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Comment by celticninja | Hacker News Reader

The difference is that a 3d printer is almost at the domestic use stage and takes up far less space than a CNC Mill and lathe.

Now combine that with countries such as the UK where gun ownership is highly restricted and you can understand how revolutionary it really is.

The article talks of only needing to make a lower receiver and buying the remaining parts legally. This applies mainly to the USA, you cannot buy those parts in the UK. The ability to print an entire gun is revolutionary it is just that you are viewing it from a US perspective only and this is the sort of technology that crosses international boundaries easily and quickly.

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>The difference is that a 3d printer is almost at the domestic use stage and takes up far less space than a CNC Mill and lathe.

That's not necessarily true. There are a plethora of available mills that require a similar skill-set for producing finished working parts. More importantly, the parts you pull off these machines could be used hundreds or thousands of times. I've listed a couple from quick google searches below.

http://www.taigtools.com/cmill.html http://www.pocketnc.com/products/

I was born and raised in a country where firearms are completely illegal. Even there, you would be able to build a higher quality zipgun (which is effectively what a Liberator is) from parts available in a hardware store. The ammunition becomes the most regulated portion of the weapon in either case, and 3D printing as a tech does nothing to change that.

Yeah, as the UK is an island, we've pretty much only ever had to monitor some clearly defined locations to prevent arms from being distributed (borders, army bases, farms, legacy firearms, etc).

Now with 3D printing, they could be manufactured with ease anywhere within the country. It's a whole different situation for the police to be dealing with.

Mostly though, it's the massively reduced cost from a CNC mill to a 3D printer (that's why they're so exciting!). A £50k+ purchase for a mill and then the expertise/blueprints to program it is very prohibitive for the general population. Whereas the 3D printer for ~£1k with freely downloaded click-and-go plans from the internet? Almost anyone could scrape that together if they tried.

It's a tipping point situation that has really scary implications for any country that has gun control.

You would think that the country that came up with the STEN gun would not be so foolish as to think that gun control is just a matter of watching the borders. Any cellar or garden workshed could be an arms factory.

The dangerous thing about volume printers is not that they could be used to make weapons, but that you can't tell the difference between a machine used to make chesspieces and one used to make guns. Every owner could have a legitimate and innocuous reason to have it, and therefore you have no probable cause for additional scrutiny on anyone.

With a CNC mill/lathe, if you don't actually need one to produce something like custom auto or motorcycle parts, using it to produce solid aluminum garden gnomes might be seen as suspicious rather than a plausible cover.

I understand borders, bases and legacy firearms. But why farms?

Mainly pest control.

Varmint rifles are not legacy firearms? Or do farmers get a special license for buying varmint rifles?

I'm guessing a large part of that depends on how you define 'varmint rifle'. To a lot of people, the AR-15 is a varmint rifle, and I'm going out on a limb and just guessing that it's either very difficult or impossible to get a license to own an AR-15 in the UK.

As for the definition I grew up with (e.g., rimfire .22 and slightly higher power centerfire bolt actions,) my understanding is that, for the most part, those things are still accessible in the UK, if one jumps through the appropriate hoops.

Thank you, we have similar notions of what a varmint rifle is. My somewhat fluid ordering of rifles is: varmint -> plinker -> hunting -> assault -> anti-materiel.

If your description is accurate, (and I have no reason to believe otherwise) the answer to my original question is "farms are a bad example and are simply a manifestation of legacy licenses." All of the other examples were categorical concerns

My original thought, as pertaining to farms, was just that they're traditional shipping hubs. Lots of packages (feed, seed, grain, machinery) come in, and lots of packages (livestock, meat, produce) go out.

If I were looking for a non-descript place to traffic guns through, I could do worse than a farm.

farmers can, and usually do, have shotguns. sometimes a .22 rifle or possibly a .303

Basically, the main categories of firearm that are still allowed in the UK are shotguns, long barrel revolvers and small calibre rifles. They're almost exclusively used in rural areas (vermin, hunting, etc.).

It's often the case when you hear of firearms related incidents, that the stolen shotgun (or whatever) gets tracked back to a farm.

I'm curious actually where the UK draws the line on gun parts. A barrel, for example, is a pretty specialized part that isn't too hard to recognize as a gun part, and isn't useful for anything else. A lot of other parts are simple little bits of machined or stamped metal, though, or stuff like springs.

If I mailed somebody in the UK a barrel, I assume it would be found and everybody involved would get in some sort of trouble. What about a spring, though? Would anybody get in trouble if you were mailed a spring? Can then even tell whether that spring is the mainspring for a 1911 pistol, or a part for a pressure valve at a factory or something? How about an AK trigger guard, which is a funny-looking bit of stamped steel? God only knows what some random person seeing that would think it's for.

>The difference is that a 3d printer is almost at the domestic use stage and takes up far less space than a CNC Mill and lathe.

Not 3D printers capable of printing with high tensile strength materials needed to produce a working firearm. That's not that far removed from CNCs and lathes suitable for woodworking being far more attainable than those intended for machine work.

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