'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, …
"...using easily sourced metal parts..."
You're missing the effect of all this, it is the parts that are hard to obtain that are potentially being printed, not the metal ones. This particular article mentions someone who tried to create a complete synthetic weapon, which is useless because as you seem to understand, metal parts are much cheaper and durable.
Until someone prints a frag grenade out of Liquid Metal, I think we all can rest easy.
> You're missing the effect of all this, it is the parts that are hard to obtain that are potentially being printed, not the metal ones
Which bits are those then? The rubber band, the nail, or the metal pipe?
Guns are not exactly difficult - bang the spiky bit into the cap and it goes bang. Have enough strength in the system that that it doesn't remove your face by mistake.
The only vaguely "functional" part of the printed design is the "spring" coil; the barrel would be better turned on a lathe (even if you wanted one made out of plastic), the nail and ammo you have to provide yourself anyway. The rest is mostly aesthetic.
The automatic version is more interesting from a technical perspective - but risk of user injury or heat jamming the whole thing still would seem to imply that there are better ways to do this.
I work with a bunch of eye doctors and they give talks every week about interesting cases. One year one of them spent a few months helping out in a hospital in Alaska. He presented a case where a patient tried to commit suicide by holding a cartridge to his forehead with a pair of pliers and tried to set it off by holding a lighter to it. The cartridge went off, but instead of penetrating the skull, the bullet ended up between the globe and orbit, doing some damage to the eye (mainly burns). The doctor had pics, so it probably happened. The patient was held for a psych eval.
Fail, because the patient missed out on a Darwin award.
Surely Shirley isn't a Darwin Award. Shirley is surely the new office girl that all the surly, assuredly single guys have been bothering, unaware that she surely wants to date none of them. Surely Shirley would resent the comparison to the Darwin Awards.
I'm sure after that I should surely just go.
More precisely, to qualify for a Darwin award a person must meet two criteria:
1. Through an action of stupidity they must remove themselves from the gene pool, either via death or (more rarely) injury that renders them incapable of breeding.
2. The action by which this is achieved may not also remove any other person from the gene pool.
Eg: If a person tied a hangglider to the roof of their car and drove it off a cliff expecting it to fly, only to land in a burning wreck and die, they would qualify. If their car happened to land on the busy beach below and squish someone who just wanted to go sunbathing, they would not qualify.
In the case of the bullet suicide, he doesn't even come close: Even if he'd succeeded, intentional suicide doesn't count.
Yes its probably got all the accuracy of a brown bess thats been at the bottom of a lake for 40 years, and might manage 5 rounds before bursting the barrel and taking half your face off, but thats not the point.
Snipers use a standard rifle, eg moisin-nagant, and use a single shot. One shot, one kill. But from a distance that needs training and natural aptitude. I know I probably wouldnt be able to do it.
This is a gamechanger for two reasons. Should I want to put a bullet in David Cameron, dont tempt me, with this I can make it myself, disguise it if I want to, and all I need to do is find the guy (probably when he's daughter hunting again), walk past, jam in in his gut and pull the trigger. Untraceable gun, unmatchable bullet (no marks or striations) and provided you do it right you walk away while sham-cam is wondering where that painful hole came from.
But wait, it gets better. Its true if you make this thing from plastic its hardly going to empty a slipper clip before exploding. But guess what, you can use other materials in 3D printers. Materials that are way stronger than standard plastic feedstocks. Or you can make the barrel assembly out of sintered or machined metal.
Say I want to off someone in a crowd.. I could use cute muslim girls in explosive undies (and yes its been done) or I could give them a batch of these modded with a magazine & welrod style silencer. A quiet bye bye to that annoyingly liberal muslim politician or that pesky schoolgirl (the cheek of her, thinking she needs to learn).. And no-one knows anything about it till its all over. 5 pounds of explosive panty gusset is somewhat obvious after all, not to mention messy!
"Should I want to put a bullet in David Cameron, dont tempt me, with this I can make it myself, disguise it if I want to, and all I need to do is find the guy (probably when he's daughter hunting again), walk past, jam in in his gut and pull the trigger."
I'm right up with you up until I wonder why a knife wouldn't be at least as effective. You could print it from your 3D printer, if that's what suits you. Actually evade the metal detectors that way, too. Oh, and no loud bang, to boot.
Obsidian. It'll take an edge so sharp it's smooth even on nano-scale. Puts metal blades to shame. Tricky to work, but it'll cut someone with much less effort than a metal blade. Put a bit of mass behind it and you could probably lop someone's head off without too much effort.
Very hard to make, but if you're planning a stealthy assassination in an secure facility I think you can afford to pay for the best tools.
Obsidian. It'll take an edge so sharp it's smooth even on nano-scale. Puts metal blades to shame. Tricky to work, but it'll cut someone with much less effort than a metal blade. Put a bit of mass behind it and you could probably lop someone's head off without too much effort.
Plus it will work on White Walkers.
I guess these comments are mostly from the UK? I find it interesting that gun owners are assumed to be nutters wanting to kill people etc. Yet there is a fair list of people discussing the best ways of killing someone they dont like in various ways with stealth in mind.
I find it interesting because surely the people wanting guns for self defence are reading the comments discussing homicide and wanting some hope of self defence instead of the police (eventually) arriving to photograph their bodies.
"I'm right up with you up until I wonder why a knife wouldn't be at least as effective. You could print it from your 3D printer, if that's what suits you. Actually evade the metal detectors that way, too."
It would need to be a hard plastic. Our ancestors favoured natural obsidian - basically glass. Ceramic can be pretty sharp too.
[Quote] This is a gamechanger for two reasons. Should I want to put a bullet in David Cameron, dont tempt me, with this I can make it myself, disguise it if I want to, and all I need to do is find the guy (probably when he's daughter hunting again), walk past, jam in in his gut and pull the trigger. [End]
Bullets are not freely available in the UK. And, if you're sourcing the bullets illegally, why not buy a gun the same way? Or, why not just stab him with a knife? It will be just as lethal as a small, low-velocity bullet.
Doesn't seem like a game-changer to me.
I agree with most of what you say. I wouldn't want to be within 100 yards of someone shooting a Liberator but.....
The only thing that will slow them down at all is their desire to avoid killing or hurting you in the process
No, not quite. 1000 assorted shotguns, sport rifles, hunting rifles, and pistols make up a hell of a lot more firepower than 100 proper assault weapons ('proper' assault weapons being the sorts of guns that a real soldier would carry onto the battlefield, not AR-15s, which are sport rifles). That's about the odds that the authorities would be looking at if they ever decided to try to disarm the American population. Even that assumes that the whole of the armed forces followed their orders instead of choosing to keep to their oath to defend the Constitution, which is extremely unlikely. Make no mistake about it. There would be a lot of blood shed on both sides, but in the end the feds wouldn't be able to win that one. They would be simply be too outnumbered. They realize this, which is why I'm not worried about anyone coming for my guns.
That isn't how it would happen. The government wouldn't suddenly come for your guns, they would instead train the population off them. They would use the threat of the law to scare people into abandoning their guns voluntarily. Eg a series of gun amnesties alongside a law that says firearm possession carries eg 10 years in jail and firearm selling carries 20.
Now the only guns out there can land the owners in jail for a long time. With the gun industry collapsed and no gun publicity in the media, the gun culture in the US would go down the pan. Kids growing up not even remembering when guns could be paraded around in public. Within 30 years gun possession would be viewed upon as much like drug possession.
If any people did decide to fight back violently they would just help reinforce the government's desired image of gun owners as criminals.
Except such a law would never get past the southern and western states who still adhere to their folklore about mountain men, rugged survivalism, and the Wild West. To them (many of whom seceded from the union once already), Washington is the real enemy, not the terrorists. To them, the phrase "from my cold, dead fingers" has real meaning.
>>Washington is the real enemy, not the terrorists. <<
Not only is this true, but its DC which makes the Wahabist/Caliphaters try to affect US foreign policy via asymmetric warfare. Read the fatwas.
In a democracy, the citizens are responsible for the actions of their leaders?
Feh, ball bearing workers were bombed in WWII by you
Eg a series of gun amnesties alongside a law that says firearm possession carries eg 10 years in jail and firearm selling carries 20.
Such a law would immediately trigger the kind of armed rebellion I was talking about in my original post. Or even if it didn't, it would get repealed after the following Congressional election cycle during which, if history is any indication, all the Congressmen who voted for it would be shown the door. It's happened every time a major gun control legislation has been passed.
You don't need to seize guns, simply have sufficient penalty for getting caught with one in your possession that is not licensed. Make the terms of getting a license semi-reasonable (training, gun club membership, pass NRA exam, pay a fee, etc.) and you will soon have a core of people serious about owning guns (hunters, target shooters, ex-military, etc.) that will get licensed, with few casual, dangerous people owning guns. Crims will still have guns, but aware that even being caught HOLDING one means that they will not be parading around with them, as even a stop and search will get them 10 years for holding it.
What congress is doing to america _NOW_ and has been doing for the last 20 years. Don't you guys get it? Guns is the 'shiny thing' keeping 300 million morons distracted while EVERYTHING ELSE is being taken away.
America can't really afford to be so stupid these days. you aint that big of a deal anymore.
> And BTW, what kind of political leader would even THINK of carpet-bombing, to say nothing of nuking, their own population? My answer is one that would soon be swamped in his own capital, making the bombing option useless unless that leader's not too concerned about his/her future.
And my answer is that he'll then complain about being so ronery and sadry arone.
In all fairness, military issued rifles are pretty awful. A nice civilian sporting rifle is more reliable and more accurate. We do more than a little failure analysis and repetitve stress testing for firearms manufacturers and if I had to pick I would prefer a civilian sport rifle any day. They have considerably higher quality components and tend to wear better and be more accurate than military rifles which are cheap to manufacture and designed to be rebuilt/tossed out after a surprisingly short lifetime.
Yes, they were also overpressured by something like 4x. If they passed they were marked, if they failed they were dug out of the ceiling every friday. The idea being that even the most gormless idiot/texan is not going to fill his rifle barrel to the brim, put a bullet in and fire it...but in case he does, the barrel might survive it the once.
It probably doesn't say anything but the American Constitution recognises rights rather than granting them, so that really just means that it doesn't take an explicit position. Probably the argument that it'd be a bit ridiculous if the right to bear arms were recognised but not the right to make them usable is the more persuasive.
Um....it IS an undisputed fact, the only contradictions in the Supreme Court's rulings have been whether or not states have the ability to regulate firearms (the have consistently ruled that the federal government doesn't in all pertinent cases throughout history), and the most recent ruling on the subject (McDonald v Chicago) holds that no government at any level in the US can deny US citizens the right to own a gun without due process. At no point in history has the Supreme Court ever ruled that individuals do not have the right to bear arms.
As for the notion that this is a quaint law no longer relevant, I happen to believe that a well armed populace is just as necessary today as it was 200 years ago, and for pretty much the same reasons as it was back then.
The whole balleyhoo isn't that the gun can be printed at home but that the gun is made of a minimal amount of metal. Guns on airplanes have always been the stuff of nightmares; it's the image that NOWHERE is safe. Sure, everyone points to the nail and the bullets, but then the question becomes, "What if they used black powder, a ceramic bullet, a carbon fiber casing, and a diamond firing pin?" Suddenly, you have a completely nonmetallic firearm. How's the airport going to be able to check that when it's on someone's person?
Yeah, I was skeptical of the 'printed gun' thing.
In the UK it's not really a threat cos where the crap do you get bullets from in any case?
The November mass-sale of explosives makes it pretty easy to make rudimentary pipe-bombs though. I'd much rather see a ban on fireworks than a ban on a 3d printed item you can only make if you have £1500 to spend on a 3d printer, and if you have THAT kind of spending money, you can easily afford to get yourself a real gun. With bullets.
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