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US Government Takes Down 3D Printed Gun Plans

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Re: US Government Takes Down 3D Printed Gun Plans

#161

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

hga wrote: post #145
rollo_tommasi wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so silly. If the country ever comes to the point where only you and your 3D printed gun stand between freedom and the government's tyranny, you'll just be obliterated by a Predator drone. Advances in and proliferation of 3D guns will only endanger innocent citizens. Thinking that it's any kind of check on government power is a childish fantasy.

You really ought to read about the namesake of this gun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator If it comes to that, it's merely a tool to get better guns.

Interesting link, thanks.

"General Eisenhower's staff never saw the practicality". And I don't either.

Re: US Government Takes Down 3D Printed Gun Plans

#162

Post by hga »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #161
hga wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really ought to read about the namesake of this gun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator If it comes to that, it's merely a tool to get better guns.

Interesting link, thanks. "General Eisenhower's staff never saw the practicality". And I don't either.

Perhaps all of the above are lacking in imagination---and/or the staffs didn't want masses of soon to be liberated people to be armed. Since mass distribution would have consumed precious air transport/bomber resources, we don't know if their tradeoff was correct. The one thing we can say is that the proposition was not put to the test.

Re: US Government Takes Down 3D Printed Gun Plans

#163

Post by smsm42 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #159
smsm42 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you acknowledge that the government can not rule over non-consenting armed population, yet call this idea "absurd". >>> for people who want to picture themselves as the heroes of another "Red Dawn" remake. Nobody wants it. But the option is there, and was there from the start. Just as no responsible person wants to kill other people, but if these people break into his house and threaten his life... And yes, this i…

> So you acknowledge that the government can not rule over non-consenting armed population Unarmed non-consenting populations can and have brought down governments. e.g. in Egypt and in the Czech republic. But if the government is determined not to let go at any cost at all, side-arms won't help you against a decent army. Protesters with guns is nothing more than a good excuse to send in the tanks/drone strikes/etc.…

>>> Unarmed non-consenting populations can and have brought down governments. e.g. in Egypt

In Egypt, the power was actually taken by the military after Mubarak has resigned. If the military had supported Mubarak, you can look in Libya and Syria how it would play out.

>>> side-arms won't help you against a decent army

Depends what you mean by "help". You can destroy a city with a bomber, but you can not actually govern the city with a bomber.

>>>> So the presence or absence of civilian guns are not the issue that you make them out to be.

It is. If the population is disarmed, the only force who decides if the government is to survive or not is the military. It's good if the military is on your side, if it's not you're in for a long and unpleasant ride.

Re: US Government Takes Down 3D Printed Gun Plans

#164

Post by smsm42 »

hga wrote: post #151
smsm42 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the argument is that since you already can bring a real bomb into the airport, creating one-shot un-concealable weapon that is useless in any practical scenario is a huge security threat requiring the government to ignore both 1st and 2nd amendment because of it? Could you expand this argument a little more, I don't see how exactly it plays out.

Check out its namesake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator There have been plenty of "practical scenarios" where access to very minimal handguns has been used to gain access to more. E.g. handguns were quite significant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And its certainly concealable; a bit thick for my tastes, but otherwise almost every time I walk out the door I'm carrying concealed a 4" barrel standard lengt…

You can use bare hands to gain access to handguns. Just surprise any armed person, hit him over the head with anything massive (or just with your bare hands if you're strong enough) and take his weapon. If you have a couple of accomplices you don't even have to be that strong - 2-3 reasonable strong men can hold a person down long enough to take his/her personal weapon, which is usually readily accessible. What plastic gun changes here? The idea of the FP-45 gun wasn't of course to be battlefield weapon - it was to convert unarmed population into armed and dangerous one. In the US, it doesn't change anything as whoever wants to be armed already is armed.

>>> Have you ever personally carried concealed?

No I have not, but from the dimensions of this one I don't see how you can reasonably keep it concealed on your person without people trained at detecting concealed things easily noticing it. You could of course disassemble it and hope nobody figures it out, but it's nothing new. If you don't need the weapon to survive more than a single shot, there are a lot of things that can be converted to a gun.

Re: US Government Takes Down 3D Printed Gun Plans

#165

Post by stfu »

rollo_tommasi wrote: post #134
stfu wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designing this gun was clearly an asshole move I, for one, welcome any asshole moves that make governments afraid of their citizens. DefDist's Bitcoin: 1Gb5GNxrVGMT8e9uoJ8CmamrdVz9o8fAEa ( http://defdist.org/bitcoin/ )

This is so silly. If the country ever comes to the point where only you and your 3D printed gun stand between freedom and the government's tyranny, you'll just be obliterated by a Predator drone. Advances in and proliferation of 3D guns will only endanger innocent citizens. Thinking that it's any kind of check on government power is a childish fantasy.

This is not the point. I'm looking at the bigger picture. At its current form the US government attempts to take away individual liberties from its citizens.

Guns are polarizing, but the same goes for the TSA/Security Theater, Online Privacy/Anonymity, and so on. What child pornography is for Internet censorship, terror threats for public security measures, are mass shootings for gun control.

It is a strategy of spotlighting extremely rare exceptions in order to justify the reduction of individual liberties on a large scale.

Therefore I am welcoming any attempts that balance the powergame - no matter how small they are. If you are going to develop an app that allows me encrypt all my mobile phone traffic you deserve the same level of applause as that guy who developed the gun.

Re: US Government Takes Down 3D Printed Gun Plans

#166

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

gadders wrote: post #133
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rubber bullets have killed people before, and I reckon rubber bullets would be as deadly as any other at close range.

But you can't fire a rubber bullet from a plastic gun. That gun as designed needs a propellant (cordite/gunpowder) to fire the metal slug at the end. And if you need a propellant, you can't use a plastic cartridge case. If you have a plastic "thing" firing a rubber projectile using a plastic spring or similar, then it is more like a crossbow than an actual gun.

Why not? I bet I could cast the charge out of an explosive resin.

Re: US Government Takes Down 3D Printed Gun Plans

#167

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

smsm42 wrote: post #146
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding? Airport security breaches are so commonplace that they don't always merit news coverage anymore. Here, another TSA pen-test failure. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-usa-security-ai... These are just the ones we hear about, and don't include incidences of undetected contraband carried by passengers, unwittingly and intentionally.

So the argument is that since you already can bring a real bomb into the airport, creating one-shot un-concealable weapon that is useless in any practical scenario is a huge security threat requiring the government to ignore both 1st and 2nd amendment because of it? Could you expand this argument a little more, I don't see how exactly it plays out.

My argument is that airport security is useless and ineffective. I said nothing about the gov't enacting even more bad legislation on top of the already bad response to the "terrorism threat".

Re: US Government Takes Down 3D Printed Gun Plans

#168

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

smsm42 wrote: post #163
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you acknowledge that the government can not rule over non-consenting armed population Unarmed non-consenting populations can and have brought down governments. e.g. in Egypt and in the Czech republic. But if the government is determined not to let go at any cost at all, side-arms won't help you against a decent army. Protesters with guns is nothing more than a good excuse to send in the tanks/drone strikes/etc.…

>>> Unarmed non-consenting populations can and have brought down governments. e.g. in Egypt In Egypt, the power was actually taken by the military after Mubarak has resigned. If the military had supported Mubarak, you can look in Libya and Syria how it would play out. >>> side-arms won't help you against a decent army Depends what you mean by "help". You can destroy a city with a bomber, but you can not actually gove…

> It is. If the population is disarmed, the only force who decides if the government is to survive or not is the military.

What I and others are saying above is that with handguns in the population, the situation is much the same.

Re: US Government Takes Down 3D Printed Gun Plans

#169

Post by nayefc »

smsm42 wrote: post #149
hga wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why screw with that?" Exactly. This period of decreasing violent crime is correlated with a massive, near nationwide relaxation of gun controls that go back to the post-Civil war period. Correlation does not suggest let alone prove causation, but desiring a reversal in a trend that correlates with what in theory is your objective should give one pause.

There are couple of things that suggest correlation: Chicago and DC.

I wonder if you realise city-wide laws don't matter: you can drive 30 minutes from DC in Virginia and get a rifle...

Re: US Government Takes Down 3D Printed Gun Plans

#170

Post by nayefc »

hga wrote: post #142
protomyth wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people killed in violent crimes by guns in the US is continuing to trend down. This is via the CDC. Why screw with that? Second, the US government does not have to the money or constitutional authority to "fix" all things. It has a budget and income which should start to match. 11,000 people taken over the whole US is not much of a risk. If you look at the CDC stats, it is very far down on a long list.

"Why screw with that?" Exactly. This period of decreasing violent crime is correlated with a massive, near nationwide relaxation of gun controls that go back to the post-Civil war period. Correlation does not suggest let alone prove causation, but desiring a reversal in a trend that correlates with what in theory is your objective should give one pause.

Do you actually believe this? This makes me laugh... I think we need a psychological study to see what is this filthy obsession with guns people have here in the US.
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