3D printing

@Flanker: Or until we get superior plastics.

That would come under the refining of designs.

Still not afraid of a dude on a plane with two small caliber single shot pistols that he has to unscrew and rescrew the barrels on to reload.

I volunteer to get shot both times by that so someone else can beat the dude to death. Unless he shoots me in the face, one pistol caliber bullet that doesn't start with "4" or involve the word "magnum" isn't going to instantly incapacitate me, sure, I might get a critical artery severed and bleed out, but I will have ample time to beat the shit out of that guy for a good 60 seconds from a cynical perspective.

They just aren't that dangerous. It's the same as if I somehow smuggled a musket on an airplane. I might kill one person, but since 9/11, people aren't afraid of hijackers anymore, or rather they are, but they hold absolutely no belief that they will be exchanged as hostages. The immediate assumption is now "They are going to use the plane as a weapon" and folks will take their chances with subduing the hijackers rather than just letting it all go down like that.

Even if he can kill me with one shot from one of those immediately, that means the rest of the plane is going to eat that dude alive. Same with just about any situation. A single shot gun that takes more time to reload than just cycling the action is not an effective weapon for anything past assassination.

And if you're going to the trouble of assassinating someone, a 3d printed weapon isn't going to be your first choice, 9/10 times. A Four Winds hand-made shotgun or a knife is going to be the first avenue of low-tech assassination, barring that a real gun.

But it's cool, the type of people who panic over this shit aren't listening anyway.

The data on passenger response's to hijackings since 9/11 is rather interesting to look at. There have been 11 attempted hijackings, 3 resulted in the hijackers being subdued , 6 resulted in the place landing safely at an airport with things being resolved on the ground, 1 was an on the ground hijack attempt and 1 landed while being accompanied by the air force. Only 4 of those happened in 'western' airspace, the New Zealand one landed safely, the one over Greece was picked up by the military and the other two (over Bulgaria and Italy) had the hijackers subdued.

Hijacking planes only worked once, because now, the moment you hijack a plane near a major western city you get your ass kicked by all the passengers.

edited 10th May '13 7:37:14 PM by Silasw

Well, I'm glad I'm wrong :) Until the gun designs get improved, as everyone's already saying.

Note that dual wielding is effective if all you have are single shot weapons, you only have a few seconds and the target is only meters in front of you. You might even get in three or four shots with a couple more plastic weapons in your pocket. But as Barkey said, prompt medical attention may well mean the target survives all of them, and the shooter's now dead or captured.

Is anyone particularly wigging out about this? Or like me are they just testing the waters to see how dangerous this development could be? Granted, it's the Internet, people get hysterical, I'm sure there's someone :)

I can totally see 3D-printed guns being banned just as soon as some toddler accidentally shoots themselves with one.

Considering that normal guns accidentally kill people all the time, I don't see that happening at all.

A ban won't be enforceable in the long run. The tech will get cheaper and blueprints will always be widely available thanks to the internet. Eventually the ability to print weapons will be available to basically everyone.

edited 11th May '13 9:22:17 PM by Talby

Exactly. I think people need to come up with more creative solutions. Like, we have Mutually Assured Destruction keeping countries from using the nukes that they have, and I hear that some countries with tons of gun ownership, like Switzerland, are far more peaceful than ours.

Barring dealing with people's reasons as to why they want to make guns (which is probably more a matter for the Gun Thread), I could conceive:

- Heavily license private ownership of very high grades of printer and printer material (the sorts that could eventually construct repeating guns)

- Require that those high grades of material have a chemical in them that makes them easy to detect at airports and the like (kinda like adding the smelly stuff to household gas)

edited 12th May '13 7:39:31 AM by betaalpha

Yeah, but doesn't Switzerland also have a mandatory draft, and the reason everyone has guns is because they've all gone through basic training and know how to use them? A professional soldier with a military grade weapon is a much bigger deterrent to crime than some kook who may or may not have a shotgun.

edited 12th May '13 7:35:38 AM by Discar

Has anyone mentioned this yet?

The government has demanded the 3D gun designs be taken offline.

edited 12th May '13 7:50:10 AM by Ultrayellow

Good luck with that. I mean, the antigovernment people, and the criminals, both for different reasons, would make sure that the designs stay out there.

Yes, that was mentioned, on the last page.

Could I remind people that this is not the gun thread, so general discussion on the effectiveness of guns and gun laws should kindly fuck off to the other thread.

&But it was mentioned as a result of a "request" (without quotes) though the linked article explained it wasn't a request.

edited 12th May '13 10:19:17 AM by Medinoc

"We will not allow you to make a gun that is made of plastic so it will melt upon firing, will injure the shooter more than the victim nine times out of ten, and is difficult to make due to the expensive 3D Printers!"

Oh Government.

And here's the accompanying article

So, any ideas as to what this could possibly mean?

From the look of it "change over time"... mostly by adding water.

nothing at all. This is nothing new. as far as i can tell it's nothing more than an fancied up version of the foam capsules you leave in water for a few hours that turn into different shapes.

3d printing in stainless steel Now we are talking.

My dad claims that they've had titanium printers in aerospace for a while now. Actually works pretty nicely, the process (head melts titanium powder and deposits it) naturally gives you a small grain size and thus excellent strength.

Probably not as strong (yet) as actual fabricated steel..but this does leave a lot of interesting possibilities now open.

Tangent: I believe that is the Sintered Metal type fabrication if I recall correctly. But it has been mostly limited to certain industries. The machines are still bulky, expensive, and demanding.

I'm trying to remember whether I've heard this one before or not

That story has been doing the rounds of late. It's pretty much THE dream of the technology, for reasons altruistic, lazy and malevolent all, but is interesting despite its medium-term unlikeliness.