Maher, Greenwald & Joy Reid Battle Over Regulating 3-D Guns: They ‘Feed Dangerous NRA ‘Fantasy’

[ellisonz]

By Evan McMurry | 12:53 pm, May 11th, 2013

Real Time with Bill Maher‘s panel Friday night tackled “The Liberator,” the 3-D plastic gun that can be printed based off plans published online. 100,000 copies of the blueprint were downloaded this week before the State Department stepped ordered Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson to remove the plans.

Maher introduced the technology: “You could make a doorstop, or jewelry, or a sex-toy, I guess, a 3-D object. Of course, this is America, we made a gun.”

“This is something that could change the equation on guns,” Maher said, noting that a home gun-production facility bypasses any and all restrictions on gun purchases, and a plastic gun could potentially evade metal detectors, meaning it could be brought into courthouses or government buildings.

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Maher widened the debate to the corrosive culture surrounding guns, one predicated on an almost pathological dedication to the specter of tyranny. “The NRA had their convention this week,” Maher said. “There’s this palpable sense that they’re whipping up their brethren into some sort of armed confrontation.”

More article and VIDEO at link: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/maher-greenwald-joy-reid-battle-over-regulating-3-d-guns-they-feed-dangerous-nra-fantasy/

I'm biased in favor of this write-up, my cousin is the author - oh, and FUCK THE NRA

[hlthe2b]

1. ditto...

and most certainly, F>>>K the NRA

[DevonRex]

2. And of course Greenwald wants people to make their own 3D guns.

What a fucking asshole. That bit about the titanium piece isn't quite right. It's not as if something the size of a small nail, that can be inserted into the plastic gun at a later time, will set off a metal detector. It's just the firing pin. Easily disguised as or in something else in your carry-on luggage or briefcase.

[ellisonz]

3. The real cost to freedom is letting people terrorize society with these things...

...that Greenwald can't plainly see that fact just continues to show his foolishness. Also, am I the only one who's irked that this whackjob in Texas chose to call this stupid fucking thing The Liberator - maybe it's my academic background showing, but he's no William Lloyd Garrison - he's a whackjob in bumfuck Texas stooging for a bunch of right-wing freaks.

[Junkdrawer]

5. The bullet would be harder to smuggle....

Praise Jeebus for little favors.

[Fumesucker]

4. After a few hundred people blow their fingers off and/or blind themselves with these things

They'll become a lot less popular, particularly since there will be video on Youtube of more than a few incidents happening.

A plastic gun would be even easier to make with hand tools than a metal one and people have been making metal guns with hand tools for hundreds of years.

It's not like the country isn't already awash in handguns, I could buy one off Craigslist today if I wanted to, "home defense items", "things that go bang", "long range paper puncher" are all terms I see on Craigslist on a regular basis.

[Junkdrawer]

6. If you can 3D print a gun at home, you're welcome to shoot me with it

I'm on the record as one of the very few people in the tech press who is sceptical about home 3D printing. Indeed, when I last weighed in on the subject – arguing that it was not the epoch-defining technology some evangelists claim, but instead a sort of vaguely-useful-for making-plastic-spoons, garden-shed technology – I received a barrage of abuse. One commenter called me an "unimaginative conservative old man who smells faintly of p—".

One of the key claims that evangelists (and press doomsayers) make is that 3D printing of firearms will inevitably happen – that home-printed plastic guns will enable every criminal (or freedom fighter worried the UN/NWO/EUSSR are coming to take his guns) to print off his own unmarked, untraceable, unlicensed assault rifle. Indeed, several of the more breathless pieces have insisted that the "Terrifying future of 3D printed weapons" is already here – that 3D-printed guns "you can download and make yourself" are a reality.

...

Of course, I'm talking about home printing. What about the industrial end of the spectrum? As one commenter said on my last piece, "where people are printing up medical implants within 5 microns on a 1.1M sintered titanium machine, or complex 3D sand moulds are printed by an ExOne printer, things are pretty stunning. These devices may well augment and even replace some manufacturing processes currently in place. They are very costly though, and will never find their way to the average consumer's workbench, office or garage".

So, it's all very well to upload weapon parts to the internet, but without a printer able to manage micron-wide measurements and high tolerances, you aren't any more dangerous than a bloke hand-casting 17th-century falconet cannons in his garden. So even if Mr Wilson can print his gun, I suspect I'm in less danger having him shoot at me with it than he is from pulling the trigger.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/willardfoxton2/100008957/if-you-can-3d-print-a-gun-at-home-youre-welcome-to-shoot-me-with-it/

So, the 3D printers you can buy at Staples can print spoons and plastic army men, but not guns. There ARE printers that could print a gun, but they're hideously expensive.

And guess what? Now that you've warned the World that the potential for abuse exists, the good stuff will probably never make it into consumer hands. Ever.

As DUer GravityCollapse put it succinctly: This is why we can't have nice things.