d think nightlife, and lack of legal weed aren’t worth avoiding personal income tax for.
Probably he will not escape capitalist hellhole. EU is too far away.
You can make a gun with anything
Well, not anything (if you actually think that’s possible, then I have a challenge for you: make a functioning gun out of cheese), but an average hardware store should have everything you need to produce something capable of firing a shot.
Usually part of 3D printed guns aren’t 3d printed. I’d bet you could make a one-time-use gun out of cheese, but the firing pin and springs would probably have to be made of something else to use a traditional round.
If you go with a gunpowder charge ignited with a flame, it’d be much easier. I’m sure there’s even a cheese that could sustain a flame to ignite it with too. You could even make a cheese bullet.
The future of warfare: dairy.
Extremely effective in the upcoming revolt against the dictatorship of the lactose-intolerant. The tolerance of intolerance is intolerance!
The milk wars Patent pending
if you actually think that’s possible, then I have a challenge for you: make a functioning gun out of cheese
Sounds like something Mythbusters would’ve taken on back in the day lol
I reckon you could do it with Himalayan Chhurpi (yak) cheese.
Some people find it so hard they literally can’t eat it.
Even if you freeze the cheese to make it more solid ?
Fine, hard mode challenge: tissue paper!
Give me water, corn starch and a hydrolic press
“Three-dimensionally printed firearms, a type of untraceable ghost gun, can be built by anyone using a $150 three-dimensional printer,” Rajkumar wrote in a memorandum explaining the bill. “This bill will require a background check so that three-dimensional printed firearms do not get in the wrong hands.”
… No way an ender 3 is going to produce something that doesn’t blow up in your hand.
so. i suggest people get that 150 dollar lol-printer. Should take care of itself.
If you think people aren’t printing firearms with an Ender 3, you are a fool.
an Ender 3’s print quality is too low to reliably handle any of the critical components, even for one or two uses. something like the defcad AR lower receiver (which is for some odd reason designated as “the firearm” under ATF regulations…) can absolutely be printed, but not reliably by an ender 3- at least not a stock ender 3. (the defcad team was using resin printers for the dimensional accuracy.)
in any case, you can go to any big box hardware store, drop around 30 bucks in plumbing parts and some quality time with a dremel will produce a fully automatic firearm. should we now regulate plumbing hardware?
Someone assassinated the former Japanese PM with a block of wood, two small pieces of pipe, and some simple electronics, and that was extremely advanced for an amateur hand crafted firearm
Spend enough time in the sticks as a teenager and I guarantee a pipe shotgun will basically materialize out of thin air at some point
You don’t print the explody bits; you have to purchase things like the barrel and the trigger assembly.
However, I know an engineer at Sig Sauer who printed his own gun and he’s never fired it while holding it…so, still prone to eventual catastrophic failure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
At that point though, you may as well start regulating the purchase of lumber, since it sounds like you could just as easily make the printed components in a basic workshop as with a 3d printer
I suppose technically you could but it would be a hell of a lot of work and you’d need detailed drawings.
The 3d model already has all of the geometry and hole locations required from the manufacturer.
If you know your printer well, all you do is download the model, slice it and press play.
If you have the 3d model, you already have the drawings. Quite literally. Just need to print off some views with measurements, if you want it on paper, otherwise, use the CAD model and get measurements as needed.
At that point, it’s just down to having the tools, skills, and material. Someone with good skills, tools, and material could make the equivalent parts faster and of better quality than a bed-slinger. Someone without the skills… well, they’ll probably have time to build the skills in the process.
Now, when it comes to materials, I think that there’s definite risk there. Wood often exhibits worse shear strength along its grain than well-tuned printers do along layers (a good example of this weakness can be seen in the rear totes of old Stanley-Bailey bench planes - it is a minority of them that have not sheared where the handle meets the mounting section). So, that has to be taken into account in laying out the part in the raw material.
so, still prone to eventual catastrophic failure ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Everything will fail eventually, the question is how long it will take and more importantly if the failure can be predicted.
Not sure how to tell you this, but however amusing… you are wrong. An Ender 3 in the hands of even a moderately experienced 3D hobbyist can absolutely produce a functional firearm.
not really. Well let me put it this way. The firearms that are entirely 3d printed are basically one-shot weapons.
the firearms that are single-printed components (or maybe more,) aren’t printing components that are part of the firing mechanism. for example, the DefCad team, they’re printing lower receiver for an AR. All the lower receiver does is holds the magazine in place for feeding into the chamber. For some technically obscure reason, it’s the part that is defined as “the” firearm for the purposes of registration.
the reason most ghost guns aren’t actually being printed is because there’s easier ways to get better firearms. Like driving to a state that allows the gunshow loophole and buying them cheap and flipping them in NY or whatever. printed ghost guns are… relatively uncommon, overall.
yes it can
