Czech gunmaker CZG buys Colt in cash and stock deal
reuters.com
reuters.com
There's a lesson here that's universally applicable well beyond gun manufacturers: You can't rest on your laurels and attempt to coast on brand value, even #1 brand value. You still always have to be competing.
Anyways there are lot of SV entrepreneurs on HN so an (old) american company sold to a European (especially from the former Eastern block) is always relevant.
Also HN is much more than an "IT community" I think, much more diverse
But as I’ve aged, I see class structures and the power of the elites much more clearly. I see how systems can be more violent than people. And that individuals do not have a lot of power these days because society is filled with so many systems.
Owning a gun returns some power to the individual. I don’t want my power for defense given to the police, I want to control that power. I don’t care if the situations I want it for will never happen, I want the comfort of having that power.
This, exactly. But also:
> we should ban them.
That “we” does a lot of heavy lifting to obscure that fact that the prohibition of guns consists of people with guns telling other people when they may and may not have guns.
The prior things pay the bills. Guns are for pleasure. Long range shooting beats meditation and yoga.
(The term "IT worker" doesn't translate well globally.)
But yeah, the in-industry definitions are that "IT" is business-side support & project roles, while CS / Dev are coders.
Do I carry one with me? No. Do I have any set up for home defense? No. Do I enjoy shooting high power rifles at the range on the weekend? You bet I do.
FWIW I own more tech stuff by value than guns, so, there's that.
The engineering and physics involved in building/tuning guns and shooting accurately is very interesting.
Furthermore, the "renegade" spirit required to reject the status-quo and push the envelope in science and engineering attracts quite a few of the same types of people.
Finally, the idea of "banning" guns -- which every basically qualified engineer or physicist should be capable to building from readily available materials and tools -- makes them even more interesting. If for no other reason than to illuminate preposterous and insulting nature of the idea.
IMHO. ;)
Again, surely you mean in the US? All engineers I have ever worked with or met are almost the exact opposite of this.
IMHO ;-)
If CZ ends up picking up Colt Canada too, seems like they'd be in good hands.
The difference is in gun culture. Very few Europeans identify with guns as much as Americans occasionally do.
It’s an issue that’s become culturally politicized. I bet folks in Switzerland don’t say stuff like “people in other cantons cling to their guns and religion.”
(Czechia does has a strong civilian ownership, however)
Europe is a more diverse place ideologically and socially than most Americans tend to imagine it. The place is bigger and more complex than just Paris or Berlin, just like how America is not just NY or Houston.
I've heard from friends there is a similar passion in many towns in Germany and Austria. I would venture a guess that outside many European cities shooting for sport is much more commonplace.
https://blog.westernpowders.com/2017/11/schuetzen-the-purest...
There's also a significant, separate overlap between computer geeks and people that like to exercise their rights (See: Crypto Wars) which results in non hunting gunowners.
In my father's generation there were a ton of hunters (something like 70% of my in laws), but I have met a single person who hunts in my career in IT in Europe.
Guns for personal defence/sport are just not common on this side of the pond, I think.
Can confirm we love our guns from the engineering aspect among other reasons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Campus_carry_map_of_US_st...
It would be an amazing coincidence if none of your coworkers were interested in guns. Around 30% of Californians have at least one gun in their home. Naively extrapolating: that means if you have 15 coworkers, there is a 99.5% chance that at least one of them owns a gun. Even if only 10% of bay area techies have guns, the odds that at least one of your coworkers has a gun is still over 80%.
When my hobby became publicly known at work, I suddenly discovered I had quite a few coworkers who liked guns. They were quiet about it at work because they were afraid (rightfully) of hurting their careers.
Good times! Could never do this these days in Silicon Valley though :(
If you want to go down to the range after-work, by all means do so, but the way you Americans trivialise a toy good for nothing but war in many cases is really fascinating.
Firearms are most definitely not toys. A bring your gun to work day is a way for coworkers to bond outside of work as well as a great learning experience for the ones without much knowledge on how to safely and responsibly handle a firearm. It’s also a lot of fun shooting targets.
Ever heard of hunters? A LOT of people hunt. Also, until relatively recently it was common for american kids to bring guns to schools, and leave them in their car until after school so they could go hunting, etc. Instead of addressing things like mental health issues, it's easier to demonize guns because the politicians don't actually have to do anything other than introduce token legislation.
It's a right written in the constitution, and only referring to guns as "weapons of war" is political rhetoric. And hunting is not the only reason to own a gun- that's also political rhetoric.
By this logic, almost nothing should be banned, do you endorse that position?
I assume your response was probably born out of some political frustration, and I respect that. Happy to discuss specifics of the this position on the practicality and effectiveness of gun bans.
Where are you going to get the bullets from? Or for a shotgun, where is the powder from, the pellets etc.
I live in the UK, I quite like clay pigeon shooting, would it be a shock to you that American mass shootings basically aren't news worthy anymore unless they are more than 2 dozen people now?
I just think “an expert can make this in their garage” is a really bad reason to legalize something. I don’t think IEDs or street meth should be legal. (Apple M1s and LSD are probably fine though.)
Frightened, ignorant (of the state of the art) people are led to believe "banning" is helping them "making them safe", when instead it is harming them: nobody law-abiding remains to come to their aid, while abusers and thugs wield powerful weapons, unopposed. Instead, benighted government officials ban common farmer livestock varmint rifles by the hundreds of thousands (see: Canada, just now).
So, no -- if someone wants to ban something, then they should darn well consult with anyone who knows something about that item, to see if A) it makes sense, and B) if it will actually prevent the violent from obtaining/using it.
I am glad this article was posted. Thank you.
Plus it's a story about a finical acquisition of a famed American brand so its a trisect of "interesting to hackers" of the HN sort.
Not to mention the very fast growing 3d-printed gun parts and DIY smithing groups within these committees where it gets technical very fast.
This makes no sense. Assaulting someone is illegal, but anyone can do it. It's still illegal.
What?
We also ban nuclear and biological weapons for good reason. Does it really matter that they are harder to obtain? (Tip: They won't be in the long run, there was a time when guns were hard to make too).
I’m sure you would care if the thing we’re banning is something you like that doesn’t hurt anyone.
> We also ban nuclear and biological weapons for good reason.
Do we? I thought we built them and kept them ready to use.
> Phrasing it in Latin doesn't make it any more compelling either.
Those are legal terms because actual judges, lawyers, law enforcement officers, and others have discussed this extensively and determined that the distinction is relevant.
As a Brit, our gun controls work quite well. It basically means the idiot down the pub is not allowed to have a rifle/pistol. It's not like they cease to exist - we're still the world's #2 arms exporter.
To be faaaaaair, without Colt's revolutionary wheely gat, the 1911 may not have happened when it did. Let that marinate.
HELL YEA! Seriously, that time period was just dumped with brilliance in its own right, especially in engineering. It's so amazing what accomplishments were made with such basic tech. I mean seriously, the basic machine shop these days is FAR more advanced than what was available to the engineering cats back then. But those folks were spitting out brilliance like we use toilet paper after a pre-pandemic taco Tuesday.
There's a part of me that thinks our general mindset to engineering, learning and research is fundamentally different compared to that golden era of science and engineering. Honestly, I think it's for the worst. We're too subservient to technology rather than being the ones holding the chains and whips to the machines. That's going to be our downfall. Being switches to the machines and not knowing when to switch them off.
Anecdotally, but yes. Same with cars, AV & musical gear, other technical-ish stuff.
I chalk it up to technical / engineering mentalities, disposable income, and US culture. Give nerds money and the ability to blow stuff up... and they'll blow stuff up.
A) A pulse on market frothiness
B) A pulse on who is opening their purse and looking
C) National security implications from the foreign purchaser of American munitions creator
D) C but with Eastern Europe. A lot of Silicon Valley is funded by funds with Russian general partners using British Virgin Islands entities which have Russian limited partners who made all their money with all the underpriced public assets in Russia, aka Oligarchs. Our salaries in a lot of startups come from Russian oligarchs. We consider that controversial because so much energy is also spent vilifying Russia and their money and its also hilarious that we are making them wealthy too, while they provide the capital to make us wealthy. So people pay attention to other constructive ways of getting Russian money into US assets. Soviet Union and satellite states are just too obvious. Even though one might as well use the Cayman Islands or British Virgin Islands.
E) No national security implication and just liking CZG and their quality control, and how that affects the general Czech gun image and brand.
F) Americans have a general consensus in favor of gun use, gun trading, gun modification, for vary wide ranges of reasons. Similar to computers and tinkering. So it will be rare to find a US-centric forum that fairly often posts culture related articles that would ignore this.
So this headline is a perfect storm. To the top, boys!
(From my experience, I don't think US IT workers are particularly pro-guns any more than average Americans.)
Most of the innovations in computers and tech are direct results from military arms research.
Silicon Valley didn’t just sprout from nothing. There were lots of engineers in the area that worked to support military contract making weapons, and their kids started computer companies.
Seems more relevant than the homeless grant article tbh.
For the record I don't mind either article and clicked on both.
https://www.historyandheadlines.com/march-5-1836-god-created...
One of my favourites almost has that sci-fi look too https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/...
220 mil is a lot. Most companies won't be worth this much.
Except for the US, guns are mostly sold to governments (policy, military) so the gun market isn't that large, and there is lots of competition.
(Sorry if the changed magasine design was about something else.)
But only at the Turks!
I can't easily find the valuation of Sony BMG or EMI at the time.
Note also that SpaceX has more accurate ballistic missiles than the U.S. and Russia (PeaceKeeper CEP = 40M, while SpaceX routinely lands rockets upright within a ~10M radius on a drone ship), and Google has more data than the CIA & NSA (why else did the NSA try to wiretap them?). The microchip revolution put enormous capabilities in the hands of those organizations that know how to code effectively, such that Silicon Valley startups can often do things that were the sole province of national governments for decades.
If a tech company were buying the country, market cap would be the appropriate metric, and market caps for those tech companies are in the $2T range, more than enough to pay a few times annual GDP.
One is travelling at tremendous speed (Mach 5 or something?) and has milliseconds for course-corrections, the aspires to come to a gentle halt and can close some feedback loops over and over again for thousands of milliseconds.
Edit: If you wish to make a weapons comparison, one might note that SpaceX can launch the mother of all MIRVs over and over again. The lower cost-to-orbit changes the economic calculus of rods-from-god, opening a possibility of a conventional-weapons bombardment from the other side of the planet for the first time.
Much higher, about mach 20 to 25. They are moving seriously fast.
That does a great job of placing the accuracy problem in context: That's ~7 km/second, or perhaps a mile per eyeblink.
It's not at all clear who has more data between GOOG and NSA. Both don't exactly declare the numbers, but it is known that in several recent years NSA has been the largest single buyer of spinning disks in the world.
Tech companies have indeed become powerful, but let's not get hyperbolic. The world hasn't become shadowrun quite yet.
The rest of the world moved to SSDs in ~2010. Google's been storing the whole web on flash since then. (I guess if you're archiving for slow-speed retrieval disks are still useful, but if that's your use-case, why wouldn't you use tape?)
Because there are many orders of latency magnitude between spinning rust and tape.
We still use a lot of spinning disk for precisely this reason - you get roughly 5x the online capacity for the same cost and automation does not whine about wanting the new shiny.
I guess it fits the NSA's use-case though, where they have ~thousands of analysts running complex queries but no external users, rather than ~billions of external users running well-defined queries.
Spinning disk is cost competitive with tape robots these days, while offering much better access performance. There's a few different vendors that supply this sort of setup, or you can build your own backblaze style. The core idea is you build storage servers that can hold more disks than can be active at any given moment. Powering up a drive and doing a seek is a lot faster than a tape robot.
In particular, Colt may have substantial liabilities, making the cost of the purchase to CZG larger than the amount of money that changed hands.
Sounds like me.
Guns in the US are near saturation from a market perspective and regulatory changes will eventually kick the floor out. Time to cash out... It's like when Phillip Morris bought Kraft and General Foods in the 80s to spin them off later when tobacco regulation came.
As to regulatory changes: support for a handgun ban is the lowest its been since Gallup started tracking the statistic in 1959: https://news.gallup.com/poll/150341/record-low-favor-handgun.... It's just 26% today, versus 60% in 1959.
Unlike with tobacco, there's no big scientific study or educational campaign that's going to drop. Guns are a well-ventilated issue.
The Dickey amendment got clarified in 2018, and the first earmarks for research were for FY2020 - so, I'd say we wait with those proclamations a few more years.
Funding of gun studies means we can make arguments backed up by data instead of partisan bickering. Calls to arm teachers in classrooms or mandate trigger locks on guns have real world effects, and both sides think they're right about it. Funding for studies of specific actions and policies help us as a society make more informed decisions.
More info: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993411/
Examples:
- Are there correlations between outcomes and specific brands, configurations, or other attributes of firearm?
- Are there correlations between sales at specific outlets and outcomes?
- Is age and/or experience correlated with negative outcomes?
The assumption is that studying this would negatively impact gun ownership. I don't think that's true. Consider that anti-gun rhetoric over the .50 Barrett rifle. You may find that it's really a collector's item that isn't associated with crime. I'm sure there are many examples similar to this, that are blocked by black and white opinion on the matter, fueled by mutual ignorance.
https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1
You've been repeatedly and blatantly lied to by the media and politicians about the CDC being "banned" from researching gun violence. The ban was on the use of public funds to advocate for specific gun laws/policies, not on research into the subject itself.
Until it comes to the Capitol, I suppose.
Seriously, I'm coming at this from a perspective of a country boy who went shooting 3-4 times a month as a teen, and earned a bounty for shooting pigeons on a farm. How much more demand can be filled for more guns the mostly sit around and gather dust? It's a market driven by ignorance and fear -- folks are treating these things as investments for a doomsday that will never come.
I'm not an anti-gun guy... I own two shotguns, a hunting rifle and a .22. What's the point of adding more? Pistols, AR-15 fetishization, etc aren't for me. What I have will probably be in great shape beyond my lifetime; if anything I might trade up if I got into skeet again.
Say you are right and no regulatory changes take place.... you're still going to have a cohort of old people who hit the gun hoarding profile start to die off and flood the secondary market with estate sales. My parents have a neighbor in the country that probably has >250 rifles, and there are way more people like that than the WW2/Korea generation that has mostly left us. What's the collector value of yet another AR-15 clone?
How many people do you know who collect smartphones? Also, waaaaaay more smartphones are sold per year in the US than guns (it's roughly two orders of magnitude difference), so if that represents some kind of ceiling, then it's a very high one that guns are nowhere near.
If you have two guns, it's simple to keep them maintained, cleared and secured when not in use. If you have 250 guns, you are extremely likely to lose track of them. And when you lose track, accidents happen. That's nothing to do with crime or responsibility or freedoms or the design of the gun - it's there in the statistics that country by country, there are more accidential gun deaths when there are more guns, and bringing our market to saturation is not serving anyone.
The statistics show record gun sales. More and more Americans are becoming firearms owners for the first time, and existing owners are expanding their collections.
It’s a matter of changing tastes as well. A Gen Z would cherish her mom’s old M1911A1 as a family heirloom but she’ll want a tricked-out Combat Master for her own use cases.
Where do you get your ideas that the market isnt interested in guns? The issue with colt and Remington has been zero innovation and updating with the times. At bass pro shop, you could take a brand new Remington bolt action and need a sledge hammer to pull the bolt. A same class benelli needed barely a pinkie's worth of strength to do the same. Buttery smooth while the new Remingtons were already acting rusty.
The market has been going striker fire as well. I haven't noticed a big push from colt or rem before they shut down. Maybe they did, but it was too little too late.
Theres a lot more going on than just gUnS bAd. I'm happy for the hit on chemicalized tobacco. Makes it easier for the organic, natural market, mostly cigars and cigarillos. Let that marinate.
“tribal police departments generally do not qualify for the exemption from payment of the transfer tax for NFA firearms, are not eligible to receive firearms interstate, and can not possess a ‘post-1986’ machinegun.”[0]
“federal authorities alleged Ho-Chunk Inc. and its subsidiaries had violated federal tobacco laws by shipping and selling “untaxed, unstamped cigarettes to businesses in Nebraska other states.”[1]
[0] https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/nfa-transfers-trib...
[1] https://www.indianz.com/News/2019/02/04/winnebago-tribe-stil...
There is a lot of crossover between the tech and firearms community and for good reasons. The engineering and design of the firearms, gear and especially optics is fascinating. The external ballistics and math involved to hit targets at 1000 yards and beyond with all of the apps and sensors required. The breathing, aiming and movement techniques brings a nice physical element as well.
I've taken several firearms classes over the years and I'm amazed at how many hardcore tech people I meet there - top engineers at top companies (Uber, Google, etc.). These aren't mid-level PMs or entry-level script kiddies either; these are the top guys solving for the hardest engineering problems.
Despite the stereotypes, the tech community as with all other communities is not a monolith that walks in lockstep. It's disappointing that some of us need to hide our hobbies from those who would unfairly pass judgment because of their own phobias and biases. The firearms community is no different than the people who are into fast cars, motorcycles, beer making, wine tasting, maker faire, etc.
I can't remember exactly, but in California you can make your own, but it has to have a serial number. I can't remember what other restrictions they have.
A man in Queensland was given a suspended sentence for printing parts of a gun that did not together constitute a usable gun without some additional pieces[1].
Apparently there have been efforts there to ban 3-D printing of guns but so far they have not been successful.
In the U.S., while it is physically possible to do anything within the privacy of one's home, it is technically illegal to print a gun if you are not legally permitted to possess one.[2]
There are also existing laws on the books against plastic/undetectable guns which presumably would apply as well to resin/PETG/PLA printed firearms that have few or zero metal parts. Actually, one wonders why there haven't been more incidents of plastic guns smuggled onto aircraft in recent years, perhaps because K9 teams of bomb sniffing hounds are randomly used to detect bomb-making ingredients while standing in line at security. They are trained presumably to smell gunpowder as well as other chemicals. Leave your "Gunpowder Solid Men's Cologne" at home.
1. http://www.australasianscience.com.au/article/science-and-te...
The root cause of this is that very few people want to smuggle guns onto aircraft. I think the biggest group of gun smugglers at this point are TSA penetration testers.
For the most part it's always been legal to build a firearm for your own use (not to sell - that would be regulated under the Fed's commerce powers). Some states make it more burdensome than others. Making a high quality anything requires skill, but guns are very primitive mechanical devices, so the bar is very low to make something of effective working order. You won't be hitting a gong at 1000 yards, but you'll hit a pie plate at 20 pretty easy.
Depends on what you're building. If you're making your own AR-15 lower, there's no detrimental impact on accuracy - all of those parts are contained within the 'upper', which (in the US) is not regulated as a firearm.
If you're building from scratch, though, accuracy is really not going to happen. Not unless you have actual machine tools and training.
YouTube censored the vids of casting your own AR lower out of beer cans, but it’s still online[0].
If you have a modicum of skill in the garage you can also fashion an AK receiver out of a shovel (or so I am told).[1]
“So, there you have it. In 2012, a drunk guy named “Boris” -who lived in what he refers to as “Communist Massachusetts”- built an AKM from an old $2 field shovel and a bunch of parts kits that can be found all over the country. His total cost was $232.”
[0] https://forum.full30.com/t/ar15-made-from-beer-cans-complete...
[1] https://warisboring.com/extreme-diy-man-makes-akm-from-a-sho...
The FCU concept would still have value were the legal framework less Byzantine, but its practical benefits would be significantly diminished.
It's also worth pointing out that while the manufacturing techniques used by Glock were new the actual design is essentially identical to the browning hi-power.
BHP is hammer-fired, Glock safe-action is striker-fired.
Any of the suppressor manufacturers.
Ultra long range bolt guns from a variety of manufacturers (notably not Remington, colt, etc).
Several novel application PDW systems (personal defense weapon). B&T, FN, Sig, HK, and others.
Optics have rally stepped up. Always on 8 year battery life 300ft submersible red dot sights from aim point. Crazy precision scopes from vortex, nightforce, a few others.
It’s certainly a hobby that you can spend $100k on really easily exploring a variety of styles of defense and sport shooting.
Colt didn't introduce the AR-15, either. That was ArmaLite, who then sold the rights to the design to Colt.
Furthermore: rising up against a tyrant/despot is only possible if the population is very united; but a tyrant/despot, with enough economic power (or oppression of others) can make sure a population is ideologically or otherwise fractured/disunited and cause infighting.
This will actually make benefits of being well armed a liability as now you have a tyrant/despot and also can't walk safely in your neighboorhood.
The two-bits army was ideologically and organizationally aligned with an already functioning colonial government. But that's survivor bias too. I don't know if there are any reliable rules for the long term outcome of a successful insurrection.
The British didn't need to be defeated, they only needed to realize that they could no longer govern the colonies.
And one major way of doing this is by reducing your combat power, and by securing control over the means of providing defense.
> Furthermore: rising up against a tyrant/despot is only possible if the population is very united;
Historical counterexamples proliferate.
> This will actually make benefits of being well armed a liability as now you have a tyrant/despot and also can't walk safely in your neighboorhood.
Fortunately possession and carriage of armaments mitigates both those ills.
Guns are legal in America and it's safe to walk in my neighborhood.
Seems like a big commitment to using one.
It's not hard to build a reliable firearm with fairly little skill. In the United States, it's not even illegal to do so.
Point being: Yes they do, but also no they don't, because you're having different conversations about different types of weapons. Are fully plastic weapons commonly used for anything? Doesn't seem to be, and I would suspect the reason is because they'd be inclined to blow up/warp after a single fire.
At the current rate of development, I give it 10 years, tops, before European and Australian gun control measures are effectively meaningless.
This assumes that everyone carrying a gun has a permit to do so.
You've just described yet another reason why gun control measures are meaningless. The desire to kill oneself and/or others (with or without a gun) doesn't exist in a vacuum; guns don't magically make people suicidal or homicidal. That desire happens due to a combination of socioeconomic pressures and inadequate mental healthcare - two angles that gun control proponents chronically ignore, instead pushing for band-aids like gun control because those band-aids are "easier" and don't involve confronting the painful realities of socioeconomic inequality.
Hence, my point: as home manufacturing of firearms proliferates, that band-aid loses whatever tenuous effectiveness it has. People concerned about "gun violence" are then forced to consider why people are killing themselves and each other (hint: because the average person is broke and depressed).
The actual difficulty for a sufficiently motivated person to obtain a gun (legal or otherwise) under gun control in the UK is not that high, but the incentives to do so are reduced, the disincentives increased, and the average person with the potential to carry out non-premeditated shootings never considers buying one. The ability to learn all about how to 3D print a gun instead of learning how to license and modify a shotgun or how to find black markets that will sell you illegal firearms does not change that calculus very much.
Most aspiring firearm enthusiasts who are not criminals could get legally permitted in Europe if they were willing to invest as much effort as it would take to make their own guns and ammunition from scratch. Most criminals who want guns just as crime accessories don't have the discipline and drive to make weapons that they can't buy. (Thank goodness, or homemade bombs with wireless command detonation would already be common instruments in areas with gang rivalry.)
Re: black powder, I think you're overestimating the level of effort a bit. It certainly hasn't gotten harder to make it after the Industrial Revolution. Hell, there are even WikiHow articles on it: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Black-Powder
It's the primers that are, from my understanding, the tricky thing to replace. I suspect that if push came to shove, though, a primer shortage/restriction would lead to designs of new cartridges and firearms built around spark plugs or some other alternative source of ignition. 3D printing would enable the sorts of quick prototyping necessary to rapidly iterate on unconventional firearm designs like that.
> Most criminals who want guns just as crime accessories don't have the discipline and drive to make weapons that they can't buy.
Well that's the thing: they don't have to be the ones making them, just like how drug dealers are not usually the ones themselves making the drugs. This is something that could very well be the purview of some black market cottage industry.
> (Thank goodness, or homemade bombs with wireless command detonation would already be common instruments in areas with gang rivalry.)
I mean, bombings are pretty common in a lot of places. See also: Ireland during the Troubles, the Middle East today, etc. And with quadcopters being widespread, it's probably only a matter of time before we start seeing drone bombings.
Cat's pretty much out of the bag. Pandora's opened the box. The only viable approach to stopping violence is to end it at its source: by addressing the reasons why people commit violence in the first place.
I don't think that a cottage industry of weapons-for-criminals is going to spring up in the same way as illicit drug production. The drug trade is nearly impossible to vanquish because so much of it is victimless; neither the seller nor the consumer attracts much attention in the usual case. But if you're dealing weapons specifically to people who can't get them by legal means, that's much riskier. Most would-be attackers who meet with a "bomb seller" are actually meeting with LEO.
The novelty factor of "3D printed" firearms leads to law enforcement worrying about them disproportionately to their actual significance. They're mostly an exotic hobby.
In any case, the US is inherently more violent and criminal than other nations in general independent of guns. It also has extremely violent subpopulations centered in major urban centers that tilt the numbers significantly. Outside of a few specific cities like Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, etc. the US is extremely peaceful and low in crime.
And I'm saying that's incorrect. It's not wrong in the binary sense of "no firearms made" vs "some firearms made", but rather in the sense that if the mass-production output were to drop significantly, prevalence and use would also drop significantly (although this would be mitigated by there being a huge stock of existing guns).
And just to clarify - I'm not saying that this is the way to "solve the gun problem" in the US though.
I'm not sure that can be assumed anymore. The 3D printer market has been absolutely exploding. I and my siblings got one as a present from my father for Christmas in 2020. Some reports[1]state there was a 68% increase globally in personal desktop 3D printer units in 2020, and that's after there were manufacturing problems to overcome.
If if shutting a factory today might suppress supply slightly in the future, I suspect that within 5-10 years the point will be mostly moot.
1: https://www.tctmagazine.com/additive-manufacturing-3d-printi...
Are these parts functional? I would be literally stunned if you could 3D print a bolt carrier group that lasts more than a clip.
The last I looked (and it's been a couple years), the designs exist, but are largely non-functional and/or still require several parts to be made of steel.
The barrel is another problematic piece. I get that with enough plastic, you might be able to make it handle the pressure (and that's a pretty big might). Even presuming you do, plastic is not hard enough to allow rifling, so we're back to smoothbore rifles, which practically haven't been seen since the Civil War. Worse yet, every time you pull that trigger, the heat and pressure will blast more of your plastic out the end of the barrel. That's going to ruin your accuracy, and at a certain point, you'll start losing muzzle velocity because the barrel no longer seals around the bullet.
3d printing everything except the parts you mentioned is quite tractable, and constantly improving from an already acceptably-high standard.
No, the chokepoint here is primers. Which are scarce on the ground at the moment, and I expect will receive significant regulatory encumbrance in the near future.
Something like ammonpulver would be comparable in power and cleanliness to modern smokeless powder, but is pretty corrosive and gets ruined if it absorbs too much water.
The same types of people eho develop 3d gun models are also putting effort into developing alternatives for primers, powder, and cases. Homemade metal barrels were an issue a few years ago but ECM barrels made it easy to make them at home with only a couple hundred dollars in tooling.
In most parts of the United States a barrel (or anything other than the frame/receiver for that matter) is not a regulated part. You can order it online and have it show up at your door without ID or signing for it. Even in areas where barrels are regulated it only requires a few materials to electrochemically machine a barrel.
The end result is a firearm built entirely with parts that are legal to purchase in the EU.[3] This will only get easier as 3D printers improve and weapon designs are refined.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9
2. https://imgur.com/gallery/xZqXXuE
3. The FGC-9's designer lives in the EU. He manufactured the gun & ammo himself and shot it in his basement: https://twitter.com/freegunzone/status/1309896256760709128
Not to mention kicks, slaps, and karate chops.
as for guns, the solution is societal change.
However removing handguns, and limiting the legal reasons to be wondering around the streets with a gun would also help.
Modern America is a historical anomaly. The powerful aren't peaceful by choice.
It's the SECOND amendment in the constitution for a reason.
If anything, a lot of nations were subjugated with the help of or by the US.
Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_NATO
And sure..America's not perfect... but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative!
There was a commission from he government to find out how many laws existed in America and after years of looking into it they gave up and the final conclusion was that no one knows.
Everyone looks to the government to solve their problems instead of solving it themselves.
If the defenseless had guns they would be able to protect themselves. I am not sure if that would result in more peace or more war, but it would definitely be a more just world.
> Most of the weapons used by the Mukti Bahini were taken from defeated soldiers. Then, there were homemade bombs, knives and even instances of the use of bows and arrows.
> Walking along the gallery of the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka where a number of weapons, including rifles and machineguns used in the Liberation War of 1971, had been put on display, Shahzaman Mozumder Bir Protik, a guerrilla freedom fighter, reminisced saying “They had to earn their weapons.”
More realistically it would change what type of guns people own. Fewer Colts, more Glocks, I presume. From a public policy perspective that’s no change at all.