Future gun control has been shot down | Hacker News Reader

Future gun control has been shot down

thoughtleader.co.za

69 pointsismail94 comments

Improvised firearms are as old as factory manufactured firearms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm

I disagree with the premise that gun control has been shot down because of this new technology applied to make improvised firearms. First of all, these things are going to be far less effective, durability, reliability and range wise than factory firearms. Second, laws are about scaring transgressors into not doing something with the threat of state violence against them, not making some action a complete impossibility.

>First of all, these things are going to be far less effective, durability, reliability and range wise than factory firearms.

This is technically true, but doesn't accurately represent the state of 3d printed firearms.

Durability - a 3d printed/hybrid firearm isn't going to last as long as one made by Ruger and co. However, the difference is between components lasting thousands of rounds vs tens of thousands of rounds - meaningful, but we're not talking "two shots then the barrel melts."

As far as range goes, that has far less to do with whether or not the components in question were homemade, and more to do with physics - namely, barrel length, the caliber of bullet you're firing, and how much powder is being used. Longer barrel = more complete burn of the powder = higher projectile velocity. The aerodynamics of projectiles is rather complex, but you can rule of thumb it as "heavier projectiles are more accurate, lighter projectiles go farther, faster." This is a long way of saying, as long as the barrel meets a certain threshold of quality (which, homemade firearms have met), it's not going to matter unless you're shooting out past 200 yards. Furthermore, barrels are (in the US anyway) cheap, plentiful, and entirely unregulated.

I would argue that durability isn't just a function of number of shots in a controlled environment - think about the environment a soldier will use their weapon in. Water, mud, dropping it, things falling on it, and so on. A weapon cast and milled from steel, aluminum, or carbon fiber impregnated polymer, with tight tolerances, is going to be more durable to that kind of thing vs. a firearm having structural parts made with FDM printing like the subject of the article.

I agree that barrels are available in the US but that isn't generally true worldwide. I admit that I don't know much about homemade barrels but my understanding is that for a long rifle barrel (needed for >200 yard shooting) is going to require some pretty specialized and expensive equipment, and I would be very surprised if they could approach the accuracy of even a cheap, non-accurized factory chamber/barrel, but I'll look into it more to satisfy my curiosity.

So on durability it seems the converse has usually proven out to be the rule rather than the exception. Probably the best example is the AK, tolerances are loose, it can be manufactured with rudimentary equipment. Basically a metal brake, a lathe and a rudimentary milling machine to machine the gas block and trigger group. The entire gun is pinned together and can be taken down in the field with a punch. It really is so simply built to the point of being genius and while it is not as accurate as some of it's counterparts produced during the same period, it is accurate enough. It is generally regarded as the most reliable gun ever produced.

The converse story of that would be that of the AR-15/M-16 tight tolerances and precise engineering lead to it fouling in action due to dust and debris to the extent that it went thru several decades of revision until we ended up with the modern AR-15/M-4.

As far as barrels I would say that is the biggest issue with ever production a 100% 3D printed gun, unless there are serious advances in modern plastics that lead to an extremely ridged, heat resistant, and expansion resistant material they will continue to need to be metals with high tensile strength. It needs to be rigid to resist barrel wrap where the barrel flexes and reduces accuracy under fire. It needs to be heat resistant for obvious reasons gun barrels get hot and it needs to resist expansion so that the barrel is in contact with the bullet at it travels down it. Thus metal seems to be the only possible material at the moment that contains the requisite properties for barrel development.

Beyond that, even if they can get to 100% of all other parts being manufactured and using common pipe with some chemical treatment to overcome the barrel issue there are still some major disadvantages that cannot be overcome without at least rudimentary metal shop tools. The biggest being that just using a pipe gives you the equivalent of a smooth bore slug gun. For any amount of accuracy the firearm has to have riffling which is groves cut into the inside of the barrel to cause the bullet to twist as it moves down the barrel thus stabilizing the flight path of the bullet when it leaves the firearms barrel. I just don't see how the above issues can be overcome via 3D printing. That being said, it's actually pretty easy to home manufacture a firearm with the most basic of metal shop tools.

The Achilles heel of 3d printed firearms is ammunition. You can 3d print a bullet, but the entire cartridge with primer is an unsolved problem.

Factory ammunition in common calibers like 9mm and 5.56 is hard to find now at least in the US.

US states with strong gun control laws now focus on ammunition sales, requiring identification and criminal background checks, and creating law enforcement databases of ammunition buyers and sellers.

I think the issue is that it is not a 3D printing problem. Plenty of hobbyist reload and self manufacture bullets it requires a simple reloading press. Most of the components can be self manufactured if one desires, as the other child poster has already said, smokeless powder is probably the hardest to manufacture but not impossible.

It’s not yet documented in the 3D printing community, but it’s not an unsolved problem. Both priming compound and black powder are fairly easy to make. Smokeless powder is a bit more difficult, but not much.

I think you may not be caught up to the current state of the art in printed firearms. Since the lower receiver of an AR-15 is legally the "firearm", it's the only part you need to create yourself to bypass infringements. The lower receiver is also not much of a pressure-bearing component, so making it on a 3D printer offers few trade offs. There are other prints available for countries with even more restrictive infringements, where you can print or assemble the entire weapon from unregulated parts (which are commonly used in other situations, making them difficult or impossible to regulate).

My understanding is that printed lower receivers is an artifact of how the USA regulates ARs, most countries regulate barrels and other components as well. So that method is extremely vulnerable to additional regulation. Anyways, finished 80% aluminum lowers are just as good as the real thing, you can even hard coat anodize (similar process to the barrel rifling of the FCG-9)

Powdered metal printing is becoming more popular. Porsche and some other auto manufacturers have made pistons from powdered printing. As the cost of entry starts to drop we are going to see interesting times ahead.

Why such high tech? CNCs have been around for ages and can do the job just as well.

3D metal printed pistons are ~10% lighter because they can have more sophisticated shape at the same strength. Reportedly this allows Porsche to increase RPM and get about 5% extra horsepower. It is still an experimental technology, not used in any road car. This is how they look like: https://images.hgmsites.net/hug/porsche-3d-prints-piston-for...

I think that there are fewer parts in a common home firearm (an AR-15, even bolt bolt action firearms) that this applies to, since the most complicated parts are in the bolt carrier group, where mass and density are generally desirable as far as I'm aware. I don't think that there are small arms parts that really benefit significantly from sintering vs machining in terms of weight savings.

So CNCs are great, but there is some benefits to the powdered printing. Better oil galleries that you can not accomplish with CNC machines.

Ian from Forgotten Weapons had a great video on improvised firearms with the National Firearms Centre collection at the Royal Armouries, including 3-D printed firearms. The collection is used for historical reference, international terrorism deterrence, and police work. The firearms greatly range in complexity and expense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TMrunbZLJw

Here's another one on 1920/30s Chinese 'mystery' guns:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HNaB7l2GQk

His videos on Khyber Pass firearms are also fascinating.

Ian's channel is some amazing stuff for anyone with passing interest in firearms, and it's largely free of politics. Well, as much as it can be.

> Second, laws are about scaring transgressors into not doing something with the threat of state violence against them, not making some action a complete impossibility.

The Second Amendment is (at least partially) about scaring the state into not doing something with the threat of popular violence against them.

As time goes by and this tech improves, restricting guns to a given level will require increasingly invasive regulation. Where once you could accomplish it by regulating manufacturers and dealers and imports, now you have to restrict 3D printers and common items from the hardware store. As 3D printers become common household items, the same level of gun control will require detailed mass surveillance and/or restrictions on common items like pipe and scrap steel.

This may mean that gun control simply fails in non-authoritarian countries, and they either go authoritarian or increasing live without effective controls on guns. As a gun culture the U.S. may be better prepared for this transition.

> This may mean that gun control simply fails in non-authoritarian countries, and they either go authoritarian or increasing live without effective controls on guns.

Yes! This isn't limited to gun control either. It's a politico-technological arms race.

People develop technology that subverts the government. New laws are eventually created, allowing the government to adapt to the new technology. With each cycle, the government must become increasingly tyrannical and totalitarian in order to maintain its own power over the governed population. We'll end up with either an uncontrollable population or an absolute state.

> As 3D printers become common household items, the same level of gun control will require detailed mass surveillance and/or restrictions on common items like pipe and scrap steel.

Are people worried about un-riffled longarms though?

Unless you have a way to rifle the inside of a pipe, that won't really be an issue. You'll just be making inaccurate muskets.

The important item isn't the 3d printer. Its the CNC Lathe.

> Unless you have a way to rifle the inside of a pipe

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2019/08/13/make-a-factor...

I can see how advancements in 3d metal printers would make this a trivial task.

This reports is an ok rundown. The 3D printed shotgun cartridges feel like something out of Hello Kitty -

Desktop Firearms: Emergent Small Arms Craft Production Technologies -

http://armamentresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ARES-...

https://www.glockforum.com/threads/sold-glock-42-custom-hell...

The proliferation of technology has never successfully been curtailed through regulation on long enough time scales.

Seems to have largely worked for Chemical and Nuclear weapons. At least in terms of weapon systems, banning lasers designed to blind was apparently completely effective.

I guess it helps when the technology being deterred (strong lasers, etc) are simply not fun and recreational. I frankly have no strong desire to turn on a super strong laser and burn things with it. On contrast, learning to operate firearms safely and accurately can be a life-long pursuit. They're simply more recreational thus the desire to own.

No, that doesn't hold water.

There's nothing inherently "more recreational" or more interesting about a thing that shoots bullets than a laser that burns things. That's just your personal interest built on top of the interests of other people, a cultural artifact.

Whatever you say about guns, I can counter with something like: lasers can be bounced off mirrors, therefore they are more interesting and fun than devices that fire bullets.

Eh. Recreational generally implies some amount of affordability and easy entry level.

Nuclear weapons and lasers are not simple machines, nor are they cheap, and (somewhat unrelated) they generally aren't as instinctively fun or easy to practice at towards any goal.

The US was actually building a weapon system for this when it was banned. It’s more than just a laser, you need a complex targeting system to be effective. Anyway, the limitation on line of sight vs over the horizon missiles and the straightforward countermeasures probably played a major role.

You can build nuclear reactors in your home (and people do[1-6]) pretty much without regulation and if you fuck up and vent a bunch of radioactive gas to atmosphere, your community will suffer for it.

As for chemical weapons, people accidentally create chlorine gas all of the time. Aside from that, the reason you don't see more of this is because the really potent nerve agents and useful explosives (smokeless powders and beyond) have complex reactions that require trained chemists to produce.

It's a good thing most people aren't motivated to do that, but Aum Shinrikyo happened in our lifetimes.

I personally have the know how to create several things that are genuinely dangerous (like an EPFCG...I even have a copy of the 70s-era paper from LANL), but absolutely zero motivation to do so. It's not regulation that's stopping me.

You can build lasers that can blind people with the laser diode from your blu-ray player and people do it for fun. Nothing illegal about it here either and I've built a few.

[1]:https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/how-to-build-a... [2]:https://www.businessinsider.com/12-year-old-builds-nuclear-r... [3]:https://www.instructables.com/Build-A-Fusion-Reactor/ [4]:https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a30917842/homemade-... [5]:https://www.foxnews.com/science/teen-builds-working-nuclear-... [6]:https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/07/150726-nucle...

Regulation really hasn't stopped any government from manufacturing nuclear weapons. Proliferation treaties have largely been a failure as you can see evidence of in recent years. The actual _use_ of nuclear weapons is something else and has nothing to do with regulation. The use of nuclear and chemical weapons doesn't support any governments war objectives. It turns out you don't actually win if everyone in the world simultaneously hates you, won't trade with you and will sanction you into oblivion. It turns out that the ability to import and export goods is worth more than the dead bodies of your enemies.

There are well over 100,000 people in the US that could afford to buy a Nuclear bomb if it was for sale at a reasonable multiple of it’s construction cost. Similarly effective chemical weapons that can kill tens of thousands of people when released over a populated area are relatively cheap to construct. If they where on sale you can bet people would buy them as artwork if nothing else.

So sure, people can do plenty of mildly dangerous things, but it’s hard to find something significantly more destructive than intentionally setting off a few hundred fires out west. That’s the kind of thing a homeless person could pull off with a backpack and 30$ worth of supplies.

My argument was that _regulation_ doesn't stop these things. Your argument is still not a refutation of that.

Regulation is not the reason that people don't use the technology. It turns out that most people aren't assholes.

And notice how all of the access to said technology is still there.

It’s regulation that’s stopping the sale of nuclear weapons to the general populace. If there where several thousand of the thing in random peoples hands globally you can expect one of them to have been stolen and used. Or just purchased with the intent to make a statement.

You're making several leaps of logic there.

The people capable and interested in building them have no interest in such, regardless of regulation. There also don't seem to be buyers on the other end to motivate anyone with money. If you did build such a thing for cash, you can't assume it won't be used on you or your loved ones.

Your argument is assuming a market that is not there. It's also a disgustingly cynical view of humanity that I care not to entertain.

> The people capable and interested in building them have no interest in such, regardless of regulation.

That’s an extraordinarily optimistic view of humanity. How to you align that with say the tobacco industry which actively spent money to kill ever more people by getting the young addicted? I honestly don’t want to change your mind, but I am curious about how you could think that in the face of what some people will do for money.

That's just naive.

Tobacco had hundreds of years of use as a medicinal before we realized anything about addictions and cancer.[1] It also looks to be a very viable biofuel (at least a GM'd, non-smokable version of it) providing 3x per acre the amount of ethanol per acre as corn and 3x per acre the amount of oil as soy. It's also a natural pesticide & insect repellant and source of saltpeter/potassium nitrate.

Not just that, but smokers mostly just hurt themselves and smoke for the benefits nicotine provides them. People drink alcohol too and that's not good for you either.

We will be growing and selling tobacco long after people stop smoking it.

I'm not aware of any medicinal benefits of nuclear weapons or nerve gas. Almost nobody has any reason to produce either. This is veering off into stupid territory.

[1]:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1079499/

The practice of Tobacco companies looking for new younger customers continued well after the harmful effects where known. Here’s a direct quote on the topic.

"Younger adult smokers are the only source of replacement smokers. Repeated government studies (Appendix B) have shown that: Less than one-third of smokers (31%) start after age 18. Only 5% of smokers start after age 24 Thus, today's young adult smoking behavior will largely determine the trend of industry volume over the next several decades. If younger adults turn away from smoking, the industry must decline, just as a population that does not give birth will eventually dwindle. In such an environment, a positive RJR sales trend would require disproportionate share gains and/or steep price increases (which could depress volume)." original quote from the internal documents of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, circa 1985, in the collection of Stanford Research Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising (note that statistics are out-of-date).

But thanks for helping me to understand where you’re coming from.

This is a South African newspaper right? Sometimes I wonder if HN headlines are just suggestions for discussion for bored or easily distracted tech workers.

It's more likely that this article has a stimulating headline that many people will likely upvote without even reading. The poster is a karma farmer.

According to the user's bio:

> Consultant in Johannesburg, South Africa

So probably closer to something that relates to him directly than posting because of the headline.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's not like there's a constitutional amendment protecting your right to own and operate a 3d printer.

Just taking another opportunity to mention the Ninth Amendment:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

One of the early arguments about whether the Bill of Rights should exist was that special-casing some rights would narrow the scope of "rights that exist" to just those explicitly listed; the compromise was the Ninth Amendment.

You make a good point. The second amendment is already dreadfully infringed throughout the US (in some states far more than others), and the first amendment is being chipped away, too. It's unfortunate that we the people allowed it to get so bad.

But guns are scary.

The problem with the second amendment is that it is an awful sentence. Malcolm Gladwell went over this in a podcast with an NYT chief editor, the way it is structured makes in ambiguous whether the intention was for militias to have access to firearms, or the people. That's why it is a such a hotly contested topic, that and we're talking about guns. To say it's "already dreadfully infringed" completely depends on your interpretation of that amendment.

I think pro gun advocates need to distance themselves from irresponsible gun owners and the NRA. It doesn't help your cause. Promoting responsible gun legislation without spouting "they're going to take our guns over my dead body" just makes you sound like a nut. We also need to address the vastly different circumstances the city living has compared to rural in terms of gun ownership. As well as stop burying the conversation when it comes to mass shootings, they happen way to often and absolutely would not happen if gun control was stricter, the entire world is evidence of this. Making guns harder to acquire makes them less likely, but only if that applies to an entire geographic region. If DC makes guns really hard to get, but Virginia makes them super easy, then it doesn't matter at all.

I just don't have much hope for anything bipartisan to actually work. Things are too split, and there's very little upside for people to change sides.

The sentence is only ambiguously defined if you look at the sentence by itself. Thankfully courts don’t do that and shouldn’t. When an interpretation is hotly contested you need secondary supporting documents to interpret it properly.

Of which we have numerous writings and documents to show what that sentence means. We have documents which break down what the Founders at the time meant by militia and what they thought about ownership.

Yep, turns out "shall not be infringed" meant exactly what it says. I keep trying to find where they say that we only need single shot hunting rifles, or that any scary-looking guns should be banned. But I haven't been able to turn anything up.

well considering those types of weapons didn't exist and weren't even a possibility for another like 70 years, your argument is pointless and irrelevant. The landscape the founding fathers were in was so different it's stupid to take everything they said literally.

I consider nuclear weapons to be arms, I should be able to have my own nuclear weapon for hunting. The second amendment makes no mention of it, thus I should get one.

> well considering those types of weapons didn't exist and weren't even a possibility for another like 70 years

At the time the Second Amendment was ratified, private individuals could, and did, own field artillery pieces and fully-armed and -crewed ships of war.

When it comes to inducing a mass-casualty event, a 32-pounder full of grapeshot is going to beat the hell out of an AR-15.

Edit: an AR-15 bullet masses somewhere around 4 grams, depending, so a 32-pounder would fire roughly the equivalent of 3,500 AR-15 rounds in one shot.

>I should be able to have my own nuclear weapon for hunting

The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting.

> The second amendment makes no mention of it, thus I should get one.

I strongly suspect than anyone with the financial resources, technical infrastructure, and desire to own a nuclear weapon already has one, laws or no laws.

This completely misses the point at what the issue is. Try to commit any act of mass murder with it and you’ll fail. It’s unreliable, and you won’t be a let to reload. An semi automatic weapon is going to be far more lethal. Also the odds of someone with the know how of how to use one and committing to it is extremely low.

The argument always comes up, well someone could commit an act of mass murder with xyz do limiting firearms won’t do anything. And yet, it absolutely will. Firearms are the path of least resistance by a long shot for the goal. So limit that path and it’s much less likely people will do it with anything else.

Just admit you like your guns more than you want lower murder rates

During the War of 1812, American civilian mariners used large cannons to commit mass murder against British sailors. It was pretty common at the time.

Depending on what you are considering the defining features of an AR-15 type there was for example a 20 round repeating airgun that was around during the period [0]. Lewis and Clark are believed to have used one.

Although using a fixed magazine, I don't think it would have been too much of a stretch to imagine a detachable one - especially as the air reservoir was.

Energy-wise it's about 10% of a standard 5.56x45mm round, but still apparently quiet effective.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girardoni_air_rifle

There was disagreement at the time of writing between the founding fathers, which was a factor in ending up with its somewhat quirky phrasing[0]. Most of this disagreement does seem to be about State vs Federal power rather than the topics in contemporary discussions about it.

The Supreme Court does seem to have settled upon it being an individual rights[1] issue. Considering all the other rights in the bill of rights are individual, there does seem to be some consistency to that.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp0-g-cjxmM

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United...

>Considering all the other rights in the bill of rights are individual, there does seem to be some consistency to that.

But it could be argued that we would be a safer country if all of the rights in the bill of rights were collective rather than individual.

I would be interested in hearing that argument. On the surface it appears to be an argument of creating special privileged groups who are the only ones who have freedom of speech or the ability to avoid having troops billeted in their dwellings. Maybe that would lead to more safety?

That makes me think of the society from Heinlein's Starship Troopers where you had to earn citizenship through civic duty. He certainly portrayed the non-citizens having a safe existence (during peacetime).

Safety was never the primary goal.

We put reasonable restrictions on all sorts of rights when the non-restriction of those rights starts to impact other people and other rights. The common example would be libel laws on speech or punishment for causing panic in a crowded theater by yelling "fire."

Vehicles can be a deadly weapon but are highly available. We put reasonable regulation in place so that getting a driver's license for a small car is not very onerous while obtaining a commercial driver's license to pilot an 18 wheel tractor trailer requires more training. Similar rules around firearms with differing capabilities to harm others seems reasonable. We also require insurance for vehicle owners at various amounts based on risk.

As I understand it there aren't restrictions on who can own vehicles, only on who can use them on public infrastructure.

I think comparing a driving license with a concealed carry permit is the most apt although not a perfect case. In many states a course must be undertaken to obtain a concealed carry permit, and some states put many restrictions on obtaining one.

A driving licence does however allow you to use any public road, whereas concealed carry permits are per state. I've wondered if lawmakers could use the possibility of federal level permits in exchange for tightening of current restrictions on say background checks.

Right it goes back to the whole concept of castle doctrine. Which is basically a wo/man is basically recognized as the king of their castle. This is where all rights are bestowed. When one enter into public some of those rights have to wane due to nature of now you have other individuals in public. So the law did not view you as king when outside of your property. To accommodate this the concept of privilege's arose. You have the right to own a car and to drive it, even drunk on your property. You are extended the privilege to do it via licensing in public. Privilege's require responsibility or they can be revoked. The government recognizes the right to self defense of each individual in public or private but it extends the privilege of allowing responsible people the ability to carry a firearm to extend that right of self defense to public places. This is why revoking a CCW permit is not an infringement on your second amendment right, you still have the right to "bare" arms, you are just not extended the privilege of doing so in public. It is generally accepted that the 2A is applicable to small arms / personal arms and is why a lot of restrictions on small arms get ruled unconstitutional, because they go against the right to own not the privilege to be in possession of in public.

The funny part is I once watched a legal scholars breakdown of the 2A and why it made sense and how language drift has caused the issue and that this would not have been a confusing sentence to individuals of the period it was written in. The supreme court rulings and positions support his conclusion and based on it, there is little in the law to be "interpreted".

If we look at the crux of the issue it is this part of the text that causes issues: "a well-regulated militia" this issue, specifically is the term regulated. In modern terminology, regulated takes on the meaning of controlled and generally implies controlled by an authority, which even in classical definition there is some connotation to control by a system of rules that govern it, but it implies that the control are a ruleset that guarantee a desired outcome. In colloquial terminology regulation would more translate into a word that meant "to supply via a process or ruleset to keep functioning properly" and in this context the 2A makes perfect sense. The best example I can think of is a regulator on a SCUBA tank, it regulates the supply of air so that the diver receives the correct amount of air. This is the concept that is being transferred in the 2A. The framers where concerned with government infringement, they wanted to ensure that the militias where well supplied via a process, the 2A is that process or ruleset to regulate (supply the militia) thus their individual right to keep and bare arms shale not be infringed. I have tried and tried to find that video and wish I would have bookmarked it as it really helped make sense of a confusing sentence that can imply a different meaning when "interpreted" with the modern dual use of the word regulated.

If one takes the text and replaces the word regulated with supplied it becomes apparent what the intent was:

"A well supplied Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The issue is, that regulated more confers what they where trying to say and that was that they need the Militia supplied by men and guns via a process, that process and ruleset that regulates the supply is the 2A, specifically the lack of ability to infringe the right to keep and bare arms.

This is also why the practice of possession of a weapon in public is not an extension of the 2A. As it does not deprive a person of their right to keep and bare arms, yet restricting a particular class of arms does, thus we cannot ban handguns.

So are you suggesting that we restrict people's civil rights based on the population density of where they happen to live? Should we also apply stricter limits to free speech if more other people are nearby?

Try yelling fire in a crowded location vs in the middle of an empty field. We do. This happens all over.

What are you suggesting? That we ban/restrict the use/ownership of 3d printers? A 3d printer is just some motors and a extruder on a set of rails, so I'd imagine it's not too hard to make your own. At that point you're back to square one.

Hasn't stopped them from outlawing a plant that will happily grow on the roadside.

A gun is just a tube and a pin.

> A gun is just a tube and a pin.

That's kind of the point. Prohibiting of the sale of something that anybody can easily make for themselves only restrains the people who follow the law from having them.

Of course they are called "arms" in the second amendment

Absolutely worthless in cases where States get away with flagrant violation of it regardless. Looking at you California and New York.

Also, good luck with actually exercising your right to "keep and bear" arms when the Interstate commerce clause is the preferred mode of shadow firearm regulation, so production of regulated parts can get you into hot water if someone doesn't like you enough. Enjoy carefully planning every travel arrrangement with having the possession of your firearm in mind, so you know the right song and dance to do on crossing State/jurisdictional boundaries, and double check with any NFA items and whether you need to engage with an FFL before crossing State lines. Also God help you if they really don't like you and you have the means and knowledge to manufacture an automatic firearm or other NFA item. In today's world, I'm not entirely sure they wouldn't try to spin it as constructive possession. Furthermore, if you machine or manufacture related components, enjoy your Special Occupational Tax, and if you're a Federal Firearm License holder, surrender of your 4th Amendment rights as a condition of doing business, and opening yourself to at will audit by the government.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. "Just don't do anything illegal and you'll be fine." That's cute and all, but I've been trying to run down and list everything I have to technically pay attention to and make sure to never slip up on as a pre-condition of owning something, and to be honest, cannot justify the risk of ownership given most of the penalties involved, because I'm horrible about keeping up with the bureaucracy. It seems to me to be less a means to get anything meaningful done, and just something to increase the odds you can throw the entire book at someone if they do do something.

So while technically the argument can be made you face no infringement to keeping and bearing of arms, I don't buy that that assertion holds water. When you create a secondary class of citizen that has to report every movement to the government just to keep their personal property with them, that's the very definition of infringement. Same thing is relevant to the closing of the Machine gun registry via the restriction of funding applied to maintinging the bloody thing since 1986.

It gets worse than that, if you buy a gun that was imported you are subject to the 922 rule. Which means that if you take that imported gun and put a US part on it, you are subject to being viewed as having assembled a foreign manufactured gun.

So to comply with the law one must change out a certain percentage of the gun with US made parts to not violate the law.

https://www.ficarettalegal.com/domestic-assembly-of-nonsport....

A minor erratum: the article refers to the FGC-9 weapon as the FCG-9.

Is it true that a $200 3D printer is sufficient?

Yes, without question.

I’ve printed AR lowers on an Anycubic i3 Mega that I bought for $100 on Facebook. My current printer was $500, but doesn’t bring any more capability.

“You don’t need no gun control, you know what you need? We need some bullet control. Men, we need to control the bullets, that’s right. I think all bullets should cost five thousand dollars… five thousand dollars per bullet… You know why? Cause if a bullet cost five thousand dollars there would be no more innocent bystanders. Yeah! Every time somebody get shut we’d say, ‘Damn, he must have done something ... Shit, he’s got fifty thousand dollars worth of bullets in his ass.’ And people would think before they killed somebody if a bullet cost five thousand dollars. ‘Man I would blow your fucking head off…if I could afford it.’ ‘I’m gonna get me another job, I’m going to start saving some money, and you’re a dead man. You’d better hope I can’t get no bullets on layaway.’ So even if you get shot by a stray bullet, you wouldn't have to go to no doctor to get it taken out. Whoever shot you would take their bullet back, like "I believe you got my property.”

― Chris Rock

If there are to be guns in our society, I would prefer all of the users to be able to afford to practice. Especially with handguns, it takes practice to be accurate and that skill atrophies over time with disuse.

For the record, I agree. I only mean to highlight the next stop is ammunition constraints/controls.

That's a fun blurb for a comedy routine, but ammunition is trivially easy to manufacture.

People do it in their basement as a hobby.

People manufacturing ammunition in the basement just put together gun powder, primers, bullets and cases. It would be really hard to manufacture any of those 4 individual pieces as a hobby.

As a whole, you're right. Primers, in particular, are probably beyond all but the most dedicated hobbyist's ability to produce at home. Still, lots of people cast their own bullets. People reuse shell casings, although there's a limit to how many times they can be reused. Smokeless powder is probably marginally easier to make than primers.

Manufacturing nitrocellulose, that is, smokeless powder, amounts to soaking cotton balls in concentrated nitric acid.

Not quite, you also need hydrochloric or sulphuric acid as a catalyst.

People have cast bullets and formed simple cases since the 1800s if not earlier. Primers are a bit more complex but not much so. Black powder has been produced by hand for several hundred years, and smokeless gun powder is not terribly more complicated.

Nonetheless, this is pretty much exactly the form of gun control practiced in Switzerland. Nearly everyone owns a gun, but ammunition is closely regulated.

Firearms and ammunition are regulated in the same way in Switzerland, and to purchase ammunition you just need to be able to show your right to purchase it at the shop - a proof of residency and a recent criminal records check. This is harder than in parts of the US, but no-one with a legal gun has problems getting ammunition.

Now, the boxes of 50 rounds that were issued as standard kit for military conscripts is no longer issued. This was designed to allow the conscript to fight their way to a designated muster point. As the need to do that is low currently the practice has been stopped to both save money and hopefully have a small effect on impulsive firearms related suicides. It's perfectly legal and normal to put one's own ammunition through an issued rifle.

There are also government sponsored shooting events, to encourage practice. The rounds here, being paid for by the government are tightly controlled to stop people walking off with handfuls for their own use.

But do note that it is not actually effective at all. Because of lack of border checks, you can purchase a trunk full of ammunition from a backyard dealer in the balkans, and then drive right to Switzerland.

Lack of gun-related crime is more caused by the law enforcement being very enthusiastic and effective about solving such crime, than it is caused by a lack of guns oe ammunition.

I think it's more because people in Switzerland just don't feel the need to shoot each other, to be honest.

I think this is an under-analyzed factor. It seems some jurisdictions are culturally more violent, and increasingly so (the U.S. in particular).

Backyard dealer in the balkans? Good luck crossing the Serbian border or in fact any EU/non-EU border with a trunk of ammo. I just mentioned Serbia because their border police is rather too vigilant. They wanted to tear a friend's RV apart to look for cigarettes or drugs. Imagine how delghted they'd be to find a trunk full of ammo. It would almost certainly be on the news. Also if you're under 30 and looking cool, you're very likely to be pulled off for a not-so-quick routine search. Also good luck crossing the Swiss border if you succeed.

That's great until someone wants to go hunting, or a farmer needs to kill a coyote.

Parent comment is relevant and a good conversation starter, it shouldn't be downvoted as much as it has been.

Why does Apple have more control over my phone than the US government has over guns?

You're right, Apple should have less control over our guns!

But just to state the obvious, there's nothing in the constitution that talks about an inherent right to control over your phone, but there is absolutely an amendment that says "a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" (and no, "well-regulated" does not mean the modern definition of "regulation")

> You're right, Apple should have less control over our guns!

According to the analogy, Apple should have less control over our phones.

Which is true.

Yeah, that was a brain typo on my part

And communication is not necessary to the security of a free state? Times have changed, you know ...

Because only one of those are a right enshrined in the Constitution.

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