A Bullet That Could Make 3-D Printed Guns Practical Weapons

This kind of worries me. Not because I'm worried about 3D printed guns killing me or other people. If somebody wants to kill other people, they're probably going to do it. This doesn't really make it much easier.

What worries me is that this will be used to regulate 3D printing. As somebody with a 3D printer, and as somebody who is excited about the potential of 3D printers, this terrifies me. It's exactly things like this that could be used to incite mass hysteria and banning of 3D printing, especially since 3D printing doesn't yet have wide consumer adoption or appeal.

I like the lateral thinking on display here. From what I've seen the most successful adopters of the new wave of fabrication technologies are adept at solving problems by looking at them in a way that is "upside-down and backwards" compared to how most people would.

The fact that these bullet casings are milled out of steel rods isn't that big of a deal, if you have the right CNC mill you could automate that too.

Despite the antics of defense distributed I don't think printed guns are that big of a deal in and of themselves, but the idea that someone could be creating untraceable weapons is the worrisome part.

It wouldn't surprise me if the moral panic over custom fabricated guns were used to build support for DRM requirements on mainstream printers. But the push for controlling fabrication technologies is going to come from established economic interests wanting to keep extracting rents from the rest of us, regardless of the fact that the realities that created their business models have changed in fundamental ways.

And just wait until molecular fabrication technologies become cheap enough that average people can generate any molecule they choose just by picking it from a catalog. That's when the sewage overflow will really intersect with the turboprop intake.

So he machines a "barrel" into the round (presumably with a lathe or mill) and it takes an hour for each round. So why not just machine a little metal barrel for your plastic gun? Or just take your same machine tool and make a metal gun? That would be because people have been doing that for 200 years. You have to say the magic words "3d printed gun!!!!" to get a magazine article about yourself.

Part of me is somewhat worried. Part of me recognizes that a 3D printed firearm is hardly very practical, consider it's easy enough to get a real firearm, even for convicted criminals. (I'm speaking of the US here.)

What keeps people in the US from going on shooting rampages is not the difficulty of getting guns. It's the fact that most people don't want to go on shooting rampages. And while I'd much prefer it if guns were banned in this country, in the end, I'm not planning to lose any sleep over it. I'm far more likely to die in a car accident, even without adjusting for risk factors like where I live or my lack of involvement in criminal activity. So if I want to worry about something, I'll focus on driving more carefully.

Anyway, there's precious little you can do to stop 3D printed firearms from eventually being available. Betting against progress is rarely safe, especially in this domain where it's pretty obvious how things are going to go.

In a way, with this, each bullet is like a miniature percussion cap musket.

Ammunition robustness isn't only important for plastic guns: witness the explosion of an 1895 Lee Navy, where the use of relatively thin .30-40 brass (since original 6 mm ammo is not available) is suspected to be the culprit [1]

[1]: http://www.forgottenweapons.com/winchester-lee-navy-safety/

If you are going for the "shell as a barrel" solution you might as well maximize the utility and make it either silenced (captive piston) ammo: http://www.sadefensejournal.com/wp/?p=1812

Or make it electronically fired multishot using a superposed load like the Metalstorm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Storm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superposed_load

That being said, while metal home use printers won't be feasible anytime soon, FDM plastics are getting much, much stronger (Ulthem etc) and being released to prosumer market at an impressive rate. Having a barrel stand up to a dozen shots or so will not be a problem for long.

Well that is a non-novel solution :-) Basically the cartridge is the barrel. A much more novel solution would be a barrel that was a rail gun, then just recharge it to refire. Of course we can't really store enough energy in a capacitor or battery that we can in gun powder yet. .22 caliber CO2 fired guns would be more dangerous (they could have longer plastic barrels and be more accurate.) But all of this simply strokes the survivalist bent that folks have to somehow come out on top when the world comes crashing to an end.

I am much less worried about a nerd trying to mug me with a plastic gun than I am with the wrong person getting hold of a UAV with a shotgun [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYz_D89BLUg

I see a lot of fear in the comments; the worry is that 3D printing will be regulated.

I find it terrible that pragmatism will be skimmed over by the very liberals I associate with who will use "new 3d printed bullets" as political ammunition.

I think it is aligned to Metal Storm tech: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Storm

At least I can see how they intersect - in both cases barrel is a round.

A gun with a 2 inch-long barrel is going to be pretty useless at not much more than a dozen feet. Good for mugging somebody I guess, but not self-defense or fighting the next revolution. And you can mug somebody with a knife.

Gosh, thanks, guys! More paranoid backlash and stupid regulations are just what the 3D printing industry needed!