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> Anyone with a $200 printer can build a safe and reliable semi-automatic handgun.

Maybe you can print a lower that will sort of work a few times, after you buy professionally machined parts for all of the critical parts of the gun.

People make this statement because it is technically true, but all they're going to accomplish is a push for high-pressure parts to be serialized.

If you're able to cheaply print firearms, then it doesn't really matter too much if those firearms end up being disposable; if it breaks, just print another one.

As for machining parts out of metal, people can and do build "slamfire" shotguns out of two pipes and a nail. Needless to say, I think you're overestimating the difficulty of shopping around at Home Depot.

I understand the problem space, I've built my own gun parts using both 3d printers and traditional machine tools.

The thing is, criminals aren't hobbyists. They're not going to goof around at the range for 8 hours trying to tune in a mechanism. As long as traditionally produced guns are the price of a 3D printer, (or a busted pickup truck window away), there's really no reason for your local gang member to do an arts and crafts session.

That's not how it works, any more than we make our own cocaine.

The local gang member doesn't need to learn the specialist skills. He needs to know a guy who knows a guy.

The gang member already knows a guy with reliable and cheap professionally made guns. 3D printed parts are inferior in quality and performance to injection molded.

> The gang member already knows a guy with reliable and cheap professionally made guns.

Right, until he doesn't. 3D printing provides additional options that he didn't really have 15 or 20 years ago.

> 3D printed parts are inferior in quality and performance to injection molded.

They just need to be good enough to do the job. Firearms used in crime often get dumped afterward anyway.

It won’t change in the US for a very long time. There’s simply too many readily available guns. Criminals in my area simply take a jaunt around the neighborhood at 3am checking for unlocked pickup trucks. It’s in our local news regularly. “Thieve robs a string of neighborhood cars at night, steal cash and a handgun”

And I don’t see any easy solution to straw purchasing on the horizon.

> It won’t change in the US for a very long time.

Right, but there are other places besides the US. Those are the places where 3D printing (and home manufacture in general) is a more viable threat to their attempts at gun control.

Agreed. Although I don’t think the 3D printer is much of an advantage in countries with strict gun control. In those places, building the gun is the easy part. The hard part is primer (and to some degree, propellant).

For instance, the guy who just shot Abe. What he built was more of a hand cannon, because it’s very difficult to make proper cartridge style ammo without factory made precursor components. If your ammo technology is limited to cannon technology, that’s the best you can build anyway.

> What he built was more of a hand cannon, because it’s very difficult to make proper cartridge style ammo without factory made precursor components.

For now, yes. A year or two from now? I would be entirely unsurprised to see CAD files to 3D print casings designed to be loaded with homemade black powder / arbitrary projectiles and ignited via some external source (e.g. an automotive spark plug).

Even ignoring that possibility, the fact that some guy with a homemade electrically-ignited handcannon killed the leader of a country with some of the strictest gun control laws is itself a nail in gun control's coffin.

> professionally machined parts

You're overstating the requirement; amateurly machined barrels work fine and that'll all you need for an FGC-9. The FGC-9 weldless bolt can be made by a monkey with an angle grinder. The FGC-9 was specifically designed with European regulations in mind. FGC-9's can be built by idiots using common garage tools, built out of commonly available materials. You cannot stop it with any degree of regulation.

You can restrict the availability of suitable ammunition. That will be the ultimate outcome if politicians continue to let guns scare them. It's a largely unfounded fear; there aren't many politicians getting shot with any kind of gun, let alone homemade ones. Even in America where professionally made guns are easy to get, politicians rarely get shot.

I am 100% aware of this, but you're no longer talking about a gun made with a $200 3d printer. You're talking about a gun made with common garage tools. Which has always been possible. The 3d printer doesn't change anything meaningful about the situation.

The FGC-9 is substantially printed. But

> The 3d printer doesn't change anything meaningful about the situation.

This much I agree with. 3d printing has never been the easiest or most effective way of making your own gun. It's a complete meme which caught on because 3d printing captures the imagination in a unique way. Just mentioning 3d printing gets people to suspend critical thought.

Case in point: "3D-Printed Bullets Exist, And They're Terrifyingly Easy To Make" https://www.huffpost.com/entry/3d-printed-bullets_n_3322370

The "3d printed bullet" is a fucking joke, why would anybody shoot a slug of 3d printed plastic instead of.. I don't know, a fucking rock? A fishing weight? Casting their own bullet? It makes no sense, but you get a breathless panicking article from HuffPost about it anyway because ooooooo 3d printing.

I have plastic AR lowers that are still working perfectly after thousands of rounds. If you use a monolithic design (built-in buffer tube & pistol grip) and make it out of glass-filled nylon, it's as durable as an aluminum lower.[1]

I could see a push for treating pressure-bearing parts as firearms, but I don't think it'd fly federally. Also unless you required everyone to serialize their existing barrels (which amounts to registration) it'd be impossible to convict anyone unless you could prove they made the barrel after the law was passed. Then you'd get into questions such as, "What is a barrel?", because at some point you're just banning certain diameter pipes. If someone invents a new caliber, does that mean we have to restrict pipes of that diameter? It quickly gets absurd. And considering the pace at which fabrication technology is improving, I doubt such restrictions would do much in the long run.

1. You can even do push-ups on it: https://twitter.com/DrDeath1776/status/1568280857835610113

This is what really bothers me about the gun debate. Stuff like the current mess around reclassifying "pistol" braces is utterly asinine and has more or less zero connection to making anything safer for anyone. But guns are bad so using asinine nonsense to create more felons must be good I guess?

It's so obvious that most of the arguments applicable to the War on Drugs or Prohibition apply to guns, but guns are so much more visceral to many that nobody sees it.

And there's so much of that kind of nonsense, like laws focused on whether non-pistols have pistol grips. It's no wonder that gun laws generate a bunch of people who hate gun laws, and it's no wonder that the whole thing is a feedback loop of institutional destruction and delegitimization. Much like laws restricting Abortions were before the Theocrats managed to create a supreme ecumenical council.

What I'm not looking forward to is that the utter lack of legitimacy coupled with the low quality opinions this ecumenical council is creating means that there will eventually be a successful backlash if the nation doesn't implode, and that backlash is going to bring back even more full-throttle versions of these lost and impossible laws at a time when they will be guaranteed to be even less effective than they are now.

back in the 30s USA viewed a number of socialmovement groups, and ethnic "mafias" as a direct threat to existence, that resulted in the gun control act.

thus immigrants, and other groups were not allowed handguns,and the restriction of Short barrel rifles was incurred. it was very important to curtail common carry of easily concealable firearms, by these groups.

the interesting thing about the AR platform is the buffer tube, projecting from the rear of the weapon, its a natural position for a shoulder stock. its possible to do away with this, using a blowback operated caliber like 9mm luger, but these in .223 cal need to have the spring and mass to push onto.

so we get the AR 15 with a short barrel [<16"] leave out the shoulder stock and call it a pistol as its [intended to shoot 1 handed] if it has no other hand grips.

you push that buffer tube, against your shoulder, and its not comfortable but it works as is to shoulder the weapon. next you massage the shoulder stock wrist brace definitions so you end up with a wrist brace that has features making it a comfortable shouldering. over time the AR platform evaded the definition of a short barrel rifle, and the crackdown, is on building pistols with features allowing rifle like usage, but remaining concealable, and easily moved in/out of vehilces.

"Anyone with a $200 printer can build a safe and reliable semi-automatic handgun."

I highly doubt that. Maybe if you have most of it out of other parts but a fully printed handgun will fail after just a few shots and it isn't safe in any shape or form. I have 3d prints fall apart on their own if there are issues with the printer or material.

Anybody with $50 can build themselves a safe and reliable slamfire shotgun made out of metal. The hardware store employees will even cut the pipe for you. These can be sold to police buyback programs for a huge profit, or simply used as shotguns normally are used.

The only way to stop this is to restrict the availability of ammunition, which is feasible in some countries but not America.

Case in point: https://www.thedailybeast.com/crude-homemade-shotgun-used-to...

Which is itself a major wrinkle in the "just restrict ammo" approach to gun control. DIY projectiles are easy (find some ball bearings or marbles or anything else that'll fit in a barrel), and DIY gunpowder is only slightly less easy (https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Gunpowder). DIY primers are much more difficult - but a spark plug and a power source to spark it, not so much.

if you really dont care for perfect engineering, a component of a box of matches can replace the powder.

This is true, but successfully restricting the availability of professionally manufactured ammunition will prevent people from using homemade semi-automatic or automatic weapons like an FGC-9. And even for a single-shot shotgun, real ammunition is a lot more practical. Not necessary, but definitely more practical.

Sure, at least until designs adapt to the new norm. 3D printed cartridges in electric-powered firearms would sever the dependency on professionally manufactured ammunition (and might even become professionally manufactured ammunition).

As for practicality, what's most practical in most circumstances is what's easiest to acquire.

People in the EU have been constructing their own ammunition (including the now deceased developer of the FGC-9) using inert rounds and nailgun blanks or unregulated blank ammo as a source of primer material and powder.

There's also the Plasma Pump project which apparently is going to eventually become semiauto, fires printed+cast caseless rounds using an electric high voltage igniter (think: arc lighter), and the firearm itself is fully printed.

you have to restrict reloading supplies as well; this also is of reduced effectiveness for shotguns, as the ammo is very forgiving of out of spec tolerance, and unrifled barrel can guide a wide variety of objects

In the US, many pressure-bearing components such as barrels are not controlled parts. You print the frame or lower receiver, then use normal parts that are compatible. This has been done for MP5s[1], AKs[2], Glocks[3], and even AR-10s in big calibers like .308.[4]

Even if barrels required as much effort to get as a complete gun, there are already designs that use no gun parts. The FCG-9[5] is the most popular one. It's actually pretty easy to ECM your own barrel at home. Hundreds of people have built guns like these using zero gun parts.[6] They're reliable and accurate enough that they're being used by Burmese rebels.[7]

1. https://twitter.com/NaviGoBoom/status/1577447210173751296

2. https://twitter.com/NaviGoBoom/status/1577019965458169856

3. https://twitter.com/NaviGoBoom/status/1574237027125559297

4. https://twitter.com/NaviGoBoom/status/1533508555994800128

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9

6. https://twitter.com/WhichJoeSchmoe/status/156254824438707814...

7. https://twitter.com/jake_hanrahan/status/1468966318317531140

I don't understand why some gun rights advocates point out that the current regulations make no sense for 3D printed guns. I think they think that this demonstrates that the rules shouldn't exist... but I think the response that they're going to elicit is a push for controls on barrels/slides/uppers/ammo.