Defense Distributed’s New 3D Printed High Capacity Gun Magazine ‘Cuomo’

http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/02/defense-distributed-unveils-new-3d-printed-gun-magazine-cuomo-video.php

by jalanco • 13 years ago

28 44 13 years ago

idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com

largesse• 13 years ago

And this is how 3D printing becomes regulated out of existence.

rdl3• 13 years ago

I think once 3D printing gets good, there will be a lot of things more "legally interesting" than guns to cause regulatory issues.

Nrsolis3• 13 years ago

You don't need 3D printing to make usable firearms parts.

Example: http://aresarmor.com/

Go head and read some of the info on this company, which is selling parts that are unfinished components of an AR-15 rifle. Essentially, they sell you an almost complete lower receiver (the part the ATF considers to be the "gun"), and you use some supplied jigs and a drill press to finish the job. Presto: untraceable, unserialized rifle unencumbered by federal rules on firearms regulated by interstate commerce.

Remember prohibition? They used to sell "grape juice concentrate" that could be mixed with water, stored in a jug for an appropriate period of time, and presto: wine.

All you need is a reasonably substantial proportion of the population willing to conspire with each other to avoid/subvert/ignore the law and you've got status quo. IMHO, restricting access to firearms will have a measurable, but ultimately negligible effect on death by firearms in the US.

knowaveragejoe3• 13 years ago

Indeed. Even within the weapon space, there are so many other things you could print besides firearm components that could aid in death/destruction.

flexie• 13 years ago

Great. Even easier access to guns is just what America needs.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/1...

RobotCaleb• 13 years ago

Without comparing that to other causes of death it's a pretty useless page to look at.

mfringel3• 13 years ago

It informed me that there are 1621 people dead since Newtown. That's useful to know in as much that there are continued gun-related deaths in the US.

Now, we can relate those to per-capita deaths in order countries and compare, like-to-like.

Can you clarify why it's useless to look at unless we include ostensibly unrelated statistics?

nirvana4• 13 years ago

Compare that number to the 1,500,000 times a year, according to the DoJ, that guns are used defensively by intended victims to stop violent crime. Constantly talking about how many people have been killed while ignoring how many have been saved is profoundly dishonest.

The rate of violent crime in the USA is around 640 per 100,000 while in the UK it is closer to 2,500 per 100k.

Clearly banning guns doesn't lower violent crime. In fact, in the UK, after they banned guns, violent gun crime skyrocketed.... because the criminals knew that their victims were disarmed.

showerst• 13 years ago

Do you have a cite for that 1.5MM/year?

The best numbers I could find from DOJ are from 2000, and suggest it's around 100,000.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:419E8WPZxdkJ:...

astrodust• 13 years ago

I'm calling bullshit on this.

Violent crime in the UK peaked in 1995 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent-crime-rates-UK-198...). Various types of gun bans were passed in 1988 and an even stricter one in 1997 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_(Amendment)_Act_1997).

knowaveragejoe3• 13 years ago

Does the slippery slope argument hold any water here? With the legal framework and technical implementation in place for regulation of 3D printing, what's to stop a situation analogous to Internet piracy...?

gnu8• 13 years ago

Piracy illustrates the fact that it's not possible to regulate 3D printing, but even if it were possible, it would be 100% wrong.

I don't know how it ever became generally accepted that every possible object and action must be regulated by the nanny state. Pretty soon that idea will be dead forever.

yareally2• 13 years ago

It's quite funny that people generally dislike how their government works (regardless of country), but have less issue with it passing new laws and regulations that help to perpetuate that general dislike.

brazzy3• 13 years ago

> I don't know how it ever became generally accepted that every possible object and action must be regulated by the nanny state.

Strawman. That's not generally accepted, not even seriously suggested by anyone except strawmen-builders.

The generally accepted idea is that it's the job of any state to regulate actions that cause serious harm to people.

Disagreements abound about what actions exactly count as causing harm, and what form the regulations should take; specifically how far they should go in preventing such actions instead of just punishing them.

Nrsolis3• 13 years ago

IIRC in Texas, they regulate the sale of Erlenmeyer flasks:

http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/RegulatoryServices/narcotics/na...

http://www.crscientific.com/texas-glassware.html

Keep in mind that TX generally has a pro-gun population.

nirvana4• 13 years ago

FWIW "High Capacity Magazine" is a loaded term. The AR system was issued with 30 round magazines so, these are normal capacity. But calling them "high capacity" is what people who want to ban them do to pretend like there's something unusual about them.

For anyone whose wondered why "gun nuts" want these "high capacity" magazines, the answer is very simple: Loading a mag is often a pain in the butt. It's a lot more fun to go to the range with a bunch of loaded magazines, shoot for several hours and then go home, rather than be loading magazines every 5 minutes. It's that simple. (Though of course there are cases where people have needed the higher capacity, like the recent news story about the shop-keeper who defended his store and customers with a pistol with 17 rounds.)

"Assault Weapon" is another made up term to make guns sound scary. Most people seem to think there are people running around with full auto machine guns out there.

In the 1990s the ban on "assault weapons" prohibited cosmetic and safety items, not anything that made guns more lethal. (EG: flash suppressor lets you not get blinded when shooting at night, "grenade launchers" are just tubes on WWII era weapons, grenades themselves long being made illegal, but the media loves to talk about the police discovering "grenade launchers", pistol grips and collapsable butt stocks are just ergonomics, the former promoting better form.)

Lately the popular term is "assault rifle" which have been effectively banned since 1934, and their manufacture totally banned since the mid 1980s. Plus if we're strictly speaking that term only applies to a particular rifle produced in germany in WWII.

The reason for this dishonest use of political terms is really easy: There's effectively no difference between an AK-47 and a hunting rifle, except that the AK has been demonized.

Previously demonized weapons: The "sawed off shotgun" which was a modification made by italian shop owners who wanted to be able to defend themselves against the mafia shaking them down, but didn't want to penetrate the wall and hit innocent bystanders. Thus shortening the barrel, which produces a wider spread and less collatoral damage. The mafia couldn't have that, so they got their politicans to demonize and then ban them. Racist gun control.

The "saturday night special" was nothing special at all, just the more popular firearm for poor black people living in dangerous areas to defend themselves. They couldn't afford more expensive firearms and they had a real need to defend themselves from the criminal elements, but we couldn't have that, could we? It's not a coincidence that the ghettos have become overrun with violence since the "saturday night special" was criminalized.

I could go on, the entire gun control political movement is based on misrepresentation (eg: "glocks are all plastic and undetectable by airport scanners!" which has never been true) and the ignorance of the general public.

Guns kill people like spoons make people fat. It's non-sensical, and proof positive that politicians don't have your best interests at heart when they say "oh, little girl, you should just get raped, rather than defend yourself with a pistol", which is what they're doing here.

jack-r-abbit5• 13 years ago

Guns kill people like spoons make people fat.

OMG... I love this! Perfect analogy, IMO.

Guillaume86• 13 years ago

Yeah everybody use a gun several times a day to fullfil a basic need, make sense.

temphn• 13 years ago

Relatedly, the thing I don't get is why people think preppers are so crazy.

Didn't Vancouver and London just have serious riots in 2010 and 2011 respectively? Didn't the US have massive unrest in Katrina in 2005 and LA in 1992? Didn't most countries around the world, including Germany, Japan, Russia, and China have seriously tyrannical governments within living memory? You'd have to do the calculation but probably 50% or more of the world's population has lived at some point under a tyrannical government.

Many progressives agree that the US military has committed atrocities overseas. They have seen Bush and Obama's unstinting increase in executive power, they know about the existence of kill lists that allow Predator Drone-based attacks on any American citizen suspected of being a terrorist, and they've seen the coverups revealed by Pfc. Manning.

So, whether or not you agree there is a nontrivial chance of significant financial instability in the near future, why is so much blind trust placed in US society, government, and military? We've seen civil society break down all over the world, live on our TV. The Anglosphere has been mostly immune over the 20th century, but it can happen here.

achy• 13 years ago

That analogy is ridiculous. It's more like having a tub of ice cream and a spoon available at all times. It doesn't make you fat, but if you're depressed or vulnerable, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to take a bite.

__--__• 13 years ago

Your analogy is also ridiculous. You're suggesting that taking a bite of ice cream and shooting somebody are morally equivalent.

Defense Distributed’s New 3D Printed High Capacity Gun Magazine ‘Cuomo’

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