Yes Another 3D Printed Gun - Semi-automatic Ruger Charger Pistol

[3D OZ]

Don't care what makes a Firearm "legally", what really matters is what makes one functionally, a common sense definition of a gun, and what this guy has done is fail to print an object capable of firing any sort of projectile.

By printing a vehicle cowl tag with a VIN number, the " only piece that is regulated, serialized, tracked, etc. It is the only part of the car that makes it a "car" legally, can I really claim to have 100% printed a car?
Of course not.
If I attach a barrel to a block of wood, slip a .22 round into the barrel and hit it with a hammer, firing the round off (probably disasterously), thus creating a firearm and then remove the barrel, is the block of wood still a firearm? Of course not.

He may have printed a regulated componant of a firearm, but 100% printed a firearm??? Rubbish.

fire·arm (frärm) n. A weapon, especially a pistol or rifle, capable of firing a projectile and using an explosive charge as a propellant.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Under 26 USCA § 861 (a), firearms is defined as “"a shot gun or rifle having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length, or any other weapon, except a pistol or revolver, from which a shot is discharged by an explosive if such weapon is capable of being concealed on the person, or a machine gun, and includes a muffler or silencer for any firearm whether or not such firearm is included within the foregoing definition." United States v. Adams, 11 F. Supp. 216, 217 (S.D. Fla. 1935)

Case closed

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[BrunoPJones]

Don't care what makes a Firearm "legally", what really matters is what makes one functionally, a common sense definition of a gun, and what this guy has done is fail to print an object capable of firing any sort of projectile.

By printing a vehicle cowl tag with a VIN number, the " only piece that is regulated, serialized, tracked, etc. It is the only part of the car that makes it a "car" legally, can I really claim to have 100% printed a car?
Of course not.
If I attach a barrel to a block of wood, slip a .22 round into the barrel and hit it with a hammer, firing the round off (probably disasterously), thus creating a firearm and then remove the barrel, is the block of wood still a firearm? Of course not.

He may have printed a regulated componant of a firearm, but 100% printed a firearm??? Rubbish.

Yes. What he printed was the "Firearm". It is not "a regulated component of a firearm", it is THE firearm.

The entire point of a printed firearm is to bypass government regulation and tracking. He did that in a legal manner by using 3D printing, and fitted his firearm with easy to obtain secondary components that would otherwise be too stressed when used repeatedly if made of printed material.

You are viewing this from a 3D printer hobbyist point of view and not from a firearms point of view, which is the whole point of his video.

Your car analogy does not work here. Anyone can buy a car. You also don't care if people know you bought a car.
Not everyone can easily obtain a gun, and not everyone wants the government to know that they own one. Anyone could use this method to print a receiver on a low-cost printer, and create from it a working gun.

That is the point of his video and why it is important. Whether or not all components are plastic has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

[3D OZ]

Anyone could use this method to print a receiver on a low-cost printer, and create from it a working gun.

So, he didn't print a GUN, he printed a part of a gun.
What I've been saying from the very start.

[BrunoPJones]

Yes. But you said it wasnt newsworthy. He printed a firearm that holds up to repeated use of 22LR from a homemade printer.
That is all that matters here. It is a major accomplishment.

[3D OZ]

It's not news worthy because he didn't print a gun.
What he printed cannot fire anything!

Zero accomplishment, hype and noise from the pro-gun lobby hoping to show gun laws to be pointless.

[BrockMcKean]

Printed guns can change the debate about these killings toward the real problems and away from a simple mechanical tool.

Most people can't really get access to this. Sure, if you really wanted to really badly you can get a 3D printed receiver and use it a grand total of like 100 times if you're really lucky, or print a ton of them and carry guns like magazines, but this isn't really a viable tool to use for killing or to obtain a gun. It's a demonstration of what is to come and how we (the entire world, not just America) will have to change laws and further balance our socioeconomic gaps one way or another.

The Real problem? The real problem is you and people like you think you are safer if everybody has the ability to shoot and kill multiple people because the good guys will kill the bad guys. Only happens like that in movies.
Deluded.

The REAL problem is what he is trying to get at: people that think that too much or too little gun control is the problem. You're just another sheep in the heard if you really believe more or less gun control would fix the problem, especially in America.

It would take decades for large scale gun control to have any effect, because there are so many illegal weapons available and more coming in all the time. You cannot clean this excess quickly or stop the influx from Mexico very quickly either without tightening the borders quite drastically, which is also still a relatively unpopular idea. Any politician that championed either of these would see none of the results in their term and be blamed for all of the cost and other unrelated collateral. So whether more gun control would eventually work or not is not a debate. If it could be funded and supported for a long enough period of time, it would succeed. However, no one's going to do that in America so it's just not feasible. This would probably stop gun related violence largely and quickly in wealthier areas, but things like gang related stray bullets and other innocent bystanders that get caught in that kind of violence would still be victims and we would see very little change in that for a long time if ever. And what about the people that follow the rules to obtain guns lawfully, but how would incidents like Sandy Hook benefit from this?

On the other side of the fence, you have people that think gun control is the problem. They believe, as you say, that good guys can get the bad guys. These people are so far right they can't be helped. The majority of the right that does not support more gun control disagree because they feel their own right to protect themselves in the event it is justified and necessary will be impeded. Some of these people are just not informed or think that Obama wants to collect everyone's guns, as if that would ever happen without another very small short civil war. Some of them believe their ability to maintain American sovereignty from its own government will be impeded.. Those people don't acknowledge the fact that China owns a sizable portion of American debt and the entire American civilian population would be overcome by its own military as is even with the 2nd Amendment. Anyone that thinks their personal firearm or incredibly small artillery cache could really stop an F-16 is deluded.

So, neither of these view points really makes any logical sense. The bottom line is guns are here. Words spoken cannot be unspoken. However, as tspisak hints , the problem is social and economic inequality and other things that are not regulated at all. The question is not simply whether a person can obtain a firearm or not. I don't care where you are or who you are -- if you want to get a firearm badly enough you will find a way to get a firearm. The question is: Have we done everything we can to make sure people cannot obtain firearms easily and do not want to use them to solve their problems? There are many countries that are trying to get closer to answering yes to this question, but no country is really doing a great job, yet.

Back to 3D printing, inventing, and science in general: their purpose is to guide, encourage, and in some cases force change. I think it's a wonderful thing that we have people putting forward the notion that thought and will cannot be controlled in many aspects or taxed by their government. Perhaps because it is a firearm, what it symbolizes is lost in translation for some, but this is the ultimate reality of Making: If we can think it, we can make it. If we can make it, others can too. If everyone can make it, you can't keep it from anyone. In most cases this is good. In some cases (like this firearm) it's potentially bad. I haven't heard any stories yet of someone being killed by a 3D printed object or by a 3d printer itself, but i'm sure it will happen if it hasn't yet. When it does, it won't mean 3D printers are bad.

[Davo]

Brock,

That is probably the best explanation of the issue that I've read. Well done.

-Davo

[Geoff]

Well, for those of you that despise the news of 3D printed weapons, here is another one for you. A man that goes by the nickname Buck O'Fama has created a video depicting himself firing a gun (semi-automatic Ruger Charger) that he claims was printed using a 3D printer. Not the entire gun was 3D printed, but the illegal-to-obtain part was. The receiver of the gun was 3D printed in 2 parts and then according to O'Fama crazy-glued together. A video and more details of this can be found at http://3dprint.com/8398/3d-printed-gun-semi-automatic/



What do you think? Is this a good or bad thing? What will this do for 3D Printing?

Really Eddie? haven't we already been here?