Re: Idiot
Erm? Name me a State of the US which was a country before joining the US. Most of them were colonies of other countries, Great Britain, France, Spain, Netherlands etc...
'Liberator': Proof that you can't make a working gun in a 3D printer
People are missing one important point about the "Liberator" 3D-printed "plastic gun": it isn't any more a gun than any other very short piece of plastic pipe is a "gun". Parts for the Liberator 3D printed pistol1 You can take my Liberator ... and shove it Seriously. That's all a Liberator is: a particularly crappy pipe, …
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Sunday 12th May 2013 22:19 GMT SDoradus
All the first thirteen
Following the declaration of independence, and before the first articles of confederation (which promoted a "perfect and indissoluble union"), all the colonies represented by the alternating red and white stripes on the original US flag. Thirteen of them, as I recall. That would include the original Virginia, Rhode Island, et cetera.
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Friday 10th May 2013 15:49 GMT Aldous
FUD and Back Pats
Anti gun lobby will froth at the mouth and get this banned/pulled as a small win on the way to a wider ban
Pro gun lobby will let this get banned/pulled as a way to throw anti gun a bone. After all 3d printed guns mean no more sales for Bushmaster!
In the meantime the debate around gun control suffers another wound as both sides crank up the hype and FUD. For example there has been hype around this in the UK yet getting ammunition is not easy (without suitable licenses) and even the powder is controlled. Now in the USA where you can buy ammo at walmart or any other large store it might be a slight issue.
This thing is pathetic as the article mentions. Zip guns are deadlier, even the ones Tom Sachs (an artist) made purely to turn in and get $300 would be more dangerous. As a proof of concept it works but if you applied the FUD to this its equivalent to saying a kit aircraft is a homemade b52 because you can fly it around and drop rocks on people
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Friday 10th May 2013 15:49 GMT Anonymous Blowhard
"3D printing at the moment is basically pretty useless."
No it isn't; I've seen some great work done with 3D printers for producing prototype parts, test jigs (to make sure that supplier parts are the correct shape), and for use in mould making.
The airheads who see 3D printing as a manufacturing technique are probably going to be disappointed, but for real engineers 3D printing is another valuable tool for the design process.
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Friday 10th May 2013 17:20 GMT Dave 126
Ten years ago, the phrase was 'Rapid Prototyping' (not 'additive manufacturing'), of which 3D printing was only one method. Other techniques include Stereolithography, Laminated Object Modelling (using a laser cutter to cut cross-sections out of paper which are then stacked and glued) and Selective Laser Sintering - though the latter is used more for end-use parts in aerospace, and could happily make a gun... just as any reasonably well-equipped machine shop could.
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Saturday 11th May 2013 20:51 GMT harmjschoonhoven
Re: But...but....
From the Dutch law on firearms (Wet wapens en munitie, translated):
"Category I 7° other objects that can form a serious personal threat as indicated by Our Minister or that look like a weapon appropriate for threat or extortion."
So no need for a Liberator here, just print your Walther P5 in soap and paint it black.
BTW the Liberator seems as good as the gun that exploded and killed James II of Scotland at the siege of Roxburgh in 1460.
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Friday 10th May 2013 15:50 GMT SirDigalot
Saturday night specials..
already fall under the category "junk guns" in many state rules, a lot of them are even shunned by gun people and are limited to observational relics only and not really to be used.
at least they were metal..
however I think it is a cool enough experiment, you never know unless you try, if we all discredited things like this without even trying we would get no where.
<<<<<<<< the one with the higgs-boson detector
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Sunday 12th May 2013 22:24 GMT SDoradus
Scaling rules apply
The reason an ant can survive falling from a height a thousand times greater than its length - equivalent to a fall from a mile up for a human - is that strength scales as the cross-section of the limbs and body, so as the square of length; but the weight it has to support scales as the cube of length.
And similarly for Irish cannon vs Liberator. The smaller you make the tube, the stronger it will be, for a given material. Even leather.;.
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Friday 10th May 2013 16:28 GMT sisk
Actually kids have been making DIY guns for a long time. I'll bet if you live in America and ask around most of us know someone who shoved a bullet into a metal pipe (or, in my dad's case, a hollowed out ball-point pen) and whacked the primer with a nail. It's not one of those things that all boys do growing up, but its not at all unheard of either.
Also, in the US you don't need any special license to make a gun provided you intend to keep it for yourself. You need the license to sell or give away said homemade gun, but not to build it. Just a relative little factoid.
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Friday 10th May 2013 15:52 GMT BillG
it's turned out to be politically impossible to institute any serious controls on real guns there [in the USA]
It's not that - it's that it's a practical impossibility to ban the illegal importation of guns in the USA.
Great Britain and Australia can successfully ban guns because they are island nations. Airplanes and dock ports can be easily monitored. Whereas the USA has the longest unprotected borders in the world. Geez, you have people coming over from Mexico carrying entire dining room sets. How easy is it going to be to have Mexican drug runners start selling guns?
And in an amusing twist of irony, the same politicians in the USA that want to repeal the 2nd Amendment and ban all guns, are the same politicians that want to keep these long unprotected borders unmonitored and unprotected.
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Friday 10th May 2013 23:47 GMT Mephistro
" Mexico is one of the best examples of "Gun control doesn't work" in the world" (@ sisk
If this was the only factor that differentiated Mexico from the USA, you would probably be right. But that's not the case.
It could be that Mexico is an example of a poor country that suddenly found itself receiving lots of cash for selling drugs to the USA, and that said cash ended in the hands of drug lords, that in turn used it to raise the corruption levels in the -already quite corrupt - country straight into the stratosphere. As their business model was found to be so successful, everybody and their brother in the area either wanted to be a member of a gang or were pressed into becoming one.
I don't know about "gun control", but the "war against drugs" surely is not going exceptionally well.
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Thursday 16th May 2013 14:25 GMT sisk
Re: " Mexico is one of the best examples of "Gun control doesn't work" in the world" (@ sisk
@Mephistro: Regardless of the other factors, if gun control worked Mexico would have a very low incidence of gun crimes. Guns are almost completely illegal there, yet people are shot in the streets every day. Ditto for Chicago.
And to the AC who made the long, intelligent sounding post about how gun control helps: the statistics are clear on the matter. Violent crime increases when strict gun control is implemented. If you stop focusing on gun crimes (which, of course, are reduced when there are fewer guns around) and focus on all violent crimes that becomes clear. A .05% murder rate with very few gun related deaths is far worse than a .02% murder rate wherein most of the murders are committed with guns.
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Friday 10th May 2013 21:35 GMT Naughtyhorse
Re: ireland during the troubles?
Thing is with your basic irish troubles situation is that the terrorists there had a huge shitload of (boston irish) american money to get the guns and bombs in.
Though something tells me that (boston irish) american money has somewhat moderated it's view on terrorism just lately.
Doesn't it say in that there book of yours that as you sow so shall ye reap?
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Saturday 11th May 2013 10:37 GMT Alfred
Re: Re @AC (was @BillG)
"did the water help keep firearms out of ireland during the troubles?"
Erm, sort of yes. During the troubles most had to be smuggled in to the North across the land border with the Republic of Ireland."
Also across the water itself; I did some time on one of the converted Hunt class vessels the RN had pootling about in the area, hoppin' onto passing vessels and pulling doughnuts outside Belfast and that sort of thing. I didn't get anyone myself but I know people who did (including one particular case where someone had too many passports, which was just brilliantly suspicious). At the very least the bootnecks had fun zipping about in RIBs looking all steely and running around and that sort of thing.
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Friday 10th May 2013 22:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
@ MrXavia
"Bullshit on banning guns, gun crime went up in the UK after hand guns were banned,"
I agree, that is bullshit touted by people with a certain agenda to push and regurgitated by the hard of thinking.
The closest thing to the truth in that statement is when possession of a class of firearms was made illegal more people were arrested for possession than before it was illegal.
Would you expect anything else?
There was no corresponding spike in the incidence of gun-involved violent crime in the UK and, since the most recent ban, firearms use in crime has gone down.
"Banning guns does not stop violent crime..."
Correct. With or without guns, dicks will be dicks. The difference is that less dicks can go on a killing spree with a knife (although it is still possible).
"Banning guns does not even stop gun crime, it only punishes the legal gun owners!"
Not really correct. It could be argued that banning guns doesnt eliminate gun crime but it does have an impact on it. It also allows police to do pre-emptive arrests of criminals *before* they shoot someone, but, hey, 1 out of 3 aint bad.
Interestingly, in the US a significant percentage (if not most) gun crime is indeed carried out by people illegally possessing firearms (as few convicted felons can carry a weapon legally), the big difference is the number of accidental deaths & injuries which prevalent gun use leads to.
Banning guns does not reduce the presence of guns in the hands of career criminals and gang members. It does, however, reduce the number of people who can go off the rails and shoot someone when they are drunk, angry, lovespurn, whatever.
These deaths might be an acceptable price for to pay for people to be able to walk round thinking a gun keeps them safe, when it doesnt.
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Saturday 11th May 2013 07:47 GMT FutureShock999
A UK gun owner responds...
I call BULLSHIT on your post. Why? Because gun control is more than just about gun crime. In factual analysis, MOST gun killings are accidents and suicides, not from gun crime. And THAT has been drastically, drastically reduced by the current UK gun laws. Because now you need a license, and training, and they will try to bar you if you are depressive or mentally unwell. So the accident rate has gone way down, because imbeciles cannot pass the NRA training and get a license, and suicides are down, because most seriously mentally ill people cannot buy a gun either. So, overall, gun DEATHS are the merest fraction of what they were. Here in the UK, we don't have 2 year olds blowing off their own heads, or 5 year olds killing their sisters (both of which happened in the past two weeks in the US). THAT is a result of UK gun control, and mandatory training and licensing.
I've owned guns in both the US and the UK, and frankly while I think the UK system is a bit too restrictive, it sure beats allowing people to purchase semi-auto AR-15s with less training and testing than it takes to drive a car....
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Saturday 11th May 2013 20:44 GMT TheVogon
Not true. Banning guns does reduce violent crime. Hence why the USA has by far the highest rate of gun homicide in the world.
And people who carry guns are far likelier to get shot – and killed – than those who are unarmed - http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed.html
Some other US Pro Gun bullshit is shot down here: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-fact-check
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Monday 13th May 2013 09:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
@TheVogon
"Not true. Banning guns does reduce violent crime. Hence why the USA has by far the highest rate of gun homicide in the world."
I wish people would stop with the failed logic. The US has the highest rate of gun homicide because it has so many guns. That has bugger all to do with the level of violent crime. A violent person will be violent anyway and can use whatever as a weapon. There is no proven link (as far as I have yet seen) between reducing guns and reducing violent crime. There is an observed relation between banning guns and increased violent crime but it never seems to be followed up scientifically because it would require putting people in harms way to prove.
"And people who carry guns are far likelier to get shot – and killed – than those who are unarmed - http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed.html"
Your link says one thing and that is they do not know much about the relationship of guns and violence.
"Some other US Pro Gun bullshit is shot down here: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-fact-check"
Oh the pain.
Myth1: Attempting to ban and outlaw which obama is still rabbiting on about.
Myth2: Some of the most restrictive states have the highest gun crimes. The statement ownership means nothing as it could be legal or illegal.
Myth3: And yet some states with personal defence carry laws have the lowest violent crime rates.
Myth4: A fake figure. No mass shooting has been achieved once said criminal has been stopped.
Myth5: Accidents happen and adding suicides (personal choice) is desperate. We cant ban accidents and if you want to we can look to banning everything that might hurt. Or we can live and have accidents.
Myth6: Funny and subjective nonsense.
Myth7: A comment on home abuse and homicide but doesnt say how its gun related except one it there.
Myth8: So selective it is funny and irrelevant on its own.
Myth9: As proven by the effect of killings. The first reaction from the interviewed is to go buy a gun because they thought they would never be a victim of anything, but now the horse has bolted...
Myth10: Subjective tripe which is meaningless.
Its easy to be selective which that site seems to do very well. There are actual arguments for and against various restrictions on guns but sites like that wont help any more than the NRA
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Friday 10th May 2013 15:54 GMT SpaMster
I take it The Reg haven't seen the automatic model they've built that's already been taken off their site then...
Really are missing the point here with all these articles, the reason it's been taken down is because anybody with the money to buy a 3D printer and toner can produce a working gun that can kill somebody. Saying 'oh the accuracy is terrible' is beside the point, these things can still kill people and could be very easily concealed. Grow up a bit please
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