Don't know if you guys have heard about the latest craze involving 3d printed plastic guns People are losing their minds over it. I've seen a liberator (the "gun" in question) be fired. The thing melts after the first shot, and it couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at 10m. It's really strange to me that people are so worried over it, when you need a $500+ 3d printer to make it and it's so crappy, while you can literally go to home depot and build a serviceable slapgun for $7
I think it's more the fact that they are significantly easier to sneak into places where people would generally like there to be no guns, seeing as AFAIK they are made almost entirely of plastic and would thus get past most metal detectors without incident.
Well, yes, but also not so much. You get one shot off. One shot that won't be accurate. And may literally blow up in your face. There's legit concern there, yeah. But the problem is, half of the fear is on a subject that already existed, and conflating the all-plastic POS gun with any 3d printed firearm parts. You can't build an entire AR-15 from 3d printed parts right now, but some people who should kow better think you can. As usual, the problem is an anti-gun politician doesn't know all the facts, often rather simple and easy to research facts, and those mistakes are what the pro-gunners leap on. The more pedantic a point can be made, someone will. It's the cycle of why no gun control will ever happen - unless anti-gun people do the research, pro-gun people pour on the corrections and assertions of how wrong they are. Likewise, pro-gunners use the same patterns and talking points, the anti-gunners nitpicking and cherry-picking away themselves in response. And then rolls around Thoughts and Prayers day again, and it all resumes from step one, no one ever learning that the things they say wrong are exactly what their opponents rely on to muddy the waters of the debate.
I find the US govt has a general issue of "people who don't know anything about a subject being in charge of regulating it" We see this everywhere: Healthcare, Guns, Internet, Economics, Education, even Defense Combine this with the lack of actual dialogue, widespread tribalism and inability to compromise and it's all just a very sorry sight
Not just a US phenomenon. Turns out when politics is a career, career politicians don't know a goddamn thing about anything other than politics. And they're smart, or so they think, and so they know better. So you get people who are expert politicians thinking they know better than actual experts on everything. And yet, almost none of them know how to even ask their staff to get things right, let alone how to google it themselves.
While that may be true of the printed gun itself, the cartridge and bullet still contain enough metal for a detector to pick up. No gun is much danger without ammunition, these ones especially so, because they ain't worth shit for pistol-whipping. For that, you need an old-school solid steel .45.
I'm not anti-gun - but it's already too late for the argument against 3d printed guns. The horse has already bolted. You can't get that djinn back in the bottle. You can make serviceable automatic weapons in any high school metal shop (indeed at least one ww2 vintage weapon was designed to be made in pretty much any metal shop by mechanics if needed). It won't be pretty, but it will be more reliable than a printed plastic one. The Sten gun was like this. Does anyone remember the "zip guns" that were more prevalent in the late 70s in the US? Hardly a tool requiring a degree to make, but easy enough for a high schooler to do. While no-one ever got suspended at my High school for making a gun (that would be expulsion and more than likely time served), several did for making crossbows ... (using leaf spring suspension for the main spring arm) - because here, crossbows have been illegal (in my state) since before they made semi-automatics over x round capacity illegal anyway (1996). There aren't even any plastics capable of containing the heat of a cartridge ignition without melting THAT YOU CAN PRINT WITH with and because of that you're just as likely for it to blow up in your hand. One that uses metals might (laser sintered titanium dust for example), but you're talking quite a few thousand $$ to get one - and if you have the money for that, you can just buy a gun. The titanium dust itself is cheaper than plastic. You can't just plug the printer into your computer and go ... "Cortana ... print me a gun. A big one with lotsa bullets." instantly - it's not a star trek replicator, it takes time to print. You also have to set the printer up first and this generally requires more patience than many people have. Halve that again if they're an apple user. (My sister uses a mac and I had to install her new printer because she couldn't follow even the directions they give you, which aren't overly technical. It's MORE of a PITA even compared to windows.). THEN you have to test it out. Then you have to test print the file. Then you have to tweak it for YOUR printer. And even then, you have to hope it won't foul anything else up during that print run. Yes, with the advantages of the software you can "scale it up" to a larger cartridge - the original is designed for a .22long - but it will more likely detonate in your hand and be even less likely to hit anyone else. The "gun" may be undetectable, but the bullets aren't. If they can smuggle bullets past a metal detector, then someone wasn't doing their job properly (and couple that with explosives residue testing at airports and they'll probably be at least watched. That said, their niche is probably one-shot "assassin" tools, where the wielder doesn't care about being caught. Your "martyrs", if you will. They'll just use whatever tools they have to hand to do the same thing anyway, they always have.
That's pretty much what I was thinking, you're not going to shoot up a shopping mall with one of these, but it's a definitely an option for some nutter to point-blank someone for some bullshit cause. Other likely use case is by gang warfare in nations where gun ownership is heavily restricted (like the UK), handguns are illegal here and very hard to obtain, a 3d-printer? can get one for £200 quid online, if your goals are intimidation and maybe having to shoot someone in close quarters then I can see it being of interesting to enterprising smaller criminal organisations, as for know-how, well it's pretty easy to pay/bully a nerd into getting it all working for you...
It's not just the US, I mean back at the start of this clusterfuck of a goverment, the guy put in charge of the National Health Service was a guy who literally wrote a book on how to make a fuckload of money by undermining and selling off bits of the National Health Service Edit: He's now the foreign secretary, where one of his first actions was to forget his own wife's nationality... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-45004765
And yet, if anyone actually wants to off someone at point blank range, a couple of stabs with a sizable knife or the aforementioned $7 home depot slapper with a 12 gauge buck shell will do a lot more to "further the cause" than a crappy-yet-complicated liberator in .22lr
Better yet, homemade bombs are incredibly easy to make and can be some of the hardest sorts of attacks to spot/stop. While undetectable guns can be a small part of the problem, they're far from the most likely or most dangerous threat, and yet they're treated as if they are by certain segments for political gain. Naturally, that rubs some people the wrong way.
They did that with a classic 1911. Made it from laser-sintered stainless steel. Printed everything but the ammunition and springs (because the springs require heat-treating). Rifled the barrel as it was printing. The shop estimates that it'd cost ~$11,000 based on how long it took to print. My 1911 cost $500. [Edit: The printer they used runs anywhere from $500k to a full million dollars to buy. ] The metal detector at the Boise VA Regional Office is sensitive enough to react to my titanium-frame glasses, which have about as much metal mass as a .22 rimfire. The plate in my spine is enough to set it off. There is more metal in a single .45ACP cartridge than there is in my spine.
Decent idea yes, and it worked for awhile but its generally held now to be a reason for the gradual weakening and then collapse of the empire.
@saint Well, depending on how you look at it, the Roman empire (in one form or the other) lasted between ~1300 years (ab urbe conditia to the Odoaker sending imperial insignia to Byzantium) and ~2300 years (AUC to Byzantium falling to the Turks) (and the Holy Roman Empire considered itself to be a successor to Rome for quite a while after that...). Quite an achievemnt, IMO. True, it wasn't using cursus honorum for the entire period of its existence AFAIK. I haven't however met with it being conisdered a reason for the collapse of the empire - could you point me towards some good text on that? I'd love to learn more :)
A good text? unfortunately no, I've not looked into Roman history for awhile mostly been looking at Renaissance/early modern/WW1(surprisingly little "good' literature on that) this is mostly from memory, which upon writing the below summary i think i got confused, this was a downside of the Cursus Honorum that continued throughout the empire even into its final days it lead to many setbacks and disasters over her history but didn't lead to the downfall, i'm thinking of the other thing i mention which when you only remember the worst parts of both, leads to my earlier assertion. The best way to gain advancement, even into the late periods of the empire was leading successful military campaigns (though there where other paths) so regional governors would gain their position, have a handful of years to make an impression then leave. meaning that they would be very aggressive and could if there where incautious or unprepared lead to shameful defeats and loss of manpower which could be ill afforded towards the end of the empires proper (the Byzantines where more or less like any other feudal society towards the end, gone where the legions and most of Romes glories) what i miss remembered was that a bigger problem was the increasing isolation of the military and their growing ties to their personal commanders. the legions as the empire grew became as second society within Rome (25 years mandatory service will do that) building their own cities around garrisons and gradually getting in fewer and fewer recruits from outside families that had served previously or from whatever tribes had just been subsumed or allowed to settle. meaning most soldiers had little care or respect for the civil government and instead where almost exclusively loyal to their generals. These generals saw them fed, clothed, paid, and rewarded for gallantry and many rewards where meaningless to civilians towards the end (unlike when the legions where still a militia), and soldiers often looked down on as little more than cutthroats. so if a general wanted to be governor of a province or even emperor his men had no reason not to support him as they owned nothing to Rome and everything to him, leading the the seemingly unending civil wars draining the already diminished legions of seasoned manpower.
Yeah, I had minor reconstructive surgery to my knee for a torn ligament in '97 (wow, 21 years ago now) and they used half a dozen titanium barbed staples to re-anchor the ligaments to the bone. they stretched and delaminated (so they weren't a 'clean' tear) as well, so they had to trim, stretch and reattach them. I had to carry a doctor's letter for the next couple of years since my knee would set off the detector if I flew anywhere. Somewhere between 3 and 5 years later, I no longer set them off (because titanium is bio-compatible, bone loves it as scaffolding, and it gets dismantled and replaced with bone over time). Had a friend with a plate in his skull (car accident in early adulthood) that would always set it off (his favourite drunken party trick was to use fridge magnets on his head).
Why can't shops in the United States include sales tax with their prices, everyone else manages it! Not knowing how much something will cost until you get to the till feels so backwards!
Pretty sure it's a psychological thing. "Look how much more you have to pay because of the government and their stupid taxes!"
