The 3D-Printed Gun Threat Is Getting Weird and Scary [Nope, no bias there]

Gizmodo ^ | 06/20/2019 | Adam Clark Estes

[marktwain]

Certainly the Tribal Areas are famous around the world, for the skills of locals, using the most basic tools. But the wonder of it is that any such guns work at all, not that they can come anywhere close to issue arms from industrial sources. Better than nothing, of course; but strength, service life, and accuracy are something else.

Just a few days ago, I examined a couple of pistols that were very likely made in the tribal areas. There were in a gun shop in Australia, and were a cap lock and a flintlock. They were identified by the variable handwork, the lack of precision, the crude lettering that characterize such items. The master craftsmen at Adams or Hollis would never have allowed them to pass their doors.

Exactly how they arrived, or when, in Australia, is uncertain, but there was commerce throughout the empire, and a number of men from the tribal areas worked in Australia as camel drivers and tenders.

A point worth considering is that 3D printed guns, or homemade guns, or small shop guns, do not need to work as well or last as long as the superbly made industrial items you refer to.

They only "need" to work to fire a few dozen shots, to be more than sufficient to accomplish the crimes those pushing for citizen disarmament say they will prevent with "gun control".

The fear those wishing to disarm us show over 3D printing does much to validate its efficacy to derail the arguments of our opponents.

[schurmann]

“...A point worth considering is that 3D printed guns, or homemade guns, or small shop guns, do not need to work as well or last as long...They only “need” to work to fire a few dozen shots, to be more than sufficient...” [marktwain, post 41]

This is the central point, and I’m glad you made it. Can’t be emphasized often enough, nor strongly enough.

Plastic guns made by 3D printing can serve as “guns to get a gun” - used by citizens to “neutralize” hostile occupying troops and armed security forces, after which the citizens take the weapons of the occupiers, and employ same to continue/expand the citizens’ response.

Weapons of any sort are only one factor in the total equation; great obstacles and greater unknowns still exist. The outcome still depends on subterfuge and raw courage on the part of citizens.

The Liberator pistol of World War Two was designed and built with the “gun-to-get-a-gun” ploy in mind. Some 1,000,000 of the simple, inexpensive single-shot smoothbore weapons were made by GM’s Guide Lamp division, but they were never distributed to resistance forces in truly large quantities; the record of their use in action remains very sparse and spotty.