This is a big deal. A young Texan inventor has designed a plastic gun that can be made at home with a 3D printer. He has now posted a video of himself firing a gun, and published the blueprint online so anyone can make one. The inventor called the gun The Liberator and believes it will help empower people by rendering gun control laws obsolete stating "I think this isn't a project about firearms, it’s a project about political equality".

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/first-3-d-printed-gun-fired-its-digital-blueprints-make-6C9790795

I think this will cause a revolution in gun ownership once the process is perfected and the technology is cheap enough for the common man. It will do to the 2nd Amendment what the internet did to the 1st, removing government and corporations from the equation. With the ability to create guns in the hands of the people, gun control laws will be about as effective as digital copyright laws are today. Making your own gun will be almost as easy as downloading an app for your ipad. The criminal and terrorist applications of the technology are also obvious, but I doubt Pandora's Box can be closed now.

The first wiki-gun:

I cannot begin to find the words to express my horror at the prospect.

Maybe. But remember the Segway.

I see a lot of people blowing their hands off with this thing for freedom.

Nothing says freedom like a throbbing lump of gristle!

On the flip side we will be able to download blueprints for bullet proof vests and coffins.

The Segway wasn't designed specifically for killing other human beings, this is.

As long as we can't download and 3-D print experienced trial lawyers I'm safe.

For a while.

Yeah, they are already trying to ban it in Congress.



Yeah, I can think of many ways this can be impractical, primary being the fact that normal, much more reliable firearms are readily bought at your neighborhood gun store.



Trolling will become lethal. You just know somebody will post a design that looks like this, and someone out there will make and fire it...

I'm somewhat puzzled why they think that, if they make a 3-D printed assault weapon and it works as one, the laws (present or future) about who can have assault weapons won't apply.

I know how to distill alcohol from fruit, too, but that doesn't mean that I'm allowed to, even "for my own use."

Distilling alcohol from fruit is perfectly legal (I believe Alabama is only exception), every redneck I know makes homemade brews or wine, you just can't make hard liquor. The reason few bother to break the law is because alcohol is cheap and readily available everywhere. But during prohibition, every other bathtub was used to store homemade spirits. Likewise as long as guns are cheap, lightly regulated, and readily available, few people will bother with 3D printing. But if guns are banned, over taxed, or over regulated, people can now print their own.

Better examples are growing poppies and making heroin or growing castor beans (shit, they're a weed) and distilling ricin.

This is nothing new. You can make a zip gun from a few common items from a hardware store.

Anyone with access to a CNC machine could make a fully auto machine gun. If a machine shop with 1920s tech can make a tommy gun, whats the big deal?

Honey, the way you make wine and beer is to ferment (brew) it. The way you make hard liquor is to distill a fermented base to concentrate the alcohol. There is a difference, which is why I said distill.

You can brew your own beer and wine, in limited amounts, for your own use. But no, distilling is NOT perfectly legal.

The deal is giving detailed directions to make a tommy gun on the internet, from materials that will never handle the stress, and then calling it freedom.

Oh LOL, sorry. Never made any myself

Prolly creating a lot of Darwin Award recipients. (Can't really call them winners.)

Which reminds me, I need to try out that "make your own root bear from root beer extract, sugar and Yeast" thing I found on the internet.

Made some in high school. It was potent, but vile. I considered it simply a lab exercise, you know, learning how to distill. Yeah, that's what it was.

I hate that "It's too dangerous for a woman" crap. Back in the early '90s they didn't want to let me do afterhours emergency response inthe city of Chester, PA (which is far more dangerous than Philly). Since I'm moderately insane I raised hell until I was allowed to do it. I never had any trouble. The truth is that the neighborhood people were happy to see us responding because of the violations the companies down there were committing at night and on weekends when their inspectors weren't around.

They're plastic. That worries me.

You did it wrong

I used to brew my own beer. Let it ferment in those fancy Grolsch bottles, the ones you can re-close?

Put some extra sugar in the brew to boost the alcohol content.

That was some good stuff.

A firearm made of themoplastic doesn't worry me too much.

Not that it couldn't be deadly under the right conditions, but then again so could a pocket knife.

The hazard to the operator is immense.

Sounds like a Darwin Award just waiting to be won.

BTW, I think there is a Federal Law against plastic guns, passed during the Reagan Administration. Am I wrong? I heard something about it on Rachel last night, but was half asleep.