3D-Printed Gun & Free Speech

[Leonhard]

If you knew me you would have realized I nearly fell off the chair laughing at the bolded comment. I can walk into virtually in home and make high explosives from what is in there.

Reminds me of college and a certain group of chemists I sometimes hang out with. I've personally stayed away from making explosives, as I rather like having fingers, prefer having eyesight and I haven't grown tired of being alive.

I was just responding to this particular statement you made which said the opposite when read as it is "A lot of those recipes are absolute junk resulting in something that'll only result in a bunch of smoke and fizzing."

That's a bit different from what you're now saying about a lot of recipes producing something more likely to blow up a person than not.

I have collected on bets on the claim that I can make water explode (without adding anything to it -- just water)^[1].

That one's gotten me curious... smooth glass container bottle. Microwaved until its super heated. Corked. And then thrown? That could produce a small steam explosion, since its the basis for some types of high pressure bottle rockets using superheated water. Not sure how big though.

Or did you make... uhm... its called 'knaldgas' in danish. Basically 'bang gas'. Electrolysing the water, and getting that really explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen?

So no, I realize that for those who know how it is mind-blowingly easy to do so. My point is that there is a lot of dangerous junk out on the internet or published in books like the Anarchist Cookbook not that it is difficult to make explosives.

A chemist once wrote that its easy to make explosives, its harder to make something that won't explode because you yelled at the coffee machine down the hall.

1. Every year, prior to 9/11, I made a "firecracker" and would set it off at a quarry for the Fourth of July or at the start of New Years. This "firecracker" was often enough homemade C-4 or other similar explosive to level a four bedroom house. That is not an exaggeration. The challenge for me was to come up with a new means of detonating it and I'd rotate between improvised electrical, chemical or mechanical devices (the latter was the only real challenge since after several years I found myself occasionally doing a variation on a theme).

Sounds awesome.

[Sparko]

The issue is not how it works. It is the capability for anyone to produce a gun out of materials that are not detectable with metal detectors. It also gives anyone the capability of creating a handgun for themselves without going through any third party, seriously reducing the tracibility of such a weapon if used in a crime.


Jim

They already can do that without a 3D printer. or go buy a plastic gun. They have existed for years before 3D printing. And at present 3D printers are not exactly replicators. It is pretty complicated to use and to print the parts and then assemble them, any one with that amount of skill probably could build it out of plastic and wood without the 3D printer. Just drill a hole in a block of plastic and you have a barrel. then use a rubber band and a bent paper clip for a firing pin. The rest is just glitter. You don't need a trigger or a grip or the spring.

[Sparko]

So. You are convinced that the capacity to create these guns - plug and play - as many of them as you want - creates no additional security risk than what is already out there?

I think you are minimizing the risk. Indeed - 'working with metal'. With the printer they are plastics which can't be detected by metal detectors.

Though the reality is as 3D printers become more and more powerful, it will be next to impossible to stop someone determined to create a weapon using them from creating it. Right now cost is a factor. That will change. Eventually, if there is not some sort of big brother looking at what is being created on what printer, there will be no way to control misuse of them. And even then, the software that talks back to big brother can be hacked.

I don't think that is an excuse not to try to reduce misuse. I would not be at all surprised to see implementation of safeguards by the manufacturers of the printers that enable tracibility to items printed by them.

And who knows, maybe with advancements in AI the printer itself might be able to detect it is being used to create a weapon and notify authorities and/or refuse to create the project.

Jim

I think the biggest danger is some teens deciding to make the guns and end up shooting themselves or having it blow up in their faces.