Maybe you can't 3D print your own gun legally!

[gunug]

Happiness might not be a warm gun if you were just printing it yourself!

QUOTE

Cody Wilson, a law student at the University of Texas at Austin, found this out last week when Stratasys, the company that made the uPrint SE 3D printer he was leasing, got wind of his plans to design a 3D-printable handgun and took back their equipment.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2232...-is-seized.html

Stratasys says that in lacking a federal firearms permit Cody was using their product in an illegal way:

QUOTE

In a letter to Wilson, lawyers for Stratasys cited his lack of a federal firearms manufacturer's licence as their reason for the repossession, adding that it does not knowingly allow its printers to be used for illegal purposes. Wilson countered that his group's aim is to disseminate a printable gun design online, not print guns per se.

There are all kinds of 3D printers out there that you can build yourself so presumably the US Government would have to enforce the law itself if you were to print your own gun with one of those.  What if you were talented enough to make your own guy out of steel or some other kind of metal?

[tacit]

QUOTE(gunug @ Oct 2 2012, 08:23 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There are all kinds of 3D printers out there that you can build yourself so presumably the US Government would have to enforce the law itself if you were to print your own gun with one of those.  What if you were talented enough to make your own guy out of steel or some other kind of metal?

People make "zip guns" (improvised, simple sing-e-shot guns) all the time; you can do it with a bit of steel pipe, a nail, some rubber bands, and a lot of ingenuity. It's way easier and cheaper than using a 3D printer to do it.

Yet, somehow, society hasn't fallen into anarchy and ruin.

I just really don't see 3D printed guns ever being a big deal. I mean, sure, Stratasys is entitled to reclaim its property if it wants to (my understanding is that he was using a loaner 3D printer for the project), but really? I just don't see hordes of people rushing out to...err, buy 3D printers and do the complex, fiddly work it takes to make a gun.

Tempest in a teacup, seems to me.

[Xairbusdriver]

I don't think I'd want to actually use a gun designed/built with one of those printers! At least not by pulling the trigger with by own finger! Maybe behind a strong wall and a few pulleys and strings. Sounds like something for Myth Busters! As far as I know, none of these printers use anything stronger than aluminum, if that. Most just use a type of plastic. Nor are their parts particularly smooth. That's a fairly critical feature of a gun barrel, in my opinion.

As tacit says, there are easy ways and there are extremely complicated ways... But it might make a good advertisement! It "proves you don't have to be smart to use our printers!"