3D Printable Ammo Clip Skirts New Proposed Gun Laws 1862
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Over the past weekend, Defense Distributed successfully 3D-printed and tested a magazine for an AR semi-automatic rifle, loading and firing 86 rounds from the 30-round clip. That homemade chunk of curved plastic holds special significance: Between 1994 and 2004, so-called 'high capacity magazines' capable of holding more than 10 bullets were banned from sale. And a new gun control bill proposed by California Senator Dianne Feinstein in the wake of recent shootings would ban those larger ammo clips again. President Obama has also voiced support for the magazine restrictions. Defense Distributed says it hopes to preempt any high capacity magazine ban by showing how impossible it has become to prevent the creation of a simple spring-loaded box in the age of cheap 3D printing. It's posted the 3D-printable magazine blueprints on its website, Defcad.org, and gun enthusiasts have already downloaded files related to the ammo holders more than 2,200 times." Update: 01/15 23:15 GMT by T : Mea culpa; please blame my flu for mistakenly letting through that headline with "clip" where it should say "magazine." I know the difference — and I don't own any clips.
Re:Clip (Score:5, Informative)
Clip [wikipedia.org] versus Magazine [wikipedia.org]
Re: Hair-splitting (Score:2, Informative)
Pro-mags are plastic and are some of the best functioning AR-15 mags out there.
It's a Magazine (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, TV and film have filled us with bad terminology. This is about a magazine. A clip is a completely different thing.
Magazines hold multiple rounds. They're typically enclosed for protection from dust and dirt, and are inserted into a firearm through a receiving slot. Magazines are used in semi-automatic pistols like your average Glock, Sig Sauer, Walther, etc. They're also used in rifles like the M-16 or AR-15.
Clips hold two rounds together in a belt fed weapon, like the M-60. They're typically fed from an ammunition box or other container. The clips are expelled after running through the weapon. The expulsion is similar to the way the brass casings are expelled. It's basically a small curved springy piece of metal holding two rounds together.
The names are not interchangeable. There's no such thing as a 30 round clip. It's a 30 round magazine.
Re:It's a Magazine (Score:2, Informative)
The term clip is commonly used to describe a firearm magazine, especially in newspapers, movies, and on television. Because of this usage, the Merriam-Webster dictionary now defines a clip as "a device to hold cartridges for charging the magazines of some rifles; also :a magazine from which ammunition is fed into the chamber of a firearm".
Language changes. Get over it. Moreover, even while you are technically correct, this distinction has no substantive impact on the underlying discussion.
Also: your definition of clip is wrong. Both stripper and en block clips can hold more than two rounds, and the weapon involved need not be belt fed.
Re:I don't understand the "high cap" magazine ban (Score:5, Informative)
Virginia Tech being the obvious counter-example. Near 200 shots fired from stock pistol magazines, I think?
Re:Blood is on the NRA Hands (Score:2, Informative)
Well, Columbine had armed guards, but the school shooters still used the tools the NRA provided to them to effectively kill many children.
Perhaps taking the gun from the bad guys - Alex Jones, and the gun stroking retards who support the NRA would be a more effective tactic.
Before looking at the facts of the case, first consider the line of reasoning used in the argument. Critics use a specific example (the Columbine tragedy) to make a general conclusion (armed school guards don't help). It's called inductive reasoning, and it is not a valid line of reasoning, because generalizations based on specific examples are easily disproved. For example, inductive reasoning would argue that because life-long smoker George Burns died of a heart attack at the age of 100 (the specific example), smoking is not hazardous to your health (the general conclusion).
In the case of the Columbine tragedy, the facts of the case disprove the conclusion that an armed guard did not help. At the time of the shooting, 11:19 a.m., Gardner was eating lunch in his car in the parking lot on the far side of the campus, away from where the shooting occurred. His parking space was near an area known as the "Smoker's Pit," and he used his lunch time to make sure students weren't in the area smoking during their lunch period.
The Columbine shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, chose that time for the attack because they knew a number of students would be in and near the school cafeteria. They placed two bombs inside the cafeteria timed to explode, which they thought would force students to evacuate outside, where they were waiting. However, the bombs did not go off.
After the bombs failed to detonate, Harris and Klebold began shooting students eating lunch outside. Deputy Gardner was notified of the shooting by a custodian within three minutes of the first shot, and had to drive around the campus to enter the parking lot where the shooting took place. It took him two minutes to arrive. He confronted the shooters in the parking lot, about five minutes after the first shot was fired. Deputy Gardner exchanged fire with Harris and Klebold, which stopped the pair from firing at students. Gardner's actions allow teacher Patti Nielson and student Brian Anderson (who were both shot at and injured) to escape and survive.
Re:Blood is on the NRA Hands (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Clip (Score:5, Informative)
Sprockets never interact with another sprocket. Gears do.
Re:Clip (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Clip (Score:5, Informative)
A sprocket is specifically to run a chain on.
A gear is a ratio of two rotating sprockets (describing the power vs motion) OR any thing with teeth on it that meets something else with teeth on it.
So, all sprockets are gears, but not all gears are sprockets. In certain industries, they are interchangeable because the gears all have a chain on them, and there's a need to use "gear" to describe the power vs motion ratios.
Re:I don't understand the "high cap" magazine ban (Score:4, Informative)
And the stupidity of this "theory" of theirs is only once has the squirrel found this nut. Every other mass shooter has gone through magazine after magazine of ammo without ever getting stopped. VT ran through 17 magazines averaging 10 rounds each and guess what, no one stopped him. It's a canard.
Re:Almost no one is killed by "assault weapons" (Score:5, Informative)
My primary point was a response to the
"You know how you stop a bad guy with a gun?
A good guy with a gun. Anything else is handwaving bullshit."
talking point: Columbine had an armed guard, who was apparently not all that useful.
The term 'green-on-blue attack' refers to the (quite common) situations where an aghan security force member will launch a surprise attack on NATO military personnel with which he is supposed to be working. Again, it turns out to not be that difficult to kill a few armed, trained, soldiers if you just wait for their backs to be turned.
More broadly, the relationship to magazine capacity is one of time: Given enough time to muster a response, the cops do show up in overwhelming numbers and either kill the shooter or cause them to kill themselves This means that the main question is how efficient they can be during the time that they have.
Re:Almost no one is killed by "assault weapons" (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, you should make some small effort to inform yourself.
It is not our responsibility to recap the entirety of history as relevant to this discussion so that you don't have to spend 10 minutes researching on the internet. You don't even need to get out of your chair.
Re:Clip (Score:5, Informative)
A sprocket is a wheel with projections that meshes with a chain or toothed/perforated belt. A gear is a wheel with projections that mesh with other gears. A cog is the projection in either case, although sometimes "cog" is used as shorthand for "cogwheel" which would be a gear. A pinion is the smallest gear in a set, or the gear that drives a rack (which is a gear of infinite diameter, ie flat)
A clip holds multiple bullets together so they can be more easily loaded into the gun's magazine. Once this happens the clip is removed. A magazine is the container that holds the bullets and can either be an integral part of the weapon (such as some rifles, or revolver pistol) or detachable.
=Smidge=
Re:Almost no one is killed by "assault weapons" (Score:5, Informative)
You're wrong.
"However, a timeline of the events assembled by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department and published by CNN proves just the opposite. The armed guard, Jefferson County Sheriff's Deputy Neil Gardner, was able to engage the killers, keeping them from shooting more victims, and he personally saved dozens of students."
http://www.examiner.com/article/fact-check-columbine-high-s-armed-guard-saved-student-lives [examiner.com]
Re:Clip (Score:5, Informative)
If you know where to look you can still get sane prices. I just bought a pair of AR15 lowers and an AR10 lower for $150 each. The honest manufacturers are not raising prices.
Also you can still get 30 round magazines at the normal $15.00 each price. just buy a full ammobox of 5.56, all the rounds come in magazines ready to fire. I just bought a box of 250 rounds in magazines and a nice metal ammo can for $155.00 I can even buy 55 gallon drums of loose 55gr .223 brass shells for $825. There is about 6000 rounds in the drum. Then start selling them for $2.00 a round to the local morons that are panic buying and make yourself a nice profit. A local gun shop has recently done that, although he sells normal price to his regulars.
Chicago, Detroit and New York (Score:5, Informative)
Three cities with the toughest gun laws in the country, and among the highest rates of gun violence. Analyze that.
Places where reasonable "shall-issue" concealed carry licenses are available have seen large decreases in gun violence. Analyze that too.
But that doesn't fit the narrative.
And to "fix" that, you want to take away the rights of every law-abiding citizen in America to defend themselves.
Re:Why can't we have rational gun control? (Score:4, Informative)
We tried to manage gun sales by requiring background checks but the gun show exemption has been used to such an extent that forty percent of guns sold in the United States were sold without a background check. Good luck trying to get the NRA to support closing this loophole or to support a federal registry of guns.
Re:Clip (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe we should allow Senator Feinstein to ban 30 round "clips," thus protecting the sale of 20 and 30 round magazines.
Maybe you should read what she actually said and not the headline some idiot put on it here.
http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=28d0c499-28ec-42a7-902d-ebf318d46d02 [senate.gov]
Re:Almost no one is killed by "assault weapons" (Score:4, Informative)
Hey - next time I'm trapped in a mass shooting incident, I'll be sure to wait til he stops shooting to make an attempt to save my sorry ass. That's a great idea you've got there! /sarcasm
Which part of "multiple weapons" does your idea apply to? And, which part of "multiple magazines" would it apply to? You DO realize that the mass murder nuts are NOT toting six-shooters? Almost exclusively, they carry semi-automatic weapons. Such weapons use quick changing magazines. Push the little slidey thing, the empty mag falls, and you slam the next mag into place, pull the trigger and "BOOM". This takes - ohhhhh - maybe three seconds if the shooter is slow. In a confined space, with a monster .45 hammering your skull with each report, you won't even perceive any time between the next-to-the-last shot from the previous mag, and the next shot after he changes mags. If he actually FIRES the last shot before swapping out, THEN you'll hear a lull in the big booms.
Oh - the multiple weapons. Guy comes in carrying three rifles, two pistols, and a shotgun? He's going to empty one and drop it, empty the next and drop it, etc. No "reloading time" at all. When he gets down to one or two weapons, THEN he'll start swapping magazines out.
As evidenced by several shooting now, a determined nutcase can mow dozens down before anyone can do anything, UNLESS THERE IS AN ARMED CITIZEN READY TO CONFRONT HIM!!!
That citizen can be a cop, a teacher, a veteran, a housewife, a passerby - anyone at all.
Be smart - get a gun, and learn how to use it. Learn WHEN to use it. And, use it effectively.
Gun research blocked by political pressure (Score:4, Informative)
There's more that one way to approach a question. Different states have very different gun laws. So one could compare rates of victimization for various types of crimes (with appropriate statistical adjustment for demographic factors). One could look at rates of accidental gun injuries and "friendly fire" shootings. There have been efforts to research these issues using the same sort of sophisticated epidemiology that has been developed to assess disease risk and drug safety. Unfortunately such research has been largely blocked by political pressure from the gun lobby [jamanetwork.com]. Apparently, they feel that their interests are best served if we keep arguing about stupid anecdotes instead of real science.
Re:I don't understand the "high cap" magazine ban (Score:5, Informative)
That's your interpretation of the intent, not the stated intent. The second ammendment actually says:
The stated purpose of the freedom is to allow for the security of the state, not to arm the populous in defense against the political leaders of the state. In fact, the Constitution outright criminalizes the waging of war against the government.
You can make good arguments about the necessity of guns for the protection of freedom against abusive government. I myself have argued that the most important part of the Second Amendment is that it bars the government from ever trying to completely disarm the populace. However, I also argue that the far-too-common reading of "Everyone gets to have guns so they can overthrow the government in the future" is utterly wrong. If you want to make the argument that you have a right to shoot anyone you feel is a tyrant, then you're going to have to support that argument with philosophy, not the Constitution.
In the end, the Supreme Court gets to decide what it really means, and how its intent should impact law. And while you might have the natural right to declare whoever you want to be a tyrant, everyone else has the right to disagree with you, and kill you for trying to overthrow their government.
Re:Clip (Score:5, Informative)
When are you going to go after the hammer nuts? After all, more people were killed in 2011 with hammers than were killed with rifles.
Another gun-nut factoid that isn't actually true.
1) They claim it comes from FBI figures. In fact the FBI don't publish figures on homicide by hammer. They have figures on homicide by blunt objects, for which they give examples as (hammers, clubs, etc.) So if I kill someone by hitting them over the head with a candlestick, lead pipe, chair, rock, ashtray, club or whatever, that too will be included in the figures the gun-nuts are claiming is "hammers".
2) Every single type of murder involving any type of blunt object when added together comes to slightly more than the number of homicides by rifle. Of course add in all the other varieties of gun, and you're up to about 35 times the numebr of blunt object murders.
3) In fact the number of rifle murder themselves may outnumber the number of blunt object murders. They have "Other guns or type not stated" stats of 1684. Many of those may well be rifles.
Re:Clip (Score:2, Informative)
I'm Canadian, and when I was 14 I used my fathers rifle to kill a rabid fox.
We're kind of sick of the yahoos who've never left Toronto (or Vancouver) speaking for Canada. It's a big country, most of it is wilderness, and long firearms are extremely common there, and hunting and target shooting is easily as popular up here as in the American south (where I lived for 12 years).
Re:Clip (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, yes it is. Gouging is a political word, not an economic one. Current price reflects future value. If something suddenly is more valuable to people, prices will (and should) rise. The higher prices are both signal and capital to produce more. Higher prices also prevent totally exhausting supply, which allows scarce inventory to be more widely distributed until more inventory can be made.
Re:Clip (Score:5, Informative)
And you can't get precise figures because the NRA lobbied congress to forbid government funding from paying for research into gun fatalities.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1487470 [jamanetwork.com]
Viewpoint: Silencing the Science on Gun Research FREE ...
Arthur L. Kellermann, MD, MPH; Frederick P. Rivara, MD, MPH
JAMA. 2012;():1-2. doi:10.1001/jama.2012.208207.
The nation might be in a better position to act if medical and public health researchers had continued to study these issues as diligently as some of us did between 1985 and 1997. But in 1996, pro-gun members of Congress mounted an all-out effort to eliminate the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although they failed to defund the center, the House of Representatives removed $2.6 million from the CDC's budget—precisely the amount the agency had spent on firearm injury research the previous year. Funding was restored in joint conference committee, but the money was earmarked for traumatic brain injury. The effect was sharply reduced support for firearm injury research.
To ensure that the CDC and its grantees got the message, the following language was added to the final appropriation: “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”4
Precisely what was or was not permitted under the clause was unclear. But no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency's funding to find out. Extramural support for firearm injury prevention research quickly dried up. Even today, 17 years after this legislative action, the CDC's website lacks specific links to information about preventing firearm-related violence.
When other agencies funded high-quality research, similar action was taken. In 2009, Branas et al5 published the results of a case-control study that examined whether carrying a gun increases or decreases the risk of firearm assault. In contrast to earlier research, this particular study was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Two years later, Congress extended the restrictive language it had previously applied to the CDC to all Department of Health and Human Services agencies, including the National Institutes of Health.6
These are not the only efforts to keep important health information from the public and patients. For example, in 1997, Cummings et al7 used state-level data from Washington to study the association between purchase of a handgun and the subsequent risk of homicide or suicide. Similar studies could not be conducted today because Washington State's firearm registration files are no longer accessible.8
Re:Clip (Score:2, Informative)
I regret to inform you that language usage changes. If it didn't, when you said 'magazine' you would have linked to this instead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magazine_(artillery) [wikipedia.org]
Sadly, you need to move with the time.
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gun+magazine%2Cartillery+magazine%2Cammunition+clip&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= [google.com]
Re:I don't understand the "high cap" magazine ban (Score:5, Informative)