This is insanely stupid stuff. Even the UK with our weird panic over Incredibly Specific Knives hasn't tried to do this kind of technical restriction to prevent people printing guns. Why not? Because nobody is printing guns! It's an infeasible solution to a non-problem!
Someone should dig into who this is coming from and why. The answers are usually either (a) they got paid to do it by a company selling the tech, which appears not to be the case here, or (b) they went insane on social media.
(can't confirm this personally, but it seems from other comments that it's perfectly feasible to just drive out of New York State and buy a gun somewhere else in the gun-owning US? And this is quite likely where all the guns used in existing NY crime come from?)
I would also note that the Shinzo Abe doohickey wasn't 3D-printed.
People print guns and gun parts. More than you think. Now even more since metal printing is starting to become affordable. I print grip and grip attachments for my 9mms and my AR15, trigger guards, barrel clamps, etc. I also find it stupid since, as the article suggests, what kind of algorithm can you implement to do smart detection of something that could be potentially dangerous? Will it also detect negative space? I print inserts in elastic filament with my gun outlines instead of foam (or as foam templates) for my carrying cases. Will the "algorithm" prevent me to do that too? What about my plastic disc thrower toy gun, or my PKD Blaster prop? Both look like guns to me. What about a dumb AI algorithm that lacks common sense?
Printing barrels and FCUs -- the fire control unit, which is the only thing tracked and serialized in a gun at least in the US -- is more difficult but not impossible. Actually, building a functional FCU that can strike a bullet primer, or a barrel that can be used once is not difficult at all and if you look around you can find videos of people that have tested that with a mixture of 3d printing and rudimentary metal working skills. The major issues on designing those parts are reliability and safety. In the Philippines there is a full bootleg gunsmith industry dedicated to build illegal guns that match commercial ones in those aspects too.
Sadly, instead of having better laws we get fallacy rhetoric by people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives.
This is my attempt to answer your question about "what kind of algorithm can you implement to detect something dangerous". Disclaimer though, I agree that the proposed regulation is way too broad and will have unintended consequences as written.
If you look at how Apple detects contraband imagery, they hash every image that gets uploaded into the photos app. Those hashes are transmitted to servers that compare them to hashes of known contraband.
A similar system could theoretically be used for STL files. So it isn't about detecting exact shapes, it's about preventing printing of STL files that are already known to be dangerous. This would make it harder to illegally manufacture parts for weapons because it would make it much harder to share designs. If you didn't have the knowledge or skill to design a reliable FCU, you would have to find a design someone with that knowledge and skill created - which the printer could theoretically detect with a cryptographic signature.
As the original author of the post pointed out though, this could and would be bypassed by actual criminals. As with most things like this, it's probably impossible to prevent entirely, only to make it more difficult.
> If you look at how Apple detects contraband imagery, they hash every image that gets uploaded into the photos app. Those hashes are transmitted to servers that compare them to hashes of known contraband.
You're spelling out a specific process in detail--which is the only reason I'm picking on details. Do you have anything documenting what you're describing?
From what I remember, Apple's system was proposed, but never shipped. They proposed hashing your photos locally and comparing them to a local database of known CSAM images. Only when there was was a match, they would transmit the photos for manual confirmation. This describes Apple's proposal [1].
I believe what did ship is an algorithm to detect novel nude imagery and gives some sort of warning for kids sending or receiving that data. None of that involves checks against Apple's server.
I do think other existing photo services will scan only photos you've uploaded to their cloud.
I'm happy to make corrections. To my knowledge, what you're describing hasn't been done so far.
Aah okay - I remember it being proposed, but perhaps I wrongly assumed it had shipped. I do wonder sometimes if Apple is doing anything that we aren't privy to with photos that end up in iCloud.
what part of the dangerous part is the actually dangerous part?
its a framing trap to think you have to print or cnc the whole thing in one job.
split it up into many smaller jobs, each one not looking dangerous, rezero start the next section as if its a new job, spiff it all up with a session of crank and curse finishing, and the blockade is meaningless.
I don't get it - afaik you can get every single part of a gun except for the lower receiver/pistol frame without any restriction - as those parts are legally defined as the 'gun' - the rest are just replacement parts.
Even for those, you can get 80% finished parts for those - just drill a few holes, and file off some tidbits, and you get an almost factory-spec gun.
I'm no expert on US gun law, but afaik, some states even allow you to make your own guns without registration, as the law defines gun manufacturing as manufacturing with the intent of selling them.
So there's plenty of options, many of them better than making a gun with a printer.
But even all this is typically overkill, I dont think criminals go to these lengths to make their own guns, they just get them from somewhere.
The only usable part a plastic 3D printer will make for you is the receiver, which is the whole point, to circumvent that very narrow legal classification. You're right about alternative lawmaking avenues, but given the 2a pushback on controlling "replacement parts" Americans are kind of stuck with the bed they made.
The receiver is like the asset tag on computer servers- it's the one thing that is definitely not replaceable since it has the serial number used for entitlement.
In the 1980s, my dad machined a lot of replacement parts for a gunsmith, right here in the UK. All legal, all perfectly legit. I will say it took a hell of a lot more skill than just "download file from thingiverse, press print" - but there's nothing stopping you doing it.
And no-one is (yet) suggesting banning lathes, hacksaws, or files.
> Sadly, instead of having better laws we get fallacy rhetoric by people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives.
Why is this the litmus test for being qualified to write gun legislation? Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities?
This is a bad example. I've been notionally pro-ownership but also pro-regulation my whole life, and one of the major problems with gun legislation in the US is that it's incredibly poorly written and does not reflect the technical reality of guns.
The government allows private ownership of automatic weapons, but hasn't issued any new tax stamps for 50 years. You can convert any semiauto gun into a full-auto gun for a few cents of 3D printed parts (or a rubber band). The hysteria over "assault weapons" basically outlawed guns that _looked_ scary, while not meaningfully making anyone safer.
I think yes, it is reasonable for Congresspeople to fire a gun before they legislate on it, because otherwise they are incapable of writing good laws.
Good gun regulation in the US would probably look like car insurance, where gun owners need to register and insure their weapons against the possibility of crimes being committed with them. There are so many guns compared to the amount of gun crime that it would probably not end up terribly expensive, especially if you own a gun safe.
> The hysteria over "assault weapons" basically outlawed guns that _looked_ scary, while not meaningfully making anyone safer.
This wasn't the goal by the congresspeople, and that them having fired a gun would've changed that goal.
That was the goal. They knew they weren't going to be able to pass any kind of legislation that actually msde people safer, but they wanted to look like they were "doing something".
This is incredibly common. It's the primary reason behind the TSA and its continuous expansion, for example.
> It's the primary reason behind the TSA and its continuous expansion, for example.
I'd also add that the TSA is a good reason why we shouldn't expect talking legislators to gun ranges would make better gun laws.
The reason the TSA is what it is is because legislators fly more than most people. If you've ever been to DC you see a lot of this sort of security theater everywhere.
So much of the TSAs budget should be redirected towards what would actually make long distance travel safer, improving the ATC and Amtrak.
Thats defacto gun registration- and worse: registration with a private entity not beholden to due process. Given current realities, anybody who registers their firearm in such a manner can expect a no-knock raid because they were nearby when somebody phoned in an engine backfire as a gunshot.
So make it allowed that the insurance is tied to the gun. You buy a lifetime policy for that serial number, provide payment, and you're done. Payment can be provided anonymously at a window in cash, if that's your thing.
If you want discounts because you live in a low-crime area, have a gun safe, have many guns, etc. then obviously the storage location for the weapon needs to be declared to the insurance company.
That's not true. They have millions of digitized 4473s. They are banned by law from creating a searchable registry of gun owners but they digitize paperwork on a daily basis.
Thanks for the clarification. I knew there was limitation placed on them to hamstring their operations under the auspices of preserving the 2nd amendment.
You're welcome to come up with a better litmus test, but it's beyond clear that lawmakers writing gun control regulation have less than a wikipedia level understanding of the topic. See "shoulder thing that goes up", the weird obsession with the Thompson, the entire concept of an Assault Weapon, etc.
Wikipedia has much better information about guns than most of the people talking about them in politics, generally speaking.
It's not too surprising, considering the way the rules are written at the ATF. There's basically zero logical thought that goes into pistol vs rifle vs felony:
ATF rulemaking can be unintuitive and arbitrary but there really is a level below it occupied by people who have dedicated a significant chunk of their lives to trying to restrict firearm ownership, who genuinely seem to believe that Die Hard, Rambo, and Spaghetti Westerns are real life. Politicians who can't answer basic questions about their legislation, who have to be told live on air that magazines can be repacked, that just make up impossible crime statistics. Yeah it's stupid that the ATF has decided that vertical grips are a rifle feature but angled grips aren't, but it gets worse.
There's no legal definition per Congress. Generally speaking, braces are intended to stabilize a pistol against your arm [0], whereas a rifle stock is meant to stabilize against your shoulder. However, braces can technically be "misused" such that the rear of the brace fits against the shoulder, meaning it is used as a stock. Likewise, the distinction is so small something as simple as a sling attachment to the stock could make it a brace, or an articulation that could be used as a cheek rest turn a brace into a stock, converting a pistol into a rifle or vice versa.
For awhile, the only way to know the difference was for the manufacturer to submit an NFA and hope.
The ATF has been in court (and lost) quite a bit [1] over this.
A "pistol brace" is designed and "intended" to be braced against your forearm to stabilize the "pistol" in a way that allows you to shoot a particularly large and heavy "pistol" with one hand. The ATF said this was fine, although I think they really regret that now.
> Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities?
It would be nice if they delegated to experts, instead of think tanks or populism, when it came to dealing with these. Both are examples of rampant regulatory failure.
Having first hand experience in contraband, and having the knowledge to create and pass laws are very different things. If you think that current lawmakers dont know enough about contraband to regulate effectively, what makes you think someone who knows loads about drug use and porn would be able to contruct decent watertight legislation?
Knowing the difference between a think tank and experts might be hard without some rudimentary knowledge to spot nonsense? I don't know, actually asking. It seems to me that the primary skill we need in our leaders is that of spotting experts talking within their field and actually listen to them while ignoring others. The primary trait, which is even more important, is character so that they act on what they here in our best interests instead of their own.
In this specific discussion familiarity does seem relevant. I don't think shooting is so relevant, but printing and assembling are.
You don't have to be a life-long user to regulate heroin, but if you start legislating second-hand heroin smoke, people might look at you sideways. You kinda need to know a little even if you've never actually ever seen heroin. If you demonstrate severe ignorance, people are going to call you on it.
I don't think its unreasonable to ask politicians to be familiar with how the machinery they are regulating functions and is used.
To use your heroin example, this is akin to banning spoons or needles because they heard those are tools of the heroin addict. It shows a lack of understanding on the part of the regulator and has a far reaching effect on people legally using the items.
Having a clue about how guns work, or the general reality of any other field one may be attempting to legislate, is absolutely crucial. With guns it just happens that actually firing them is a good way to gain (some of) that understanding.
litmus test wise, regulators of 3d printing should be able to create strong parts with a variety of 3d printing mechanisms.
they should at least be able to understand that a 3d printer is akin to a turing machine and what the real limits are - strength of the printed material vs length of the strip of memory.
It’s more like people who barely use computers regulating software features and development.. oh wait
I don’t own a gun, and think guns should be regulated more and better, but the heroin let alone another one are just flawed. There are no legitimate, non-life-ruining use cases for either of those analogies.
It’s becoming a thing, police don’t like to report on it because they don’t want to give people ideas. They didn’t want to report on Glock switches either. I do machining as a hobby and am interested in machining guns from an academic challenge perspective, I’ve not done it because I focus on making things I can’t buy. Guns from an academic perspective are fascinating, we’ve been making them for a long time in just about every possible way, and there is an easy way to measure and communicate quality, I.e. does it shoot and how accurate is it. I think the ban is absurd, the tech to make 3D printers / CNCs is pretty generic and someone sufficiently motivated to make a gun is unlikely to have difficulty putting together the machines to do it.
Every time I see one of these stories I wonder how many tools I would have to remove from my garage to make it impossible to build a primitive gun in there. With enough ingenuity I'm really not sure there would be anything left.
> one particular design, outlined in his book Expedient Homemade Firearms, is the best known. This design makes extensive use of easily procured materials such as folded sheet metal, bar stock, washers, and hex screws. It is a simple blowback-operated sub-machine gun and entirely made from craft-produced components, including the magazine and pistol grip. The major drawback of such designs is the lack of rifling in the barrel, which results in poor accuracy and limited range
This book was openly sold on Amazon 10 years ago. I still have one on my shelf.
There are some Youtube videos about homemade weapons in African countries and it seems you'd have to remove peoples hands in addition to their tools. Some of the functional guns out there are mostly hand whittled wood with a piece of pipe and some bailing wire.
Wasn't the whole point of the Sten gun that it could be made out of readily-available materials (steel plumbing pipe mostly) with simple hand tools, and really only needed two of the 50 or so components to be machined?
So, unless your garage is down to a pair of rusty pliers and a dried-out Biro then you're probably still up there.
That's effectively a complete ban as a thrown potato would have considerably more energy than that. A quick web search suggests professional baseball pitchers achieve ~130J, and a potato is roughly comparable to a baseball in mass.
They are trying to criminalize everyone who uses a normal lathe or a normal CNC without a permit
House Bill 2321 (HB-2321) proposes exemptions only for machines with licensed AI firmware that connects to blacklists, potentially requiring refits or licensing for machine shops.
Really looking forward to NY funding upgrades to the computers connected to CNC machines which tend to be pre-2000 vintage running software that's even older.
The entire concept is absurd on about 10 different levels.
Why would you waste everyone's time posting such nonsense? It's not that I support this legislation, but arguing against with counterfactual statements is unhelpful noise.
> Even the UK with our weird panic over Incredibly Specific Knives hasn't tried to do this kind of technical restriction to prevent people printing guns.
They haven't done this specific restriction, but there is a movement to make it illegal to possess the CAD files: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3877
Tbf to New York it is much easier to print a gun in the us I imagine than Europe for example a 3d printed Glock the controlled part is the lower which is just a plastic shell that ends up containing the trigger group and a few other parts which you can all by easily online the only other thing you need is the upper which is just the slide barrel and a few other parts you can buy them online already completed the only part you actually have to file a form for and get approved for the is lower specifically the plastic shell so in the us once you print that which is pretty simple you can order everything else online no need to file or register anything I imagine in the eu the other parts are much more controlled which raises the complexity by a ton you’d need a lot of tools/parts and expertise to create a ghost Glock in the eu that you wouldn’t in America and you’d still probably need some street connections for the ammo which is much easier to come by in America I’d bet. If it was as simple to get your hands on all the other parts in the eu I would imagine there would much much more 3d printed guns there. I still think it’s stupid everyone should be allowed to print as many glocks as they want especially if your having to live in New York
Also atleast in America there is a very large 3d printed gun community lots of people are doing it I suggest checking out the PSR YouTube channel it’s a guy who is basically a real life dead pool who’s 3d printed every gun you can think of his videos are very entertaining and while you won’t learn much since YouTube restricts any teaching of gun manufacturing you may be surprised at how far 3d printed guns have come. His plastikov v4 video is good and pretty funny if I remember.
I can't find the detailed breakdown for 2025, but in 2024, they took in $308bn in premiums and paid out $264bn in medical costs. So even ignoring all of the downstream and systemic problems caused by insurance existing as a for-profit entity, they're taking 14% off the top just to exist as a middle-man.
Highlighting that was actually part of my point. What utility does insurance add to justify its existence as a middle man? How are we better off with a middle man taking a cut vs nationalizing the industry? And that 14% is at best, given the other externalities of the existence of insurance and its perverse incentives.
You're saying "how is that worse than other industries", but I'm saying, why is there an industry there at all?
The government would still need employees to basically do everything that the people at insurance companies do. Theoretically it could be more efficient, realistically it would not.
The real problem with our system is that for anyone who is going to hit their deductible, or especially their out of pocket max, the costs no longer matter at all. Sure, that cancer drug can be $500,000. GLP1 drugs for $1,000 a month? Why not?
Of course, there's no free lunch on this. In a single payer system you get things like the UK not approving certain cancer treatments for people over a certain age, certain medications just aren't available, etc.
Otherwise you could make every plan a very high deductible plan, possible just not cover medications at all, etc. But then people will complain about people not being able to afford things, especially in the short term.
If you’ve had UHC you’d know very well that Optum is intimately tied to their insurance business. UHC just “administers the plan” while Optum controls plan decisions. So when there’s a problem, which there always is with every claim more complicated than a PCP visit, you get bounced between both companies for hours until you find someone willing to take responsibility for answering questions.
Right, because most people recognize that the US has become sufficiently polarized and radicalized that "If enough people are mad at you, a complete stranger might shoot you" is not a theory of change we want to encourage. Yes, even for causes we agree with, most adults in the room understand that "people being mad at you" is pretty independent of how righteous your cause is, and even how civil and thoughtful you are in pursuing it.
Are you claiming that the most likely proximal cause for his murder was the legal ability to print a gun rather than any concerns or grievances the shooter may have had related to the healthcare industry or United Healthcare specifically?
>because most people recognize that the US has become sufficiently polarized and radicalized that "If enough people are mad at you, a complete stranger might shoot you" is not a theory of change we want to encourage.
God forbid individuals and organizations not choose paths of action that "low level piss off" millions of people such that their chance of being at the business end of some outlier who will actually do violence upon them is non-trivial.
It's not hard to not be "the thing" in any given crazy's life they choose to go out with a bang over, especially if you're not something they deal with every day. If that means that the default amount of screwage your organization applies needs to be dialed back, or that you must clean house a little better or more often then cry me a river.
>most adults in the room understand that "people being mad at you" is pretty independent of how righteous your cause is
Except it's not. The "budget" you have to wrong people and cause despair before people would be apathetic to violence done upon you is pretty directly coupled to the amount of good you do to offset your harm.
>It's not hard to not be "the thing" in any given crazy's life they choose to go out with a bang over
> The "budget" you have to wrong people and cause despair before people would be apathetic to violence done upon you is pretty directly coupled to the amount of good you do to offset your harm.
That case started over a year ago, I would have expected the topic to come up long ago if this was motivated by the shooting. Granted, lawmaking takes longer than public sentiment lasts, but I didn't really hear much about 3D-printed guns at the time.
I haven't printed a full firearm but I've printed some replacement/ergonomic parts for my legally purchased firearms. And there are people printing guns - you don't hear about it because they keep their mouth shut about it.
In countries that ban guns, 3D printers don't help much because you still can't get the other parts that aren't printed and you can't get bullets. 3D printed guns are only really viable in places where guns are already common.
> because you still can't get the other parts that aren't printed
Every part except the firing pin is now printable (you can print quite strong carbon-fiber reinforced parts at home). The firing pin can be made from a nail or similar piece of metal.
> You can't get bullets
Bullets are mostly easy enough to make. One of my neighbors growing up was a competitive shooter who competed nationally and internationally. He manufactured his own ammo in his home shop, using tools any boomer dad had access to, like a lathe, presses and very accurate scales. He didn't really pay any more for ammo than we did per round. The only reason criminals don't do it is because buying factory ammo on the gray and black market is so easy.
The most difficult part to make would probably be the primers, but that still isn't difficult for any chemist.
In my country, Guns and Bullets are heavily controlled(Even airsoft is banned here). You can not get explosive unless you prove you have legit use for it(usually for mining). And of course DIY gun or bullet is no-no and you will be jailed.
Even in police force or army, they literally count every single bullet, and for every fired bullet, it must be explained in detail.
Maybe that's why we have low gun-related crime here.
> You can not get explosive unless you prove you have legit use for it(usually for mining).
Gunpowder is fairly simple to make.
> Maybe that's why we have low gun-related crime here.
Mexico has extremely restrictive gun laws and that is not the case there. It seems to have more to do with how much crime you have than whether someone who could be charged with homicide could redundantly be charged with having a firearm.
The UK doesn't need to put restrictions in for 3d printing guns because the viable approaches for 3d printing them usually require _some_ off the shelf gun parts not to mention actual ammunition which you can't feasibly acquire in the UK to begin with.
You can acquire guns, gun parts, and ammunition quite easily in the UK, and entirely legally.
You need to hold a suitable licence, which isn't expensive and is mostly an exercise in proving to the police that you're not a violent psychopath who's likely to run up to people in cars and shoot them in the face.
Well it might be the second most famous now, having been supplanted by Charlie Kirk through recency if not also notability (harder to spin the motives of the UHC CEO's killer in a way that people aren't sympathetic to).
The 3d-printed hybrid FGC-9 is readily and commonly made all over Europe[0]. Most notoriously exhibit by 'jstark' in Germany[1]. Ammo is no problem, as can be made with off the shelf components available in EU[2]. And fairly reliable, if not oversized, 9mm pistol, primarily printed except with an ECM machined barrel that is easily DIY'd by 3d printing a mandrel for the rifling electrode and a simple bolt. A really nice gun all things considered for people with no other options, that can be built quickly using simple instructions.
No, and the blades created because of the methods used, would likely not be covered by the legislation anyway, theres a carve out for antiques and weapons made using traditional methods (now define traditional methods, because the law doesn't, but hammer and anvil would seem to be the most obvious traditional approach).
However, in practice the police continually take and often destroy legally owned antiques claiming they are zombie swords.
The law is written in such a way the police can take anything and you have to prove to a judge they aren't illegal.
Could be the way guns are defined in UK are different. There is a fundamental problem in US law specifically, that you can purchase legally nearly any part of a gun separately, but only need to register the lower receiver. These are parts that take very little stress and can be relatively easily printed and used to hold together all the other parts that actually hold the stress of firing the bullet.
This is at least true for some specific rifles, where there’s a whole industry around selling unfinished receivers that are relatively easy to mill down with common machining tools to be able to assemble unregistered rifles.
My guess, is that these bills are a knee jerk reaction to constituents who’ve seen some tik toks talking about this. Though the conspiracist in me thinks that it’s mostly an excuse for control. This means, this bill is also coming for the UK too…
> These are parts that take very little stress and can be relatively easily printed and used to hold together all the other parts that actually hold the stress of firing the bullet.
A lot of the polymer guns (1911, AR15) need to be reinforced with metal at certain places for any kind of reliablity. A Glock doesn't need to be, because the material was invented by the designer of the gun and the gun was intended to be a polymer frame from the start.
is it because guns are easy to get without printing?
Because it is possible to print molds for cast iron, I wonder what else you need beyond that (although, don't indulge me if the topic is going in the illegal direction).
not a gunsmith, but cast iron manages to be both soft and brittle at the same time. and the barrel and bearing parts would have to be machined anyways. you have to try to harden it too. its probably easier to just machine the whole thing out of decent quality steel. just guessing.
really? they didn't have machining in the 1700s. how about a good'ol musket? or a bit more modern: a gatling gun. I always thought those were made under coarse conditions. I mean, people just need something that makes a spark against gun powder,goes boom and shoots really fast projectiles. If a shotgun is possible, then an automatic shotgun doesn't feel like it's a stretch. I would think the firing mechanisms might not be tolerant of amateur techniques, but the reloading and trigger parts at least might be. I'm also not a gunsmith, no idea what I'm talking about for the record.
They certainly didn't have mills as we know them in the 1700s, but lathes, drills, and subtractive manufacturing had been in practice for millenia. You could say they were "machined by hand". Most early firearms (barring large-bore guns like cannons) were made from forged steel or iron, which is significantly stronger than cast iron due to its lower carbon content and regular grain structure. These forged parts were then worked on by gunspiths with cutters and abrasives to produce parts in tolerance for their mechanism. Cast iron (or more typically in early warfare, bronze) was suitable for cannons and large-bore guns due to the mass of the finished gun; more metal meant that the gun could withstand more shock, but even then they could fail catastrophically due to material fatigue or failure.
Well, the kind of guns politicians are afraid people will make at home are not intended for durability. But things like street crime, school shootings,etc.. where it's just a one and done affair.
Complex manufacturing of improvised firearms has been practically made obsolete by the commodification of both steel tubing and cartridges. "Pipe guns" are incredibly easy to make, and require little more than a pipe, a cap, and a drill (which can sometimes be omitted as well). Many common cartridge diameters very closely or exactly match commercially available pipe diameters, and the hardware to make a single-shot firearm is ubiquitous in any store that sells plumbing supplies. Pipe guns are simple and cheap enough to make that some people abuse gun buy-back programs by deliberately manufacturing pipe guns for pennies and pocketing the money these programs offer [0]. These are real, functional guns, and I promise they're simpler, faster, and cheaper to manufacture than any 3d printed gun.
I assume this is mostly for a shotgun shell affair? otherwise the difference in bore, and particularly the seam that is present in almost all steel pipe (unless its drawn-over-mandrel which is a more speciality product), would make it pretty dodgy to fire a proper round
they also didn't have 3d printers in the 1700s, so I figure the 3d printer doesn't add much if it requires all of these post-processing steps like molding, casting, and finishing
People are printing guns. They're printing guns right here in the UK.
Then they're taking them out to the firing range, setting them up on a test stand, firing them by remote control, and filming the ensuing carnage with high frame rate cameras.
If you make a really really good 3D printed gun, it'll last at least two shots before it explodes into about a trillion razor-sharp fragments expanding rapidly outwards from where your hand used to be. The way you tell it's a really really good one is it didn't explode into a trillion fragments on the first shot.
We've seen enough Terrifying Public Information Films about the dangers of fireworks to mess with that shit.
Few people would bring an illegal firearm into NYC or other major US metros because a) the penalties in most of those cities and states can be brutal and b) it's not that difficult to acquire a legal firearm in most cities. If someone's smuggling a gun it's likely because it's just a small part of more varied criminal activity. Or because they did it by accident.
Also, I find it unconscionable to suggest we should allow home manufacturing of automatic weapons without even engaging with possible ways to stem that tide.
i personally wouldn't described teenagers killing each other with luminous green hunting knives as a 'weird panic' but perhaps something that needs a lot of attention and a multitude of steps to solve. banning these insane weapons is, would you believe it, one quick step that might help.
How many crimes related to “foot claws”, “death stars” and “blow darts” were there before they were banned? The UK Offensive Weapons Act is a joke of a law that makes us look like morons afraid of cartoon turtles and farming tools.
It's just very easily substitutable with regular knives? Plus the Offensive Weapons Act already covers them? I would be very surprised if it has made a difference.
(those of us with longer memories remember the previous iteration and why the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles don't have "ninja" in their name in the UK)
Yeah, its almost as if the knives aren't the problem. The gang memebrs will use whatever gives them an advantage, guns, knives, acid, bats, bricks. We can't ban everything, we should possibly tackle the cause instead of the symptom...
But don't worry, in the mean time they're coming for our regular knives.
The BBC has already rolled out Idris Ebla to explain that kitchen knives shouldnt have points[0]. Yes this has been picked up by politicians with the minister for policing at the time calling it an interesting idea [1].
Maybe if the law required all knives to be pink they might be too embarrassed to murder someone. One problem then is the switch to acid attacks which are just clear liquids in containers.
Someone should dig into who this is coming from and why. The answers are usually either (a) they got paid to do it by a company selling the tech, which appears not to be the case here, or (b) they went insane on social media.
(can't confirm this personally, but it seems from other comments that it's perfectly feasible to just drive out of New York State and buy a gun somewhere else in the gun-owning US? And this is quite likely where all the guns used in existing NY crime come from?)
I would also note that the Shinzo Abe doohickey wasn't 3D-printed.