UK police mistakenly believed they found 3D printed gun in raid | Hacker News Reader

UK police mistakenly believed they found 3D printed gun in raid

newscientist.com

68 pointskisamoto68 comments

The most important quote in the article:

    "It does look like the MakerBot part," says Stuart Offer of 3D-printing firm 3T 
    RPD in Newbury, UK. "These 3D printed guns seem to have hit the headlines, but
    I've no idea why they take off so much," he says. "A little engineer in his 
    shed with a mill down the bottom of the garden could make a proper metal barrel
    capable of firing a high-velocity bullet."

And that's what I have been discussing with friends. Is printing a 3D gun that much easier than building a proto-gun with metal parts?

I think they hit the headlines because the whole "the future is scary" appeals to the masses, or at least, "3D printed guns" sounds like something out of a movie (for instance, "In the Line of Fire").

A home-made gun, aka a "zip gun"[1] is much easier to make -- but like you said, it doesn't sound nearly as scary as "any criminal can, with the press of a button, print out a gun at home!" (nevermind that it's not as simple as pressing a button, and they only work for a shot or two anyway.)

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

I think what's scary to some is the perceived ease of production. Just download some files and hit print. The engineer in his shed at least has to know what he's doing.

I'm not saying they are right and I have also no idea how hard it is to build an actual (metal)weapon from scratch, but the notion of "anyone can do this" seems to be a big factor in most stories.

Even if it was easy, you still need to go and find bullets, which is presumably just as hard and finding a gun. I wouldn't know, I've never had any inclination go anywhere near the things, and I don't know a single person in my normal life who owns one.

Here in the USA, ammunition is sold on every street corner. But then, so are guns. Printed guns seems to be more of a technical challenge than anything practical. The police and press making a fuss seem to be looking for a juicy story more than any actual danger. Meanwhile D&D made me the Satanist I am today.

here in the UK ammunition is as difficult to acquire as guns are, so printing a gun is not even half the battle.

Difficult for whom?

Well, you can also make your own bullets. I cast my own lead bullets sometimes (in the garage, you have to heat the lead and vapor doesn't belong in the house), but most of the time just reload old scruffy brass. Or as another poster mentioned, just buy the ammo. Ammo really is the easy part.

This guy built an AK47 out of a shovel. (well the receiver and stock anyhow) Some of the other bits are a little more tricky. Vodka appears to be an important factor as well.

http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/threads/179192-DI...

What's most impressive about that build is that the AK47 design is optimized for specially-tooled mass production factories, not DIY. The AR15 is a more modular design that's easier for this sort of thing.

The AK47 receiver (which is the "gun" in the eyes of the law) is much simpler than the AR15. Its literally a piece of folded sheet metal. (I have built both in my garage from scratch)Now headspacing and barrel pressing with the AK is a bit more complicated but still there are ways around this work.

If you're willing to relax safety standards, you can easily do it with Home Depot parts. You just have to be mechanically inclined and somewhat clever. It doesn't have to look like a traditional firearm (grip, magazine, chamber, barrel, etc), all it has to be able to do is ignite a propellant and push a bullet down a tube.

Get a length of pipe that a shotgun shell will fit in - a slightly larger length of pipe that the smaller pipe will ride in smoothly, a cap for the larger length and a nail. Attach the nail to the cap - stick the cap onto the larger pipe. Place a shell in the smaller pipe and slide it into the larger one.

It's not hugely safe, mind - but it's doable. You can see videos on youtube of people, even kids, who've made them.

http://youtu.be/7Va87gB_4AI

You're right - 'perceived' is the operative word here. People are imagining Star Trek replicators, and that's not even close to where we're at.

The whole conversation around 3D printing reminds me a lot of personal computing in the 70s. It's a group of diehards hacking this stuff together, doing it because it's neat. There isn't a hell of a lot you can do with it yet, and no one can really predict what the future of it will be like, but everybody understands that it can be huge.

Have a look at this documentary-

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DconsfGsXyA

It's extremely scary. In most countries, the right to owning ammunition is not allowed. The thought that in the future, my neighbor could make a gun using a home 3d printer makes me feel very unsafe.

Your neighbor can build a bomb right now with beauty salon supplies. If you think restricting things is going to make you safe, you should be terrified.

Your commute to work every day is much more dangerous than an armed neighbor will ever be.

Source: survived countless armed neighbors and lost plenty of friends to cars. Also, statistics.

Why do you have irrational fear of your neighbor? That if they posess something dangerous you feel unsafe.

Maybe you should realize your neighbors aren't out to get you.

I should imagine the "scary" part for security services is the fact that it's printed in plastic and therefore much harder to detect, not that it's home-made.

Nothing stops you from milling and turning plastic. Not only that, there are many heat resistant plastics on the market that are far stronger than some poorly bonded ABS.

I may be wrong here, but don't 3d printed guns still need a metal firing assembly to work? Would that be enough to detect?

The Liberator derringer[1] which caused such a fuss a few months ago only needed a nail, which wouldn't be detected under most circumstances. I imagine that using an epoxy pin would probably be suitable given the gun's other single-fire characteristics.

[1] It's single shot, uses a low-powered cartridge, and is a bitch to reload; calling it a handgun is an extreme stretch.

They put in a metal firing pin because 100% plastic guns are illegal in the US. It was technically capable of being completely plastic.

But like the other poster said, it's a one-shot pistol with a weak cartridge. It's a long way from a practical firearm that will survive more than 10 shots.

No one should be alarmed by a non-metal firearm until someone figures out how to make plastic bullets.

http://www.guns.com/2013/01/02/flare-guns-as-weapons/

Shotgun shells are mostly plastic.

Loaded full of metal pellets.

You make a good point with flare guns, but I wouldn't be terribly afraid of them. Maybe someone on a plane could cause a lot of panic with flare gun but that's not much different that causing a fire with other means. You might be able to kill someone with the initial shot, but that's it.

In a shotgun shell, the pellets (or slug) and primer section are still metal. You couldn't smuggle a shotgun shell through a metal detector any more than you could smuggle a regular bullet through.

The shot, however, is not plastic.

"Police in the UK this morning claimed to have seized parts of a 3D-printed gun, but it looks as if they may have jumped to the wrong conclusion."

Really annoyed they didn't use the phrase, "jumped the gun".

It's a Friday and everything...

"Jumped the gun" has a different meaning and can't be used interchangeably with "jumped to the wrong conclusion" without further stilted language.

This is what journalistic restraint looks like.

So would you say he jumped the gun with his joke?

Since when has the British press ever worried about letting stilted language get between them and a poor gag.

That's why I'm admiring their restraint this time!

Here ya go:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/british-police-may-h...

The egg on the police's face is nothing compared to their opportunity to scare the world with their fear-quote about "organized crime inventing the next generation of weapons with 3-d printers."

...As if 3-d printers are the next generation of weapons, and not their own government in cahoots with my own government. I'll quote Company Flow here: "It takes crazy engineering to fuck with anything from quantum physics to thought transmitters."

"...not yet possible to print bullets" - ha! Its not yet possible to print anything but little plastic junk. If you could 'print' bullets, you could just make them anyway; you'd have to have all the raw materials at hand.

Indeed, the raw materials such as spent casing and powder are easily acquired. It's a lot cheaper too.

I know you are talking about hobby/consumer level printing here but it is entirely possible to print things other than little plastic junk. Metal SLS printing is very capable today.[1] Printing materials such as tungsten would make a very capable (however impractically expensive) bullet.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zApmGFDA6ow&noredirect=1

In the UK we don't let a thing like "the truth" get in the way of a good story. Some bits of plastic = major news event. Manchester police should be concentrating on the real guns that are circulating in that city. Last time I was there a taxi driver told me that the police let the gangs shoot each other, and only really get involved when they turn on innocent bystanders. Sounds like they have enough to do without making problems where they don't exist.

That cannot possibly be true. In the US we are told that the UK is a utopia with no guns and everyone loves each other. You know, because guns are illegal there and all.

The UK has one of the lowest gun crime rates in the world.

Knife crime on the other hand...

Has been dropping consistently since 1995?

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/apr/25/uk-crime-falls-off...

This is the most recent official statistics I can find: http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/Sn04304

Fair enough... I didn't actually take the time to look up statistics. Thanks :)

According to some sources, gun crime went up after the ban:

http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/gun-crime

"Despite the handguns ban imposed under the 1997 Firearms Amendment, research carried out following the implementation of the Act saw a 40 per cent increase in the number of gun crime incidents in the UK."

That could in part be due to them making more acts illegal with that amendment?

I've also heard that the UK collects such statistics in different ways than as compared to the US.

For instance, my understanding is that in the UK a death by gunshot is not reported as a homicide until someone is convicted of said homicide. Even then, it is reported as a homicide for the year of the conviction, not of the death. Granted, I don't recall the source for this so I could be completely wrong. On the other hand, if someone is shot to death in the US and it doesn't appear to be self-inflicted, it's a homicide. If the person was shot in self-defense, it's justified homicide. Another granted though, this is a very simplistic explanation.

Anyway, my point being is that if two countries don't collect and categorize the data the same way then any type of comparison is pointless.

I've also seen the thought tossed out there that if you remove gang-related violence from the US statistics then the gun crime rate drops dramatically. Meaning that in most places in the US the gun crime rate is mostly on par with the safest places in the world. It's just the gang problems in major cities are elevating the averages.

> my point being is that if two countries don't collect and categorize the data the same way then any type of comparison is pointless.

That's a very good point. I was being lazy and just going by a single line in a wikipedia article, so maybe I'm totally wrong.

We seem to be doing better with gang gun violence. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-winning-ba...

Police are not routinely armed, so officer involved shootings are rare. Although we've had some really awful examples - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_...

Well, I wouldn't necessarily dispute the claim that the UK seems to have a better handle on gun crimes overall as compared to the US. It's just that the difficulties in doing so are quite different between the two.

In many cities guns are available and besides, farmers all have shotguns. I put the low gun crime rate here down to the police not being issued sidearms, so the average low level criminal doesn't usually get into an arms race with the cops.

It's true, the nice politicians on the TV told me the same thing.

If someone prints a part from a gun design, and then uses it for some unrelated purpose, would that be a crime under UK law?

I think it wouldn't be, in fact, because plenty of things are "weapons" if used in one way and "not weapons" (and therefore legal to carry on the street) when used another way (prime example: not illegal to carry kitchen knives home from the shops, totally illegal to wave it around in the street.)

Not the parts, but at some point when you have enough parts it becomes a weapon.

Guess it would be up to a judge to decide.

Pretty sure they'd have a hard time bringing about a prosecution with unassembled parts as it is. Slow news day is what this is.

Police (and the home office) doing press releases telling us all the new ways criminals are going to hurt us (maybe) is really getting on my nerves.

Some guns and some parts of guns are banned, and this is an absolute offence. You find a gun in the attic and take it to the police? That's an offence. Having a part of a gun and suing it for something else would fall under that law. (I don't think all gun parts are covered).

Knives are covered under a different law.

then we clearly need a new law - if the police can't tell the difference between a 3D printer part and a gun part (or, indeed, a 3D printer part can be used in a gun, which is possible I suppose) then the existing law bans such 3D printers, which was clearly not its intention!

This gets sorted out in court. All that's happened here is the police have seized some things under PACE as part of an unrelated raid and put out an excitable press release.

At least in the US, a drop-in auto sear is considered to be a firearm/machine gun in the eyes of the law.

In the UK, you are required to have a license for any firearm, and we haven't had any handgun licenses for many years (since the aftermath of the Dunblane shooting[1] in 1996.)

The only type of license that I know of as common is shotguns in the countryside. (I live in central London, and if I applied for a shotgun license I'd not only be refused out of hand, I'd probably go on every police watch list that exists.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre

Let's be clear, the UK hasnt banned all handgun sales to civilians. Black powder is still allowed, as are small firearms in special circumstances. I suspect you are referring to "modern" handguns. In which case, subjects of the crown are not allowed to own them. Whereas, Handgun sales to the government are very common, and of course Illegal handguns are certainly sold in the UK to criminals. So there have been handgun sales in the UK since the "ban".

Err, yes, but I don't think anything you've said actually disproves his argument...

Black powder guns - I assuming you're referring to the muzzle-loaded antique-looking ones you'd normally see in museums?

Not exactly the sort of thing you'd use for sport shooting, or for self-defense.

And saying that there are illegal sales doesn't mean that the "UK hasn't banned all handgun sales to civilians".

That's like saying smoking in a hospital is illegal - but I heard from a friend of a friend that this guy in the next county did it once and didn't get caught - so they haven't really banned smoking, have they gasp?

Look, I have my own thoughts on guy laws, and I'm not saying the UK handgun ban is bad - but to claim is isn't really a ban (with tiny exceptions) is a bit disingenuous.

"...it demonstrates that organised(sic) crime groups are acquiring technology...to produce the next generation of weapons."

Do people really think that some relatively low resolution plastic extrusion will be used to manufacturer high tech weapons?

People who know nothing about firearms and/or 3d printing are likely to believe it. People believe all kinds of stupid crap that come from what they perceive as an authority on the topic at hand.

Two things that might interest you:

(1) "organised" is the most common spelling in the UK and is not incorrect anywhere;

(2) when you use "sic" inside a quotation, you put it in square brackets, to show that it's not part of the original quotation but something added. Also, if the quote is in italics you set the "sic" in upright type, and vice versa, because it is a foreign (Latin) word.

Otherwise, good point.

The wise assassin disguises his 3D printed gun parts as 3D printing machine parts.

I'm not a gun supporter, but the anti-gun crowd lost.

Trying to control it through violent raids will be as successful as trying to stop people printing their own books on their own printers.

Criminals who want to have guns will have them. End of story. The future has arrived.

And it's not just guns. Assault rifles, military-grade miniguns, everything will be soon available to anybody.

To the people who say "oh, anybody could do with with a few metal pipes and some machinery", it's not even close to pressing a "print" button and waiting a couple of hours.

Isn't that the point of DDs plastic gun project? To point out gun control can't work in a world with DIY mad easy?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com