You could always make a gun, all you needed was a lathe, some tooling, a hacksaw a file, some steel stock and a bunch of patience.
Printing a gun is just another way to get to the goal, possibly an easier one but one with its own unique challenges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm
The differentiating factor for a gun from printed ABS is not that you've made it at home, but that it is very hard to detect the gun itself (you'd have a hard time not using metal at all, especially for the parts mentioned above and then there is the ammo).
You can bet that if you get caught with one trying to board an airplane that there will be very serious repercussions, you won't be able to say you left it in your carry-on luggage by accident. Well, you can say that but good luck to get anybody to believe you.
So, printing a gun is not the same as buying a gun, it is the same as making a fire-arm at home through conventional means.
On another note, the design of a working firearm, especially from unproven materials, is not something you muck around with unless you know your materials science. A gun that explodes when fired could have some pretty nasty effects on you and bystanders.
Yes, some jurisdictions aside you can make one AR15 lower receiver on your own without any paperwork, fees, checks, or permission. Understanding is that nobody going thru that much effort is going to waste it by doing something stupid (if there's criminal intent there are many far easier ways to acquire one).
The issue here is: where's the line on making one? You can make one yourself legally, but if you hire someone else to knowingly make it they'll need an expensive big-hassle manufacturer's license. The key is "knowingly", as up until recently it was pretty obvious to the machinist what he was being asked to do. Now, with "printing", you just upload the pattern for what is otherwise just another odd-shaped chunk of metal, a computer & machine crank one out, and the result gets sent back to you with a minimum of comprehension by any humans involved - are _you_ "making" it? or is the printing house "making" it and, in effect, selling it to you? The legal line has been blurred.
If the legal fiction is that the lower receiver of that gun is the gun, then legally that didn't change so the method of manufacturing it is not relevant.
Hiring someone to produce it while obfuscating the intent is not gray, it puts you in the docket. The printing house is acting on your explicit instruction, and if they don't review the orders (hard to do, after all, you can't know each and every prohibited item) then you are still on the hook.
Trained machinist or 3D printer operator the change is only in the material of the produced item.
As for not being able to whittle that part from wood, there are many kinds of wood that are much stronger than the ABS wire that a 3D printer uses.
And if it can't be made out of those kinds of wood then it certainly can't be made out of plastic printed ABS (if you expect the gun to function).
A sufficiently large quantitative change is a qualitative change. Also the debate is ultimately not about this one thing today, but about a future in which one can download and print an open-source AK-47-equivalent with only slightly more difficulty than printing a picture.
I'd contend this isn't "printing" or the definition of "making it yourself" that you'd consider here in 2011; it's a new semantic category that very few people are prepared to grapple with, least of all the law. I'd contend the law is yet to catch up with what computer programs permit people to do, it really isn't ready for how computer programs will increasingly freely impinge upon the real world. There is simply no legal category to handle this question, and many conventional ethical ones can't handle it very well either.
The only solution is to go back to first principles, but most people can't really reason on first principles.
True, but I submit this is not a sufficiently large quantitative change.
> Also the debate is ultimately not about this one thing today, but about a future in which one can download and print an open-source AK-47-equivalent with only slightly more difficulty than printing a picture.
I humbly suggest there is more to it than that, and will still be more to it than that in a future in which 3D printers can print composite materials strong enough to survive the extreme pressures of a 7.62x39mm cartridge firing a bullet down a long rifled barrel. Even if that were possible, the result of the AK-47 print job would be a whole mess of parts, including tiny pins, springs, etc. With the exception of the lower receiver, all of these parts can be bought (in the US at least) online with no government oversight or regulation. Once the parts are obtained, they must be assembled, which is not difficult for the mechanically inclined, but is considerably more difficult than printing a picture.
So, before this quantitative change:
* Obtain AK-47 spec and assembly instructions * Obtain necessary tools for assembly * Order AK-47 parts kit online * Buy AK-47 lower receiver from firearms dealer, or assemble yourself from sheet metal * Assemble AK-47
After this quantitative change:
* Obtain AK-47 spec and assembly instructions * Obtain AK-47 3D printer files * Obtain assembly tools printer files * Print AK-47 parts * Print AK-47 lower receiver * Assemble AK-47
Hardly a revolutionary shift.
Legally I don't see any sticky issue here, and if there's an ethical dilema I don't see it. Having said that, I agree with the general proposition that the law has not kept pace with technological innovation, and that there are areas in which this lag has serious consequences.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcKwOo7dmM
Mechanics is easy.
There is one guy who got arrested in Brazil because he protected his house with improvised guns made with mousetraps.
But it (kind of) is, specifically with regards to US law. I mean, that's the point. There is a huge market for AR-15 upgrade parts, and everything else can be acquired easily with no regulation.
And yes, this could be made at home with old technology, but it requires a fair amount of dedication and skill. Downloading a file and clicking 'print' is a significantly different process.
To specifically address that point, you could use a 5 axis machining center and a standardized control sequence ('G-codes') to do the exact same thing.
I think the bigger difference is the amount of funds that needs to be put on the table for the machine itself.
Once you have the rig set up for a part the major operations are mounting the blank, hitting 'start' and removing the finished part (assuming it can be made in one pass).
It's not clear to me if a rifle part printed from plastic at home is usable.
I wonder how the manufacturing of these thing are regulated normally: Can you have a professional place make 2-3 of these for you without telling them what it is?
Reminds me of the case where Phil Zimmerman noticed that exporting crypto was a form of arms export, but exporting books was protected by the First Amendment. So he published the source code to PGP and shipped it.
It wouldn't surprise me if it were perfectly functional. The lower receiver on an AR houses the trigger group, buffer tube, magazine, and grip. Not really a lot of high-stress parts there. The barrel, bolt, gas tube, etc that have to withstand 60k+ PSI of pressure are all part of the upper receiver.
Legally, only the lower is classified as a firearm in the United States (meaning they have to be transferred through a licensed firearms dealer if shipped); the upper and the rest of the gun are simply parts and can be shipped directly by UPS/FedEX/USPS.
Printing full metal parts is possible but there are some penalties, relatively low tensile strength is one of those.
Just kidding, but truthfully speaking a lot of the news on HN takes a very California-centric view.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
...a decision by the United States Supreme Court ruling that under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, the United States Congress may criminalize the production and use of home-grown cannabis even where states approve its use for medicinal purposes.
Here in the UK, just being in possession of a home-made handgun is going to get you a hefty (mandatory minimum: 5 years) prison sentence.
Being in possession of part of a rifle or shotgun might be legal, depending on whether you have a firearms license for that particular device. But I'm pretty sure AR-15s are blanket banned (semi-auto rifles have been illegal since the aftermath of the Hungerford massacre).
Now.
Is it legal (or not) to merely download the 3D model over the internet in the UK? What if you, for example, printed it out ... but after applying a distortion that renders it unfit for use as the receiver of an AR-15? What if you've scaled it up by a factor of two, so it could in principle be the receiver of a 1:2 scale (large) copy of an AR-15?
(What if, in the USA, you download the file coding for the magazine and expand it to hold 30 rounds?)
Edge conditions: chewy!
I thought the idea behind the receiver for the AR15 is that with a slightly different receiver that the AR15 becomes an automatic weapon (aka. an M16)? Or are we talking about the semi-auto (AR15) receiver?
This article doesn't really get into the question of printing then subsequently transferring a receiver to another person. Were that to occur, I assume that the person who printed it would be regulated in exactly the same manner as any other gun manufacturer.
Transferring it is going to be treated the same as any other firearm transfer in the U.S. as well.
i.e., expect the BATFE to get rather upset with you if you manufacture a receiver intending to transfer it to someone else without being a licensed firearms manufacturer.
Manufacturing a firearm for personal use is generally good to go as long as you stay within the bounds of NFA, etc regulations.
So really, this doesn't change anything. This brings preexisting truths more prominently to the public discussion.
You can get an AR-15 lower blank for $100 or less.
You can buy the tooling to allow you to use a drill press to make the receiver M-16 ready for not much more.
http://www.cncguns.com/tooling.html
No heat-treating necessary (it's just aluminum). Yes, you'll need a drill press.
http://www.amazon.com/Bazooka-How-Build-Your-Own/dp/08736473...
Guns really are not that complicated. I wish I had the time and the cojones to actually try to make one of these.
http://armsofamerica.com/ak47762flatwithrailstrunnionholes19...
You do not need a license or a permit, just access to machine tools. Oh, and $22 for the flat.
I think when the day arrives that we can just print out whatever we can get a blueprint to the world will be so drastically changed that our current biggest concerns won't even be relevant anymore.
