Awesome, the edit post function apparently includes a hidden feature that turns any properly-spaced-out post into a wall of text. Apologies.

There are other materials with tensile strength equivalent to steel – fiberglass, and carbon fiber for two, both of which are eminently suitable for home manufacturing.

This is not true. Only specialized (and expensive) laminates of fiberglass approach or equal the tensile strength of steel but are still far more brittle than steel and will fail by shattering under load where steel will flex What makes for great bullet-resistant glass does not make for a firearm barrel. Similar problems exist for carbon fiber, which is why although there are rifle barrels with carbon fiber outer coatings there are no firearm barrels at all that are entirely made from carbon fiber.

There is a reason that this pistol needs a chamber and barrel thickness close to what would normally be seen on a .50 BMG rifle even though it’s firing a piddly little .380 ACP round: polymer can’t do the same job as steel, period. Once we start talking about someone crafting ceramic or stone bullets (which would work fine with black powder but would shatter inside the barrel from the ignition of modern smokeless powder), we’re in the realm of a particularly wacky episode of CSI.

Honestly at this point, I think the gun control crowd is being played for suckers because they’re making all kinds of completely ludicrous leaps in logic to paint this thing as some kind of actual danger. It’s a thousand-dollar zip gun made using a machine most people don’t know how to operate and can’t afford in a world where someone can build a shotgun out of pipe for ten bucks.

If there is to be a discussion, it would be a lot better if it was heavy on the facts regarding the actual capabilities and limitations of the technology and minus the hyperbole that has characterized the discussion of the firearms issue so far.

As it stands right now, this is hundreds or thousands of dollars to produce a bulkier and less durable version of a “zip gun” that can all ready be slapped together using no tools or materials more modern than anything available in the 1930′s and without any plans beyond a basic understanding of how a firearm works. Until a polymer composite exists with the same material characteristics as steel, this is a strange little proof-of-concept gadget with a heavy helping of the designer’s conceit involved, not the herald of the Plastopocalypse.

The gun is plastic. The ammunition? Not so much. Still detectable by metal detectors and xray. There has been some dabbling with polymer-cased ammunition but they run into the same problems of plastic not being able to tolerate the same physical stresses as metal. If you go beyond that into plastic bullets as well, you might as well be throwing styrofoam peanuts.

As far as building improvised firearms not being a common skill, that’s what we have the internet for. That information is relatively free, especially compared to the cost of of even a low-end 3D printer and the materials to run it. The available materials are also far more common than 3D printers. I will not go into any kind of construction details for obvious reasons but it really is easier than you might think; even unskilled people can assemble basic single-shot firearms using nothing more than what they can find at Home Depot. They’d also be doing it without being part of a still rather small group of people who own 3D printers.

At this point, it’s still easier to circumvent a metal detector by bringing weapons in by hiding them in deliveries, with the aid of someone working security or by using social engineering tactics to bluff your way past security. The idea that we’re going to start seeing a rash of assassinations committed with 3D printed plastic guns is bordering on Hollywood-style thriller fiction. It’s almost the same logic that has suppressors (silencers) so heavily regulated in the US, it’s extremely rare that they’re used in any kind of crimes (and when they are, they’re typically improvised single-use ones) but the popular perception is that they’re an assassin/criminal tool because that’s the media presentation of them.

Also, curious what kind of oddball gun you have because I’m a huge nerd like that.

I believe you misread the quote:

I guess this story disproves the theory that it is the porn prawn industry that is responsible for all major technological innovations.

Being able to trade cat food for power armor and directed-energy weapons is definitely an innovation.

I do have to say I’m not terribly impressed with this thing, nor did I expect to be. Only thing keeping it from exploding on the first shot looks to be the fact that it’s a gigantic block of plastic containing a tiny little chamber. It requires such a massively larger quantity of plastic to do the job of a piece of steel that would be a tenth the size and that’s the major limitation of these things. Honestly, I could go down to the hardware store and get the parts to build something that would be a heavier caliber (12 gauge), would be half the size and would cost me maybe $50 in parts. With actual machine tools I could build anything from a copy of the old British Sten submachinegun to a reasonable Kalashnikov knockoff and I still wouldn’t come close to the same investment required for a 3D printed gun. Plastic just can’t handle the same physical stresses steel can and it takes a lot less technical savvy to operate much more common tools like a basic lathe or metal press.

Now where this technology will most likely make an impact is in accessories for firearms. Stocks, grips, forends, any parts that are all ready made from polymer composite. I don’t think it’ll steal a whole lot of the market away from the big companies like Magpul, but it could open up a whole new market for firearms owners who want to design their own furniture or for firearms owners who have physical disabilities who may benefit from very specifically customized parts. But printing a complete and functional firearm that would be the equivalent of an AR-15? Not until someone comes up with a plastic composite material that’s the equivalent strength of steel at a 1-to-1 volume ratio.

The title of this diary — Logic Goes Down in a Hail of Gunfire — is thick with irony. Your logic apparently goes on vacation any time the issue involves firearms. You seem to be a budding authoritarian seeking expansion of the police/surveillance state in order to deny basic rights. Lord save me from “liberals” like you.

You may or may not have noticed by now that the “If it would save just ONE life” or “What about the CHILDREN?!?” or any of the other ticking-time-bomb scenarios the Right comes up with to justify any abrogation of our rights are absolutely and without hesitation roundly and rightly argued down with facts and logic around here.

Unless, of course, the topic is firearms.

That’s when the gloves come off and the knives come out. Then there is no classist or sexist comment that’s too nasty. There is no slander too vicious to ascribe to firearms owners that won’t get with the program. There is no pro-war, pro-surveillance, anti-speech authoritarian politician that can be embraced quickly enough if they’re also anti-gun. There is no tiny group of violent or stupid people that cannot be conflated as representing all firearms owners.

But, they’re all convinced of the righteousness of the cause so that excuses every bit of it. Sound familiar? I’ll bet it does.

They successfully managed to make this vote on background checks about something more than just background checks.

But it wasn’t just about background checks. Granted, the arbitrary and pointless proposed bans on “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazine clips” were pulled but it was very clear the attempt would be made to reintroduce them as amendments. I will tell you though, that’s not the only other reason you lost.

First, the vast majority of the people working on this push for “common sense firearm laws” had almost no idea what they were talking about and continually got caught out in public saying the most ludicrous shit possible. Now let me be clear here; I’m not expecting them to be experts. I’m not expecting them to always get every single bit of nomenclature or technical data correct. But I’m also expecting them to not sound like Todd Akin claiming that a woman’s body has ways to shut down conception during a rape. Meaning they shouldn’t sound like they’re either complete blithering idiots, like they’re just making shit up, or both. When you have Dianne Feinstein talking about bullets that “implode”, Diana DeGette saying that once you fire all the rounds in a magazine it can’t ever be refilled and any of the other assorted nonsense that’s been blabbered about since this all started, anyone with a level of knowledge about firearms greater than that which can be obtained by playing videogames or watching action movies is going to come to one of two conclusions. They’re either going to see the speaker as an idiot, or they’re going to see the speaker as assuming everyone else is an idiot.

Second problem has been the emotionalism involved. And honestly, this is the one that has made it so you deserved to lose. Just about every single pro-gun-control article has been focused on making anyone who doesn’t agree to the proposals to look at best, stupid and at worst, a pack of psychotic inbred illiterate racist homophobic thugs who gargle the blood of kindergarteners and kick puppies. There’s the small dick jokes, which I love because they’re simultaneously homophobia-light (the implication that the target is “not a REAL man”) and extremely sexist (because it effectively erases every single woman who owns firearms, or alternately suggests that they too are “compensating”). There’s the constant screaming of “THE CHILDREN! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!”, because honest debate is not about facts or logic but about implying that your opponent would gleefully scramble over a mountain of dead toddlers to purchase a new rifle. There’s the “jokes” about drone strikes, SWAT teams and Waco. Even better, there’s the more than occasional implication or outright hoping that anyone opposing this legislation loses a family member or friend to homicidal violence.

Now since you’re probably wondering why this means you deserved to lose this one so I’ll spell it out for you: because every single bit of this is directly from the same vile bag of tricks you (rightly) criticize the Right for using.

You’ve tried to take peoples’ friends and family and paint your monstrous caricatures over them, just like the Right does with LGBT folks and non-white folks. You’ve used the same kind of sexist bullying that the Right does against people who don’t agree with them, implying that they’re either not “man enough” or that they’re trying to BE men. You’ve slapped people in the face with the bodies of the innocent dead to try and shame them into agreeing with you, just like the Right did with the Patriot Act and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You’ve also tried to shame them as not caring about the safety of children, just like the Right has done every time they seek to remove our privacy and restrict our speech on the internet. And you’ve laughed and laughed about “natural selection” when someone’s killed by a negligent discharge and then laughed some more about sending the feds after those nasty gun owners, sounding just as gleeful as the people who laughed over Rachael Corrie’s murder and who laugh when “those Occupy hippies” get their heads bashed in by the cops.

These acts, these words, they do not suddenly change from being underhanded and vicious to noble and righteous because of who uses them or why. They’re also not going to start miraculously working even though they’re a greater and greater point of failure for the Right.

Of course the funny part is, nobody using these tactics seems capable of realizing any of what’s wrong with it. Oh no, they’re planning to double down on it, because now owning firearms is the same thing as smoking cigarettes! Never mind how people who continue to smoke invariably die from it while no such correlation exists for people who continue to own firearms and how there’s no safe way to smoke around other people at all while there are millions who safely own firearms around other people. No, this needs to be done because somebody somewhere got the idea that if shaming firearms owners and manufacturers didn’t work the first time, obviously the solution is more shame. Fuck facts because dead children. Hell, I’m almost 100% certain that at least one person is going to respond to me with the exact same crap I’ve been talking about, because the impulse to attack, to insult and to denigrate seems to override all sense on this issue.

And for you “gun owners for reasonable gun control”, I only have this to say: sure, you don’t own anything anyone wants to ban right now. Wait until the next Charles Whitman, Derrik Bird or Seung Hui-Cho kills a dozen people with a bolt-action rifle like your hunting gun, a double-barrel shotgun like the one you bought for busting clays or a .22 pistol like your target gun. Before you throw us “unreasonable” gun owners to the wolves, you might want to take a moment to consider who’ll be left to fill the menu next time.

Anybody wants to talk reasonable, I’m all for it. Let’s talk mandatory safe storage laws, mandatory safety training, access to the background check system for private sellers. Even better, let’s talk government subsidies for all of that so that firearms ownership isn’t restricted to the wealthy and the well-off so it’ll really stick in the Right’s craw. Let’s talk about separating the culture of toxic masculinity from firearms ownership. Let’s talk about disproportionate policing and the failed policies of the War on Drugs. But if all you’ve got is shaming and dick jokes? I’m just going to laugh at you for being a predictable tool who’s more interested in winning on the internet than saving lives and preventing injuries.