Watch "Mikhail Kalashnikov Happy 93rd Birthday - AK Fun (HD)" on YouTube
11/19/2012
11/14/2012
11/07/2012
We lost
""Well, we lost. Now is not about him anymore. His next four years are not about him as, when he finishes, he will be automatically retired and off the politics, and going into history. Now is about America.
Someone said, I don't remember who, that the first four years are about reelection, the second term is about legacy.
I am a Republican, since before I was born. I believe that government must
Someone said, I don't remember who, that the first four years are about reelection, the second term is about legacy.
I am a Republican, since before I was born. I believe that government must
be minimum, that we shouldn't have any kind of welfare or safety net, I believe that people that cannot pay for their own food, their own housing, their own healthcare, they shouldn't have it for free. Was that way when capitalism began, and was that way when it worked: only the strongest would survive. I am far right, a Tea Party militia commander, and my political views are totally opposite of the President Obama.
But, I am American, and I am tired of fighting my brothers and sisters, my fellow Americans, no matter if they are red or blue.So, President Obama, this time, I won't be a sore loser. Our country needs more from me. Our country needs us to be working together for the good of us all. We need to recover. Because we need America back. And the world also needs America strong, as China is growing its tentacles over Africa, South America, and now Europe, through Portugal.That way, I say: President Obama, I will oppose you, yes, because I can't agree with your political views. But, that will be a different kind of opposition. The give-no-quarter politics will change, and I am here to cooperate with you, if you give yourself to the fight for America reconstruction. I will be waiting, President. Do what is best for my beloved America, and I will be right by your side, fighting alongside you. We need you to be stronger and decisive or we will die as a country.""
But, I am American, and I am tired of fighting my brothers and sisters, my fellow Americans, no matter if they are red or blue.So, President Obama, this time, I won't be a sore loser. Our country needs more from me. Our country needs us to be working together for the good of us all. We need to recover. Because we need America back. And the world also needs America strong, as China is growing its tentacles over Africa, South America, and now Europe, through Portugal.That way, I say: President Obama, I will oppose you, yes, because I can't agree with your political views. But, that will be a different kind of opposition. The give-no-quarter politics will change, and I am here to cooperate with you, if you give yourself to the fight for America reconstruction. I will be waiting, President. Do what is best for my beloved America, and I will be right by your side, fighting alongside you. We need you to be stronger and decisive or we will die as a country.""
11/01/2012
10/31/2012
Gammer a New Feeling Lyrics
A new feeling... [?x]
Can you feel it?!
A new feeling...
I can see, I can see
A new feeling...
No, no, I want more!
A new feeling...
I can feel it...
A new feeling!
I can see
And I know
Don't let it go
Oh no, oh no
Living the level
State of mind
If you let it shine
Let it shine!
I know, can see it in your eyes
For sure, it's deep within your soul
No you can't hold it down no more
It's the rhythm taking over, leave you wanting some more!
This is your high, you can't disguise it
The sound's bringing it out, you're shining
So right, a new feeling tonight!
A new feeling... [4x]
I know, can see it in your eyes
For sure, it's deep within your soul
No you can't hold it down no more
It's the rhythm taking over, leave you wanting some more!
This is your high, you can't disguise it
The sound's bringing it out, you're shining
So right, a new feeling tonight!
Can you feel it?!
A new feeling...
I can see, I can see
A new feeling...
No, no, I want more!
A new feeling...
I can feel it...
A new feeling... [4x]
Close to the heart, within you
Only can go, if you believe so
(...) deepest meaning
Giving me in
Now feel the light
Let it show, let it show
I know, can see it in your eyes
For sure, it's deep within your soul
No you can't hold it down no more
It's the rhythm taking over, leave you wanting some more!
This is your high, you can't disguise it
The sound's bringing it out, you're shining
So right, a new feeling tonight!
[2x]
A new feeling... (?X)
10/20/2012
10/16/2012
10/12/2012
10/09/2012
10/04/2012
3D-Printer Company Sells to Gun Companies, But Not Desktop Weaponeers | Danger Room | Wired.com
3D-Printer Company Sells to Gun Companies, But Not Desktop Weaponeers | Danger Room | Wired.com:
'via Blog this'
Direct digital manufacturing company Stratasys may have pulled the lease on a 3-D printer rented out by a group of unlicensed internet gunsmiths. But they’re all for making money by printing guns. According to internal sales documents acquired by Danger Room, Stratasys is working with some of the world’s top firearms-makers today.
According to those company documents, two “representative customers” for Stratasys’s 3-D printing machines include Knight’s Armament Company — which makes gun grips and produces its own line of firearms — and Remington Arms, the country’s largest producer of shotguns and rifles. A presentation by the company’s Direct Digital Manufacturing Group dated to January 2010 also determined that the company’s main “selling focus will be to the Aerospace and Defense Markets,” and discussed building closer ties to the military and defense industry at various Defense Department, Army and Navy expos, including an “unmanned vehicle conference.”
In addition, Stratasys has become a regular exhibitor at the annual Shot Show in Las Vegas, which promotes itself as “the largest and most comprehensive trade show for all professionals involved with the shooting sports, hunting and law enforcement industries.” Stratasys is also listed by Shot Show in a January 2012 exhibitor webpage under the categories: ammunition, firearms, “firearm parts/gunsmithing,” and “scopes, sights telescopes and accessories.”
In July 2011, a forum poster who identified himself as a New England distributor of Stratasys machines, said he had “a database of CAD [computer aided design] 1911 parts available to me,” referring to the famous pistol. The poster claimed that “Remington, Savage, Sig-Sauer and possibly others use systems from Stratasys that make parts out of engineering thermoplastics,” and also boasted of making a frame and slide for a M1911A1, “a Luger, etc.”
But it was a proposed gunsmithing venture that got Cody Wilson in trouble. A second-year law student and director of the Defense Distributed online collective, which intends to print a plastic gun and freely distribute its schematics online, Wilson had leased a uPrint SE printer from Stratasys with a portion of the $20,000 in funds raised by internet supporters. But last week, the company pulled the lease after getting wind of Wiki Weapon, the group’s gun-manufacturing and schematics-trading project. Stratasys told Wilson, “It is the policy of Stratasys not to knowingly allow its printers to be used for illegal purposes.”
“I don’t want to start a spat with them,” Wilson says. “But look, Stratasys made a choice, didn’t they? They chose a side in the democratization of manufacturing by this little decision.”
Wilson maintains he would’ve done nothing illegal by building a plastic pistol with the printer, and hadn’t planned to. But Stratasys pointed to Wilson’s lack of a federal firearm manufacturer’s license, which he may not have needed. Emphasis on the “may,” as the legality involves a complex series of overlapping and (sometimes vague) laws about what you can and can’t manufacture in your garage.
There’s also a big gap between the kinds of machines Remington can deploy to build components, and the budget printer that Defense Distributed intended to use. Stratasys makes a wide range of systems with different price points, with varying tensile strengths and fidelity in the finished products. A lease on the uPrint SE starts at $299 per month and buying one can cost up to $20,000. But a high-end Stratasys Fortus 900mc (.pdf) can set you back a total price of $380,000, and is also capable of printing a much wider variety of materials up to three times as accurately. The closest comparison to Defense Distributed’s (former) printer in the arms industry is a Dimension Elite 3D Printer – spotted in the offices of one gun manufacturer — which starts leasing from a higher $560 per month and costs a total of more than $30,000, but has similar specifications.
It’s usually legal to build your own pistol without a license. But if you intend to sell it, then you need to apply for a Title I-class federal firearms manufacturer’s license. However, Wilson never intended to sell the pistol. His plan was to simply — and possibly much more worrying to firearms regulators — build a working prototype and then share the schematics online for anyone to download.
On the other hand, a plastic pistol may — the law doesn’t exactly account for it — fall under the National Firearms Act’s definition of a Title II weapon, which also includes machine guns and easily concealable “gadget guns.” You need a license to manufacture those, regardless of whether you intend to sell the weapon or not. There’s also the Undetectable Firearms Act, which prohibits guns that can sneak through airport metal detectors.
When contacted on Wednesday, Stratasys provided a statement that read: ”We believe Mr. Wilson intended to use Stratasys property to produce a weapon that is illegal according to the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 (a.k.a. ‘The Plastic Guns’ Law) which prohibits the manufacturing or possession of a gun undetectable by airport metal detectors.” The statement added, “Additionally, Mr. Wilson failed to respond to the company’s request that he provide a copy of his firearms manufacturers and distributors license.”
That act, though, gives an exception for prototypes by licensed manufacturers and weapons built by government agencies. For instance, that means the CIA’s secret spy guns are quite legal.
The exemption could also mean Remington could be printing plastic pistols (or close enough prototypes) that can defeat airport metal detectors, but be exempt under the law if they’re keeping them in the warehouse. More likely, the odds are that Remington — like other firearms companies — could be using the machines for rapid prototyping of standard gun components. Stratasys machines have been used by Ashbury Precision Ordnance to make a chassis center section for a Tac-50 sniper rifle. Detroit Gun Works used Stratasys machines to build aprototype upper and lower receiver of a .308 caliber pistol. Stratasys even tweeted about it.
Nor is Stratasys the only additive manufacturing company to work with weapons and defense. Competitor 3D Systems has sought to expand into the defense market at the same time 3D Systems’s CEO, Abe Reichental, has pushed the printing industry to prevent “unlawful printing of regulated gun parts” before “someone dangerous hijacked this capability to do evil.” Think of it like a version of Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” mantra for the desktop manufacturing industry.
In August, Reichental said companies “should join together so parents don’t have to worry their child might print something illegally and communities don’t have to worry that someone irresponsible will open fire with a printed weapon and companies don’t have to worry about counterfeiting and piracy.”
But Reichental never suggested that the big firearms manufacturers shouldn’t enjoy the many benefits of rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing.
'via Blog this'
10/03/2012
The Poverty of Democrat Party "solutions"
"The Democrat introduced a bill last session calling for a voluntary sign-up system. Someone suicidal could put themselves on a list banning them from buying a gun. The bill never got a hearing."
But not aspirin? No one has ever killed themselves with OTC meds...
NOTE THE AGENDA
Via: This link.
and this comment is spot on:
Andrew Gadtke • 13 hours ago
But not aspirin? No one has ever killed themselves with OTC meds...
NOTE THE AGENDA
Via: This link.
and this comment is spot on:
Those who are adjudicated as mentally ill are prohibited from buying or owning firearms - they are one of the only groups who have their second ammendment rights taken away WITHOUT ever having committed a crime. That is because they are twice as likely to be violent as a "normal" person. But data also shows blacks are 8 times more likely than non-blacks of being violent, and men are 10 times more likely than women of being violent. Perhaps instead of trying to take away more rights from law abiding citizens based on illogical fear arguments, we should only take away rights of those who are criminals. If society is worried about the mentally ill being violent, maybe society should try to help them in terms of treatment, supported housing and employment, social acceptence, etc.
- Andrew D. Gadtke, paranoid schizophrenic and author of the book on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder called "Regular & Decaf"
- Andrew D. Gadtke, paranoid schizophrenic and author of the book on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder called "Regular & Decaf"
10/02/2012
9/30/2012
Arsenal SGL-31 Stencil w/ pics
Special Thanks to Madmartigan for without his help this little late night project could not have been completed.
9/27/2012
9/26/2012
9/24/2012
9/23/2012
9/21/2012
9/20/2012
Tactical Response Fighting Rifle
This is good as it shows a lot of different rifle-men and the different ways civilians run their kit.
9/19/2012
The Erosion of Constitutional Liberties: Voter ID Laws and Gun Restrictions
|
9/16/2012
9/14/2012
9/13/2012
9/12/2012
Arsenal Arms SGL 31-94 Updated review AK 74 5.45x39
I dig this dude's scope mount and red dot. It's a nice clean setup that flows with the Russian Mil-Spec AK74 rifle.
9/10/2012
Officer Shooting Caught On Camera, El Cajon Shooting
People act in irrational manner when injured/under stress. The injured officer should have remained behind cover. The uninjured officer exposed himself and attempted to drag his injured comrade. To what end? Never expose yourself in a gunfight. You can't do anything to prevent an injured comrade from bleeding out if that's there fate, but you are no good to anyone if you are injured because you exposed yourself.
Brad Pitt comes out in favor of 2A
"America is a country founded on guns. It’s in our DNA. It’s very strange but I feel better having a gun. I really do. I don’t feel safe, I don’t feel the house is completely safe, if I don’t have one hidden somewhere. That’s my thinking, right or wrong."
You can just hear the libtards gnashing their teeth over this one.
YAHOO NEWS COVERS DEFENSE DISTRIBUTED
You don't bring a 3D printer to a gun fight -- yet
By Rich Brown | CNET.com – Fri, Sep 7, 2012
Welcome to the dark side of 3D printing.
The hobby is best known for creating colorful toys and trinkets, but some enthusiasts are working on design files that would allow anyone to print a working gun. These don't exist yet, but some believe it's only a matter of time.
The hobby is best known for creating colorful toys and trinkets, but some enthusiasts are working on design files that would allow anyone to print a working gun. These don't exist yet, but some believe it's only a matter of time.
Why would a 3D-printed gun be appealing? For one, it could potentially be cheap. You can buy a preassembled 3D printer for about $500. A spool of ABS plastic to print with goes for $50. Depending on where you shop, you can buy .38 Special ammunition for 30 cents a round. The plans will undoubted be distributed free like so many MP3s.
In fact, plans for working gun parts already exist. They can be found on a site called Thingiverse and on similar sites, alongside thousands of free plans for toys, jewelry, tools, and design equipment.
Thingiverse is a creation of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based MakerBot and its CEO, Bre Pettis. Pettis and his company have become the de facto faces of 3D printing thanks to regular appearances in mainstream and tech media talking about how 3D printers democratize manufacturing. Pettis usually demonstrates this idea with brightly colored remote-control cars, robots, and other toys made with MakerBot printers. MakerBot and Pettis don't really talk about files related to gun parts.
That doesn't mean the issue has gone unnoticed, with the intersection of 3D printing and firearms having made the news a few times this year. In June, Michael "HaveBlue" Guslick reported on his blogabout successfully test-firing a homemade gun whose key component, the lower receiver, he made from ABS plastic on a '90s-era Stratasys FDM 1600 3D printer.
And in August, Forbes' Andy Greenberg wrote about a group called Defense Distributed, which has some lofty goals as mapped out in the video below. In practical terms, their immediate aim is to create a design file for what they call a Wiki Weapon, a functional, 3D-printed firearm.
The increased attention on printable guns comes as Defense Distributed is approaching a firing test, said Cody Wilson, a University of Texas graduate student and the chief spokesman for the group. Depending on the outcome of that testing, 3D-printing companies, file-hosting sites, and law enforcement and legislative groups may have to tackle a challenging set of questions regarding the manufacture and regulation of firearms, both in this country and abroad.
None of that means printing a gun is impossible.
Darwin Award, or upending the means of production?
On his blog, Haveblue.org, Guslick offers thorough documentation of the process he followed to design, print, fine-tune, and test his 3D-printed receiver. Guslick also addresses the reception to his project by the greater 3D-printing community, as well as the ensuing media swirl and the feasibility of the Defense Distributed project. All of those topics are worth reading about, but that last part will be of particular interest to would-be gunmakers.
You can make a receiver like Guslick's out of plastic because it houses only the basic mechanical parts of a firearm -- the trigger mechanism, the magazine, and other components. It's the barrel of a gun and/or the firing chamber, both of which you attach to the receiver, that must be strong enough to contain the heat and explosive pressure that comes from firing a round. A project like that of Defense Distributed and its Wiki Weapon poses a much harder challenge, as Guslick explains on his site (links added where appropriate):
Darwin Award, or upending the means of production?
On his blog, Haveblue.org, Guslick offers thorough documentation of the process he followed to design, print, fine-tune, and test his 3D-printed receiver. Guslick also addresses the reception to his project by the greater 3D-printing community, as well as the ensuing media swirl and the feasibility of the Defense Distributed project. All of those topics are worth reading about, but that last part will be of particular interest to would-be gunmakers.
You can make a receiver like Guslick's out of plastic because it houses only the basic mechanical parts of a firearm -- the trigger mechanism, the magazine, and other components. It's the barrel of a gun and/or the firing chamber, both of which you attach to the receiver, that must be strong enough to contain the heat and explosive pressure that comes from firing a round. A project like that of Defense Distributed and its Wiki Weapon poses a much harder challenge, as Guslick explains on his site (links added where appropriate):
The problem is that even the strongest 3D-printable thermoplastic currently available for the FDM process (Ultem 9085) doesn't even have half the tensile strength needed to withstand the 24,000 psi maximum allowed chamber pressure of the .22LR round as defined by SAAMI (the Sporting Arms and Manufacturer's Institute).Wilson at the University of Texas says he intends to find out just what's possible with ABS plastic. "I'm excited about the question, because I'm interested to see how it fails," he told CNET.
As such, yes, a 100 percent 3D-printed gun made on a RepRap could certainly go "bang," but even with a barrel of large enough diameter to keep it from exploding, there would be so much deformation in the bore that most of the available energy would be sapped by gas leakage around the projectile (to say nothing of the utter lack of accuracy). In the end, you'd have a smoking, charred crater left for a barrel bore after the single shot.
That doesn't mean Wilson expects to fail. He referred me to this list of barrel pressure tolerances, and said Defense Distributed plans to test .38 Special ammunition, as well as .45 Long Colt, both of which have lower maximum pressure output than the .22. And according to Wilson, "operational pressure is also about half of the SAAMI-suggested maximum tolerances."
Bringing in a specialist
Ryder Washburn is the vice president of Specialists Ltd., the East Coast's largest provider of prop weaponry for film, TV, and theater. "What we try to do is the opposite of what you're talking about,"Washburn said. "We want to take as much 'gun' out of our products as possible. Essentially we want to stay 10 feet back from the edge of making an actual firearm. But in order to do that, you have to know where the edge is."
I asked Washburn about Wilson's likelihood of success. "Using lower-pressure ammunition sounds like a good decision, but it depends on how you define success. If his goal is to fire a bullet and not blow his hand off, I give him a 50 percent chance."
To my disappointment, I did not get to meet Washburn at his SOHO office in New York ("It's pretty hectic here," he told me). Instead, we met at a nearby coffee shop.
"People get excited by additive manufacturing [like 3D printing] because it seems like you're making something out of thin air. But it has been possible to make guns with reductive technology, like a CNC mill, for years, and it works the same way as a 3D printer. Most of the work goes on in 3D-modeling software. Then you take the design file from the computer and send it to the machine to build. You can make a working metal gun with a $3,000 CNC machine. If all you want to do is make a cheap gun, you can go down to Home Depot and build one with $20 worth of parts."
Washburn also backed up Guslick's assessment that using Ultem or any other plastic-based FDM printer feedstock to make a complete, functional firearm would be very difficult, if not impossible. I asked him if it was possible for a gun made entirely from ABS plastic to fire a .22 caliber round, the same ammunition Defense Distributed had in mind initially. "You might be able to do that, but it would take a lot of design work, and a lot of research and funding. And the end result would still be an inferior product compared with what you can currently make using traditional machine tools."
For Wilson, making a practical, working gun isn't necessarily the point. "We have to start here. This is the fundament. It's the beginning." The Defense Distributed project is less about the gun, according to Wilson, than about democratizing manufacturing technology. His intention is that "the non-expert user will have the ability to make a gun with just a click."
As Washburn points out, you can already do that with a CNC milling machine. But, Wilson adds, it still requires some expertise in the assembly. Wilson also argues that 3D printers are unique in their potential to print using multiple materials. That, he says, gives 3D printing a more capable future than traditional machine tools.
In summing up my goal for this article to Wilson, I said that it was in part to communicate the present-day reality of using a 3D printer to make a plastic gun and submitted that it was not currently feasible. Citing his team's upcoming ammunition test, he disagreed. "Literally, it might be possible to print out a gun in a few weeks."
Not everyone will agree with Wilson's goals or philosophy, but enough people do that the project has made substantial progress toward its $20,000 fundraising goal. After stagnating at just over $1,000 toward the end of last week, on the evening of August 30, the group received a $10,000 windfall. Wilson tells me they also have a commitment for matching funds for every dollar above $10,000. According to the Defense Distributed Web site, the fundraising tally currently stands at $11,304, and he intends to conduct his firing test soon.
The law won
But is any of this even legal? From the 1934 National Firearms Act to the 1968 Gun Control Act (PDF) and a variety of other laws, the federal government has all kinds of regulations pertaining to firearm manufacturing and possession. And those laws supply only the minimum standard. Layer state and local laws on top of those, and the legal obligations for the would-be home gunsmiths become rather burdensome.
From a federal point of view, you have three primary legal considerations before you hit print.
If you aim to sell your services as a gunsmith (e.g., "I charge $50 an hour to make a gun") or you intend to sell the weapon once you've made it (e.g., "I charge $500 for this particular gun"), you need to obtain a federal manufacturer's license. If the weapon is for personal use, no manufacturing license is required.
You then need to consider the kind of weapon you intend to make. Crafting a Title I class weapon at home -- a long-barreled semi-automatic or single-action rifle, a long-barreled shotgun, or a traditional pistol or a revolver as defined by the Gun Control Act -- generally requires no preliminary paperwork. You may still need to register the weapon once you've made it (depending on state and local laws), but, federally speaking, you're free to engage in the act of making it without any prior permission. The problem is that using a consumer-grade 3D printer to make a functional firearm that meets the specifications of a Title I weapon would be extremely difficult, not to mention impractical, for the reasons outlined above.
Instead, any successful design would most likely be considered a Title II-class weapon as defined by the National Firearms Act, specifically one that fits the "Any Other Weapon" category.
Get ready for some paperwork
Title II-class weapons are the more heavily regulated firearms under federal law. Guns in this category consist of, among other things, machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, explosive devices, and what the U.S. government calls "Any Other Weapon." The latter includes pen, cane, and other gadget-type guns, and smooth-bore pistols. According to David Goldman, managing partner of Jacksonville, FL's Apple Law Firm, and publisher of the NFA Gun Trust Lawyer blog, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms would most likely put a 3D-printed plastic gun in that category.
Assuming your design does fall under the Title II Any Other Weapon classification, federal law mandates that before you make it, you fill out ATF Form 5320.1 (PDF), aka Form 1, aka the Application to Make and Register a Firearm. You then need to submit it and have it approved by the ATF.
As part of the approval process, an ATF spokesperson informed me that the agency will want to see the design for your homemade gun. This will help them determine its classification, as well as whether the weapon would be legal for you to possess in your state or municipality.
Form 1 also requires that you receive approval from a local law enforcement officer. Others have sued after failing to secure this approval for the transfer of weapons between owners, which requires a different form, but Goldman is familiar with no case law supporting those who have been unable to obtain this approval for a Form 1 application.
You must also consider the obscure but very relevant Undetectable Firearms Act. It was Wilson who told me about this law ("I'm doing your research for you," he joked).
The Undetectable Firearms Act says, simply, that you may not manufacture or possess a firearm that cannot be detected by an airport metal detector. The law is a product of the debut of the Glock 17 handgun that caused a stir in the 1980s for its composite plastic components. That gun was itself never capable of defeating an airport metal detector, but the law is still in place regardless, although it's due to expire in December of 2013.
Trying this at home
There are more legal considerations to making a Title II-class gun, but also interesting is the case of the Guslick's receiver design. According to federal law, the receiver is so integral to the specific functionality of a given weapon that the receiver itself is considered a firearm. Guslick's design in particular mirrors that of a Colt AR 15 hunting rifle, making it a Title I-class weapon. In New York City, possessing Guslick's receiver would be illegal.
It's for that reason that I printed a significantly reduced-scale version of Guslick's receiver from ABS plastic on a MakerBot Replicator 3D printer. It's also why I felt even more secure when the print came out a little mangled after one corner pulled up from the build surface during printing. It's also the reason why, even despite the small size and the imperfect print, I destroyed the mini receiver last week.
I printed the receiver first to see if the end result seemed like a feasible gun part. I'm neither a materials scientist nor a gunsmith, nor am I even a particularly adept 3D-printer user, but my miniature receiver felt solid enough, at least to me, to accept some mechanical internal components and mounting hardware.
"This is about 25 percent scale," Washburn said of my mini receiver. "There's probably nothing illegal about this. If you made it at 100 percent scale, I wouldn't want to be your lawyer."
Even if a consumer-level 3D printer can't currently make a functioning gun, it can make some rather serious gun components. "I'd hate to see some 15-year-old get in trouble for printing this full-sized," Washburn said.
I am become death, the destroyer of my garage
The obvious retort to any discussion of the legalities of making your own firearms or firearm components, 3D-printed or otherwise, is that criminals don't care about gun control laws. And even if it's impractical, if not downright impossible, to make your own plastic gun now, as 3D-printing technology improves and grows you might envision a near-term future where crooks regularly arm themselves with cheap, easily reproduced plastic firearms.
Even if you dial down the scare rhetoric, 3D printing at the very least seems like it could disrupt the idea that a government can regulate guns or their manufacture. Defense Distributed outright claims that kind of disruption among its goals.
"In a sense, every dollar [that you donate to their project] is a statement to these international kleptocrats that this isn't in [their] control anymore."
Here's the problem with that idea. As Washburn pointed out, you can already make a cheap gun with a trip down to the hardware store. And with only a little training, you can already use relatively affordable, widely available machine tools to mass-produce functioning weapons.
This is not to say that zip guns and other illegal homemade weapons don't currently exist. Yet despite the widely distributed means of production and low financial and knowledge requirements, the regulation-shaking, homemade gun-making revolution hasn't happened in this country.
Washburn, the ATF, and gun rights attorney Stephan Halbrook all believe current U.S. legislation is already well-equipped to handle the prospect of a plastic, 3D-printed firearm. You never know, of course. "You might find a legislator somewhere who wants to do something about it," Halbrook said. But the federal government has been regulating alternative gun designs, the Any Other Weapon, since the National Firearms Act of 1934. Wilson counters that if his group can design an effective, easily distributed plan for a printable plastic gun, "there is just not enough manpower to control it."
"3D printing 20 years from now is a different animal," Washburn said, allowing at least the possibility that printing a functional firearm might one day become more practical. Even if it does, it will only offer another means to an end that we can already accomplish easily. "This has all been done before," Washburn said, "and there are smarter ways to do it."
Meanwhile, Defense Distributed is going forward with its testing.
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