UK Police Seize 3D-Printed 'Gun Parts,' Which Are Actually Spare Printer Parts 279
nk497 writes "Police in Manchester have arrested a man and seized what they claim are 3D printed components to a gun. They made the arrest after a 'significant' discovery of a 3D printed 'trigger' and 'magazine,' saying they were now testing the parts to see if they were viable. 3D printing experts, however, said the objects were actually spare parts for the printer. 'As soon as I saw the picture... I instantly thought, "I know that part,"' said Scott Crawford, head of 3D printing firm Revolv3D. 'They designed an upgrade for the printer soon after it was launched, and most people will have downloaded and upgraded this part within their printer. It basically pulls the plastic filament, and it used to jam an awful lot. The new system that they've put out, which includes that little lever that they're claiming is the trigger, is most definitely the same part.'"
over-reaction? (Score:5, Funny)
FTFA: "The man was also arrested on suspicion of making gunpowder"
He was probably making coffee...
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And, as they 'significantly' discovered later, the man wasn't actually a man.
Re:over-reaction? (Score:5, Funny)
This is England, so it was probably tea. It's an easy mistake to make:
http://www.whittard.co.uk/tea/type/green-tea/gunpowder-tea [whittard.co.uk]
Re:over-reaction? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:over-reaction? (Score:5, Funny)
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seing as a trigger is nothing but a lever in most cases, and a detent with a nice finger surface in really fancy cases, i'd say that declaring that someone who has made a trigger can easily fashion it into a firearm is something of an exageration.
the magazine on the otherhand... a box, a spring, and a plate... now THAT is truly terrifying!
Re:over-reaction? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also worth pointing out that there is absolutely nothing illegal about triggers or magazines in the UK. My father owns several deactivated guns, all of which have real metal gun triggers (not simply trigger shaped bits of plastic) and at least one has a magazine. These are legal and have been certified as properly deactivated yet that process does not involve doing anything to damage/limit those components. (Chambers on a revolver are blocked as part of the process however.)
So if it's not illegal to own real triggers and magazines, why is it illegal to make plastic things that look like them? Actual construction of a firearm out of plastic gun shaped bits should be illegal in a country where firearms are illegal of course. This is similar to black powder guns, or guns of obsolete calibre (for which ammo is not readily available), these do not need to be deactivated however if you make or acquire ammo for them from somewhere then you're in trouble.
Toy guns and fabric softener? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, if a plastic trigger is illegal, that would make every plastic toy gun, every water pistol, every cap gun, illegal. And every seller, maker, importer guilty of manufacturing/importing/distributing illegal firearm parts.
Nearly every cleaner, weed-spray, bug-spray bottle in my laundry has a trigger on it. [made-in-china.com]
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What happens when a person designs and builds a series of parts that are separately useful as something other than a "gun", but when combined in the right way does build a functioning "gun"? In other words, an disassembled gun is not a gun.
Please describe how any law can prevent this? If you outlaw guns, fine, but they better be fully working versions, and not the disassembled blob of misc. parts.
Re:over-reaction? (Score:4, Funny)
What happens when a person designs and builds a series of parts that are separately useful as something other than a "gun", but when combined in the right way does build a functioning "gun"?
Is that you Francisco_Scaramanga [wikipedia.org]?
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At the point where you have all the parts that are necessary to assemble a working gun, you are deemed to be in a constructive possession [wikipedia.org] of one.
Of course, such a law would be tricky to enforce in any meaningful cases, since buying parts separately is not illegal, and by the time someone actually assembles a gun and uses it, it's too late. So in practice it's mainly just an extra headache for legal gun owners - e.g. in US, you have to be careful to never be in a possession of an unmated short-barrel upper
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So you typed this message on a keyboard? Oh my god, that means he has fingers... he could fire a gun! Police, arrest this man!
PEZ? (Score:3)
>the magazine on the otherhand... a box, a spring, and a plate... now THAT is truly terrifying!
Putting a Miss Piggy head on top was a clever disguise, Mr. Terrorist, but we recognize a .22 short magazine when we see one. Come along quietly now before we get upset and have to beat you senseless.
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It is hardly a gun if all it consisted of was a trigger and magazine. A hammer and nail is much more dangerous (assuming you had ammunition).
Re:over-reaction? (Score:4, Funny)
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I would put my focus on the guy without the nail and the bullet.
Re:over-reaction? (Score:4, Informative)
indeed, when an unconfined handgun round goes off, the brass flies away from the bullet. at gun club I used to belong we'd sweep up powder residue and brass after matches and burn the pile since a portion of the powder is ejected from a gun unburned. every now and then a live round would pop and send the brass flying. but put that round in the shortest metal tube, maybe even inch beyond edge of brass (e.g. like a snub nosed revolver, which even has *air gap* before the short tube), and that's a whole different matter, that's a lethal weapon.
Article slashdotted (Score:2)
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Re:over-reaction? (Score:4, Informative)
After that explosion, it's hard to remember anything really.
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And rightfully so! Gunpowder is a monopoly of fireworks and ammunition makers. Making it yourself is a crass example of copyright terrorism! Had he bough a few large firecrackers and opened them, he would have been alright.
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Gunpowder tea
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Oh god (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time I remember one of these "weapons" related knives, it was during the post-handgun knifing sprees, and the gov't managed to spin up its citizens so much with their knife amnesty programs that people were turning in unsharpened movie prop fantasy knives, kitchen utensils, and yard tools afraid they were going to get prosecuted for owning lethal weaponry.
We'll see what they come up with for 3D printers. Maybe plastic/printer amnesty days
Re: Oh god (Score:2)
Re:Oh god (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets not forget a major part of this panic is due to old manufacturing companies starting to realize that if we can print something for 5 cents, then why would we pay $5 for it?
While we're not at that point yet, we certainly will be in 5 years. In 10-15 years, we'll be able to print iPods. Once that happens... why buy an iPod, when you can download a crowd-engineered alternative that's better and cheaper?
I expect some form of faux outrage to ramp up and 3D printing to be banned or seriously restricted soon. It's too disruptive for us us mere plebeians to be allowed to have.
Re:Oh god (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh god (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh god (Score:5, Interesting)
Printing an iPod??? Not a chance. Printing an iPod case? Sure.
Sorry, you cannot print electronics. Well, you *CAN* (some have experimented with this), but your iPod would have the size and consistency of a phone book. Even a simple processor these days consists of tens of millions of transistors. Same for memory.
I can envision two scenarios for printing electronics:
1) Print just the board yourself. This is certainly feasible, eventually. However, assembly of something the level of a iPod requres soldering which simply cannot be done at home. Try soldering a BGA with 1,000 pins. This CAN be done is a toaster oven (but not by beginners), but requires a lot of knowledge to get it to work. Add in memory, caps, resistors, etc., and the odds of getting something out without any defects seems unlikely.
2) Print the entire circuit yourself. It is possible to print transistors, but not to the scale needed. I would guestimate that thousands of transistors on a sheet of paper would be possible, but that is still a far way off from printing millions. Modern transistors can most closely be compared in size to a red blood cell. That sort of scale is difiicult to achieve with billions of dollars of equipment.
Printing of electronics will be awesome when it comes, but it will have limits. Expect some fantastic hobbyist inventions, but it will not be able to even come close to commercial products.
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Hell, in 25 years we might have full functioning robotic fabricators that can do everything from laser sintering to textile weaving to chemical vapor deposition on the desktop. A fully automated, fully configurable and reconfigurable factory in a box
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Hell, in 25 years we might have full functioning robotic fabricators that can do everything from laser sintering to textile weaving to chemical vapor deposition on the desktop. A fully automated, fully configurable and reconfigurable factory in a box.
I really, truly hope you're correct, but that seems a bit optimistic.
Re:Oh god (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I do have a master's degree in electrical engineering, and I design silicon for a living. I think that makes me at least a little qualified to answer. I am also capable of making a point without having to resort to personal attacks and insults. That is the sort of thing that you do when you do not know enough to actually use facts.
The problem with electronics is one of scale. To get millions of transistors, you need TINY transistors. Tiny transistors = machines with extreme precision, and an incredibly clean environment. Current technology has 28 nm process as the mainstream, with 22 nm being more cutting edge, and right now, anything smaller is "bleeding edge" with yield problems.
So, given this, I would consider 250 nm to be a nice goal to be able to do anything "real." 250 nm is 1997 technology, and ten times larger than current processes (along one axis, 100 times bigger for 2D items). This is about the same size as some larger viruses!!! Can you imagine a home device capable of the precision of the size of a virus? How much would that cost?
Now, home electronics DOES have a lot of DIY-type stuff. Things like the Arduino come to mind. How about an FPGA (since you are an expert, I am sure that you already know what an FPGA is)? The humble FPGA is one of the greatest things for a DIY-electronics enthusiast. If there is to be a real home-electronics revolution, it will likely come from making your own boards, maybe with a few hundred transistors for analog and interface stuff, along with an FPGA to do all of the heavy lifting. Still, soldering a large FPGA is not for the timid.
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250 nm is 1997 technology, and ten times larger than current processes (along one axis, 100 times bigger for 2D items). This is about the same size as some larger viruses!!! Can you imagine a home device capable of the precision of the size of a virus? How much would that cost?
In 1998 Nokia came out with the iconic 5110. That is one year after the 1997 technology you talk of. Let us compare the 5110 with last big phone the Samsung Galaxy S4.
Nokia 5110: 2G Network. 170 grams. 5 line monochromatic display. SMS Messaging. Played 3 games. and could store 5 received, 5 missed and 8 dialed calls.
Galaxy S4: 4G LTE, 3G, Wifi, Bluetooth, A 5 Inch 1080 x 1920 pixel color display, SMS, MMS, Email, Web can store 64 GM of information, can play games that would have been impossible on full
Re:Oh god (Score:4, Informative)
I should also like to point out that 3D printing has existed for over 15 years. It just took that long to get the price and size down enough for home use. However, the seeds were there almost two decades ago. I actually held a 3D plastic model in 2000. The technology existed then.
When it comes to making tiny transistors, there IS NO OTHER METHOD besides the conventional silicon fab.
There were some experiments to print circuits using modified ink-jet printers (in theory, all you need is a conductor, an insulator, and an 'N-type' and a 'P-type" semiconductor). These actually worked (nobody said that they worked well, or were capable of any type of speed). Even assuming that this technology takes off and gets millions of dollars in research, there are fundamental limits in this type of technology. You will not be able to "spray" transistors at the size that we are talking.
Now, if I wanted to prototype a million-transistor digital circuit right now without takint it to a real silicon fab, let me list the ways that this can be done today. 1) Simulate in software. 2) Put on an FPGA. All other methods (including hardware-accelerated simulations) are combinations or enhancements of the above two approaces. There is no thrid approach, even in the labs, as far as I am aware.
Let's look at building a custom chip in a 28nm process. The mask costs are easily over one million dollars. This means that the very first chip that you get back will cost over $1,000,000. The 2nd might only be $50, but the first one is the expensive one. If you find a bug, hopefully the problem is small enough that you can re-use most of the masks. If not, expect to hand over another million for a re-spin. So, if your design is risky and you are not guaranteed that it would work, paying $250,000 for a single prototype made by some other method would be a bargain! Yet there is nobody out there offering to prototype an ASIC like this.
The old saying is that what we have in our homes today was in the labs 20 years ago. There is nothing in the lab right now that looks promising for making your own high-density circuits right now, other than the FPGA. Low-density? Yes. Hundreds or maybe even thousands of transistors? Maybe. Millions of transistors? No way that I can forsee.
Re:Oh god (Score:4, Insightful)
This is about the same size as some larger viruses!!! Can you imagine a home device capable of the precision of the size of a virus?
And now the police in the UK are shitting themselves even more because someone's going to 3d print a virus.
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Yeah, those, and also real Klingon Bat'leths [dailymail.co.uk] (I mean, with actual sharpened edges that could take someones head off). Along with machetes and lots of other things that typically aren't needed in suburban Britain.
I would expect panics about people 3D printing guns to be relatively commonplace in the UK and throughout Europe in future. Being an islan
Re:Oh god (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm not sure you can lump the entire US into a single cultural box. Although we may share federal laws and a single language, states that border each other will likely be very similar, but as you put more distance between the states you are comparing they become more dissimilar. The US is roughly 9 million km2 and Europe is roughly 10 million km2.
When I hear people talk about US or American culture I often times find myself thinking maybe in some other state {over 1,000 miles away} but not here.
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Liberals let their feelings dictate their actions, regardless of the consequences.
Ah the evul libruls. What about the commie-nazis?
. That is why the UK has higher violent crime rates than the US,
lolwut?
The obvious search turns up this first:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-25671/Violent-crime-worse-Britain-US.html [dailymail.co.uk]
Which is, of course the daily fail. Quoting from that has about as much credibility as quoting from the National Inquirer.
If you read a sendible analysis, then you get:
http://blog.skepticall [skepticallibertarian.com]
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Our police (I'm British) do seem to be on a bit of a PR flurry at the moment, trying to get headlines by puffing up raids and arrests in response to whatever the moral panic of the day is.
A cynic might suspect that it's related to a general crisis of confidence in them, relating to:
- several years of stories about the doctoring of crime statistics
- violent over-reactions in some public order situations
- attempted cover-ups of said over-reactions
- catastrophic under-reactions in other (genuinely dangerous) p
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- violent over-reactions in some public order situations
Also big over reactions to harmless demonstrators, i.e. kettling to strip them of their right to protest. The thing is kettling only works on peacful protestors. When the riots broke out there was no thought of doing that (how do you kettle people lobbing rocks and petrol bombs?)
So it showed up the police's ability to crack down on peacful law abiding citizens and being near powerless in the face of actual criminals.
Though I suspect you're refrring to
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We need more Chris Morris on the telly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwylBRucU7w [youtube.com]
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That board with a nail in it may have defeated us.
But the humans won't stop there. They'll make bigger boards and bigger nails, and soon, they will make a board with a nail so big, it will destroy them all!
Re:Oh god (Score:4, Insightful)
Foam tips... could catch on fire... Incendiary arrows! Police, arrest this man!
Wait, the schoolyard that only allows nerf toys is in Toronto! Arrest those children, immediately!
Incendiary comment (Score:3)
Meanwhile, the same police will call their own actual incendiary grenades "smoke grenades" which, oops, "may have accidentally caused a fire" (and burned the body of the shot suspect and most of the evidence re: the police shooting.)
And the media will go along with it. Which is the problem. Reporters trust police statements to be roughly factual, so police quickly learn they can get away with sa
Kudos to the police for realizing... (Score:4, Funny)
...a 3D gun is much more likely to be viable than a picture of a gun.
"During the searches, officers found a 3D printer and what is suspected to be a 3D plastic magazine and trigger which could be fitted together to make a viable 3D gun.
It they are found to be viable components for a 3D gun, it would be the first ever seizure of this kind in the UK."
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I'm pretty sure you could design a gun that would use those parts somehow, so the police have lots of busy nights with cad to make them not seem stupid...
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Any chance they'll open source it? Might be better than the currently circulating CADs.
Shachar
Re:Kudos to the police for realizing... (Score:5, Funny)
You need special glasses to fire a 3D gun and only people wearing those glasses can get shot by one.
Re:Kudos to the police for realizing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now you may be able to argue that the ease of access to home 3D printers makes it possible for more whacko's to get their hands on printed guns. But they will have shitty little pea shooters that might work once without blowing up in their faces. Whereas the 10s of 1000s of machine shop owners/employees out there are just as likely to be whacko's, and capable of producing things much more dangerous than some idiot in his basement. You're worried about a 15 round magazine being printed? How about a vulcan cannon?
Hell, a marginally talented machinist with knowledge of firearms can make a damn effective weapon out of some pipe, using a lathe and a drill.
So where's the moral outrage against the people with machine shops? Cutters? Drills? Maybe laws should be passed to regulate the purchase of pipes?
The guy that fixes your uber eco bicycle as every tool he needs to kill you and everyone within 50 feet of you. But you are freaking out about a chunk of plastic.
Re:Kudos to the police for realizing... (Score:4, Informative)
I'll teach you how to make a better "gun" than you can with a 3D printer.
1) gather components: a bullet, a block of wood, a rock.
2) drill a hole through the block of wood that matches the diameter of your bullet.
3) place bullet in the hole in the block of wood. Congratulations, you're done.
Fire the "gun" by hitting the back side of the bullet with the rock.
The "gun" described above doesn't require a 3D printer, knowledge of CAD software or metallurgy.
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Oh yeah, one more thing- if you use your imagination, that block of wood with a hole in it can used to smoke weed, so now you have not only made a weapon, you've also made drug paraphernalia.
Use with caution!
Shotgun! (Score:3)
There is steel scaffolding pipe which is exactly the right inner-diameter to hold a standard 12-guage shotgun shell. It's also usually pre-threaded off-the-shelf.
So buy or cut a half a metre (a couple of feet) of unthreaded pipe that neatly holds a shotgun shell. That's your barrel. Then cut around 15cm (six inches) of a larger diameter pipe that slides over the first pipe, this should be threaded at one end. Get a standard end-cap that fits the larger diameter pipe. Drill a pilot hole in the centre of the
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Dull the point of the screw, you need to punch the firing pin, not pierce it. It will take some testing to get the firing pin the right depth, too shallow or too deep and it doesn't ignite. In the US it's more common to use a .22 caliber rim-fire cartridge since no firing pin is necessary.
Gun Control Nuts... (Score:2)
Bigger authoritarians than the "gun nuts". Hopefully this shit stays on the other side of the pond.
Simple solution (Score:2)
So what they're saying is that we can use replacement printer parts to make guns?
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Funny)
Or that you can use replacement gun parts to make printers.
Speaking as a Brit (Score:5, Funny)
I love that the Greater Manchester Police site has suffered the curse of slashdot. :)
Re:Speaking as a Brit (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like another case (Score:2)
Sounds like another case of the WMD aluminum tubes they found in Iraq, which were way too weak to be used for a centrifuge for enriching uranium. But it was a good enough excuse for the US to go to war.
"But we have tubes!!!"
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They were obviously planning on making their own Internet.
It ALMOST looks like a hammer (Score:2)
Except it's missing the hook that catches the trigger. I understand that UK cops don't really carry firearms, so they may not really be trained in the inner workings of different guns. I don't know much about what their training standards are, but I'd say it's an easy mistake to make for those who don't disassemble firearms very often. See below:
http://www.joeboboutfitters.com/product_p/jp-sh-1a.htm [joeboboutfitters.com]
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PCSOs and not-otherwise-alarmed officers don't routinely carry firearms; but 'Authorized Firearms Officers', potentially any officers with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and various other entities here and there, do, so it's not as though the necessary expertise isn't an internal phone call away, at most.
(The, um, unimpressive... build quality and design standards of 3d printed weapons may also be a factor:
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(The, um, unimpressive... build quality and design standards of 3d printed weapons may also be a factor: if you are hunting parts for firearms that are made out of shitty plastic, to a level of quality that would shame your average zipgun and make a 'saturday night special' look like some sort of futuristic H&K design concept, you may be inclined to consider the absence of 'normal' features to be mere shodiness, rather than a sign that it's a different part entirely.)
Yes, a maker-whatever 3D printer in your garage cannot be expected to make a decent firearm, even by the most liberal definition of a firearm, but it is enough to make a drop-in auto sear conversion to modify an existing semi-auto to full auto that would at least be good for one spray in a drive-by. Then print as many as you like. That's what a more practical criminal mind would be inclined to do.
How realistic are the fears? (Score:2)
Do wonder why the police raided this guy
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As for practical criminal interest, though? Absolutely zero so far demonstrated, largely because it doesn't resolve any ammunition supply challenges (and anyone who can do that can
gun and ammo easily built at hardware store (Score:2)
It's easy to make the ammo (and the gun) from readily available materials found at your local hardware store.
The garden department has the three ingredients for black powder and the plumbing department has most of the rest . A few items like springs come from the hardware section.
Ammo is short piece of copper tube from plumbing, filled with black powder mixed in gardening, topped with whatever little chunk of metal - a short hex bolt would do fine.
That just proves our point (Score:2)
Sure, the parts are not part of a 3D printed gun, but of the 3D printer itself, but with these parts the printer can be used to print a gun, which is what makes them so dangerous.
The process is the punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
They punish someone with the legal process, knowing they can't convict, but sending a message to anyone with a 3D printer that 3D printer owners can expect trouble from the state.
Re:The process is the punishment (Score:5, Informative)
Is that meant to be a prediction, or a statement of fact? If you read the article it becomes clear that they had search warrants as part of a targeted investigation into organised crime, and apparently were surprised to discover the 3D printer at one of the searched areas. Given that they arrested someone because they think he was making gunpowder, and because you can't make gunpowder with a 3D printer, it seems that they believed (correctly) that someone was trying to manufacture ammo and got a judge to issue a warrant on that basis. When they discovered the printer, they made the obvious logical conclusion - someone who is illegally making guns, and has a 3D printer, might be experimenting with 3D printing plastic guns. What else would he use it for?
It may turn out in the course of events that the printer was used for something else, or making tools used to help make ammo rather than making gun parts, or something else. But ownership of the 3D printer is incidental. There isn't even any way they would know he had such a device, as far as I can tell.
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You're missing the reason why they raided this place originally. It wasn't because he was a guy who owned a 3d printer, it was because he was associated with criminal gangs in Manchester and they were raiding him and others to confiscate the proceeds of crime. This was one of the things they found, alongside ~$3.5m in counterfeit goods, $500k of drugs and $50k in cash and 50 people arrested.
When you find a 3d printer in the garage of a suspected gangster, you don't assume anything and investigate everything
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Police seize $1000 in Cash (Score:2, Funny)
Police seized $1000 dollars in cash due to the possibility of obtaining a gun with said cash.... source: future...
Re:Police seize $1000 in Cash (Score:4, Interesting)
Are triggers and magazines controlled in the UK? (Score:3)
Is printing gun components illegal in the UK?
In the US, the only part of a gun that is controlled is the receiver. What are the laws in the UK?
It's hard to believe that making or owning a trigger is illegal in the UK since low-power pellets guns (which use triggers) are legal. That said, UK gun laws are so restrictive, that I am sure they try to control high-capacity magazines. (UK high-capacity meaning more than two rounds.)
In a related story... (Score:3)
A Manchester plumber was arrested for having a van full of "bomb" making material.
His pleas of "It's just pipe for a sink" went unheeded.
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Comparing a lathe, CNC cutter, mill, etc to a 3d printer is like comparing assembly language to Visual Studio. Sure, you can use both to create the same thing, but you're just either naive or being intentionally thickheaded if you refuse to believe that the latter opens up that capability to a much larger group of people.
More Apt than you think? (Score:2)
Personally, I'd compare it more between C++ and visual basic scripting. While it does indeed take more knowledge to operate the lathes and such, currently that tool set can produce far more capable devices, and I'd imagine that at least the CNC cutter shouldn't be that much more complicated to program than the printer.
With the printer you can make a 'liberator' type firearm - a single shot weapon that you MIGHT be able to reuse the trigger group for.
With the machine shop equipment you can churn out full au
Re:More Apt than you think? (Score:4, Informative)
While it does indeed take more knowledge to operate the lathes and such, currently that tool set can produce far more capable devices, and I'd imagine that at least the CNC cutter shouldn't be that much more complicated to program than the printer.
It's actually put it the other way round for now. I have a bit of experience in CNC milling and a bit of experience in using a 3D printer (the type in the $1000-$2000 range). I think that puts me in a reasonable position to judge since I'm an expert in neither field so know how far a bit of knowledge can take a person.
Honestly the 3D printers are harder. Don't get me wrong, they're fantastic machines and I love them, but they are not easy to use. After receiving instruction on how to use it, getting reliable prints out of it still took considerable work. Even after figuring out that much I (and ecen much more experienced people) still have the odd problem with parts sticking too hard, not hard enough, curling up, etc.
And don't get me started on how the slicing process can go bad...
I think the main thing is that the 3D printers are cheap and small and clean devices so you can have one without having to dedicate serious space (I don't own one, but I live in a place which could easily accomodate one. The same cannot be said about a machine shop). You also only need one, rather than a quite large collection of tools.
It's also that the barrier to entry is lower in that there's a nice library of 3D things to print online and the slicing process for the printing is simpler the software to do the printing is more readily available.
So, they're not necessarily simpler to use (that really depends on the shape being produced), but they are much, much, much more accessible.
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If you actually think that 3D printers are what makes it possible for a larger group of people to get weapons, you have demonstrated your depth of ignorance on the topic of firearms. Which is really the whole problem; p
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You mistake me for someone who fears 3D printers. I've actually hand fitted and assembled an AR-15 and a 1911. I'm a certified Glock armorer and a competitive shooter. I'm quite experienced and knowledgeable about firearms.
Still, for the common person, the use of machine tools is out of their reach and capability. Running a 3d printer is much less complex and will only get more so. The guns that produce now are very much just proof of concept but a) the technolgoy will improve, and b) over time designs
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I think it is beyond dispute that the kid was carrying something that looked like a gun. If the policemen's story is to be believed (I know it's a stretch, but still), then the kid refused to drop it when told to. Under those circumstances, a policeman can justifiably say he felt threatened to the point of shooting.
I file that story under "tragic misunderstanding" rather than "homicidal police".
Shachar
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Could you, an untrained unpaid person with no body armor no partner and no backup on the way get away with killing a kid because he was holding something that looked like a gun?
The laws of self defense, at least in my area of the world (Israel), let you go if the damage you inflicted is no greater than the damage it was reasonable to assume you might sustain (i.e. - a subjective test). The answer, therefor, is "absolutely yes". IANAL, of course.
If so, why haven't you, do you like kids on your lawn?
My 3yo does not play with pretend weapons (yet?). Answering your real question, though, it all boils down to how reasonable it is to feel threatened. About a decade and a half ago, there was a big terrorist attack during Purim, a Jewish hol
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Luckily, they didn't go all Amercian on his ass and shot him on sight http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24648974 [bbc.co.uk]
Kid was obviously some kind of foreign pinko sleeper agent. No Real American would be caught dead with a replica assault rifle, rather than the real thing.
Re:Thank god (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Thank god (Score:2)
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Unfortunately you can't just legislate it away. That doesn't work, has never worked, and will never work. Doesn't stop them from trying, though.
I'm not going to get into it beyond that though - I'm not an expert, but it doesn't take an expert to recognize that something is broken. I really don't think just taking them away is the answer. As other incidents have spotlit, the act will not change, only the tools. Children (and adults too) committing violence against their peers and authority figures is the sym
Re:smug retribution (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately you can't just legislate it away. That doesn't work, has never worked, and will never work.
Well, it works very well in Europe. So while this particular case is example of police idiocy, the law in UK is not crazy. But I agree that it would be extremely hard to do in USA.
Doesn't stop them from trying, though.
I'm not going to get into it beyond that though - I'm not an expert, but it doesn't take an expert to recognize that something is broken. I really don't think just taking them away is the answer. As other incidents have spotlit, the act will not change, only the tools. Children (and adults too) committing violence against their peers and authority figures is the symptom, the gun (or knife etc) is just the vehicle, and the real problem is something else that I can't really identify personally. People are losing hope, getting restless, frustrated, and angry. We need to determine (and fix) the cause of that, not the results. But good luck with that, because the people in charge only care about looking like they are fixing things. Which only compounds the problem.
With that logic every kind of weapon should be legalised. Why bother banning nerve gas and explosives ? After all this will only change tools, not the act itself.
Re:smug retribution (Score:4, Informative)
You are wrong.
US: 4.7 per 100,000
UK 1.2 per 100,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
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Here is the statistic that should shut people like you up for good. Suicide and Murder Rates for the US and Great Britain are about the same.
By "here" you mean in your head? Only total moron would post lie that can be disproved by 30 second search in google. Here is source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate [wikipedia.org] . USA - 4.7 homicides /100 000 vs 1.2 in UK. Almost 4x difference is 'about the same' ? Go back to polishing your penis enhancer^W^W gun and leave discussion to others.
One has strict gun control laws and the other does not. Suicide by guns in the US far outpace Suicide by guns in the UK, yet the overall rates are almost identical. The same is true for murder rates. In fact, if you exclude the cities in the US with the strictest gun control laws (DC, Chicago etc) which also happen to have the highest murder rates by guns, the murder rates in the US is actually LESS than most other countries.
Exclude cities with highest murder rate and murder late drops a lot ... thank you captain obvious! You can't exclude any cities, beca
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Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
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Unfortunately, your "statistic" to "shut people ... up for good" isn't actually true.
According to the United Nations [unodc.org] (warning, .xls file), the intentional homicide rate in Great Britain (the UK collects different data for England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, so I've combined the E+W and Scotland data to get a GB one) in 2011 was 1.1 per 100,000. In the United States it was 4.7. The suicide rates are similar, but the inten
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Re:smug retribution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:smug retribution (Score:4, Insightful)
But if he did it with a box cutter would you blame the parents for leaving the box cutter out? Because that also happened just this week. Is that "negligence causing death" too? Do you want those parents jailed then?
Perhaps it isn't the tool that caused the violence, it is the person using the tool!
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Just pointing out what most folks are missing: hey had a warrant, which was not based on "look for 3D printed gun parts", but on other stuff related to the fact that this guy is a member of a criminal gang.