Gun control is fast becoming impossible, whether our opponents in the gun control movement want to admit it or not. This was printed on a plastic 3D printer:
In short, this means that people without gun licenses — or people who have had their licenses revoked — could print their own lower receiver and build a complete, off-the-books gun. What a chilling thought.
Just our brief experiments with 3D printing magazines and CNC milling an AR15 and a CNC 1911 have shown the technology is already there, pretty much. All it would take is the gun control crowd getting their way to create the proper underground market. You’ll have less luck locating clandestine build shops than you will marijuana grow operations. It’s also likely only a matter of time before criminals get wise to this tech regardless.
It’s amusing that the writer there seems shocked (shocked!) that someone without a “gun license” could therefore manufacture a firearm.
Didn’t have the heart to point out that in almost all of the country there’s no such thing as a “gun license”, any more than a “speech license”.
An organization that can mass-produce cocaine or meth and make submersibles to transport them is probably not going to have much of a problem with setting up some small CNC machine shops to produce firearms.
Is there any conjecture to what the ATF thinks about this??
I hate to tell the author, but any machinist with access to a machine shop and some materials could make a gun. I shoot with a guy who made his own (semi-auto) Sten. It’s not pretty but it is reliable and quite accurate at 100 yards.
With 3D printing, you don’t have to have any machining skills. That’s the point. All it takes is the printer, a computer, and an internet connection.
Oh I understand – I’m laughing at the people who though building a gun was all that complicated in the first place.
tacticalmachining.com + a hand drill = AR15.
Even easier would be to build a tube SMG. I think Oleg made one of his pictures of a sten with something written in the picture to that effect.
I don’t think the govt is all that worried. All they have to do is “convince” the manufacturer to set up the driver software to phone home every time someone uses the printer…. and refuse to work at all if it can’t. They can also make it so it sends ATF a copy of whatever you’re making at the time.
For a number of reasons, not going too happen, and impractical even if the government could do it.