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Grey Templar wrote:Even a firing pin will show up on an airport scanner.

And a criminal is going to pony up $8,000+ to get a bulky machine installed in his garage when he could just as easily go to one of his criminal buddies and get a gun that he knows will work for a fraction of the cost?

I suspect you have a very specific criminal element in mind when you say "criminal". So if I'm right, le tme put this in terms that even you might be willing to consider:

One guy buys a printer for $8k and then prints his own untraceable guns, being sold for $500 each (a bargain). He'll have his money back inside of a weekend (assuming actual production time isn't insanely high)

 Grey Templar wrote:
True, but then he has to reassemble the gun after he's on the plane.

And what about bullets? Can't hide very many of those in a cell phone.


Yeah, they'll get cheaper eventually but with the internet you are not going to prevent people from getting their hands on the blueprints. We can't stop people from pirating music, what chance do we have of stopping them from getting a 3-D blueprint?

And similarly you can't prevent anyone from buying a 3-D printer.

Now there's the problem. Hide the bullets in a pen Gorky Park style.

 CptJake wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even a firing pin will show up on an airport scanner.

And a criminal is going to pony up $8,000+ to get a bulky machine installed in his garage when he could just as easily go to one of his criminal buddies and get a gun that he knows will work for a fraction of the cost?

Come on. You really think TSA employees are gonna recognize that as a firing pin?

A criminal buddy isn't gonna get him a gun that potentially gets onto an airplane...

No, but they'll see a sharp metal object. They go rabid over just about everything.

CptJake wrote:I suspect it will be traceable for a variety of reasons. The specific design is traceable, and it won't be hard to trace who had downloaded it. The plastics used by the printer will be traceable to manufacturer and probably point of sale much like they can do with an ink cartridge or toner cartridge now. Won't be easy, but I would not underestimate the FBIs investigatory capability.

As it stands it is impossible to trace an ink cartridge due to how generic and commercialized they are -the exact reason tracing these plastics would be a nightmare. This, of course, does not even touch on the idea that these guns can easily be printed without rifling (you don't need accuracy when you put the barrel to someone's head). Even more technical than that (and this I'm not certain of yet due to the plastics used) there's a good chance that if there was any rifling, the heat would alter it such that it made tracing a bullet's striations impossible.

And of course, that doesn't even get into the idea of using cartridges, though I suspect that will require leaps and bounds in structural advancement first...


EDIT: GT, do you know what a firing pin actually looks like?

 azazel the cat wrote:

CptJake wrote:I suspect it will be traceable for a variety of reasons. The specific design is traceable, and it won't be hard to trace who had downloaded it. The plastics used by the printer will be traceable to manufacturer and probably point of sale much like they can do with an ink cartridge or toner cartridge now. Won't be easy, but I would not underestimate the FBIs investigatory capability.

As it stands it is impossible to trace an ink cartridge due to how generic and commercialized they are -the exact reason tracing these plastics would be a nightmare. This, of course, does not even touch on the idea that these guns can easily be printed without rifling (you don't need accuracy when you put the barrel to someone's head). Even more technical than that (and this I'm not certain of yet due to the plastics used) there's a good chance that if there was any rifling, the heat would alter it such that it made tracing a bullet's striations impossible.

And of course, that doesn't even get into the idea of using cartridges, though I suspect that will require leaps and bounds in structural advancement first...


EDIT: GT, do you know what a firing pin actually looks like?

I do. There's a reason its called a pin.