Actually it would behoove all of us to get some metal working equipment – small machine shop lathe and mill to be able to build such things right now….

Galt2009 on December 21, 2012 at 5:12 PM

I would seriously apprentice myself to a conservative metalshop worker for this very reason. Something BIG and BAD is coming down the pike and I can’t even afford a 2nd-hand shotgun. My survival instinct is screaming at me.

Then you have a reductive printer. This actually doesn’t print, but more accurately reduces a material to create the part you want. So, you stick in a larger block of metal or wood and it cuts away the excess. These machines are much more expensive (for now), but should soon be able to make a lot of complex machines.

As these technologies become more sophisticated (and they rapidly are) and cheaper, we are going to see an entirely new commerce model. You may go online, see something you want, purchase the plan and print it out immediately. Of course, we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with intellectual property rights on these types of thing or we’ll see Napster like services popping up where people download and print anything they want without the original creator getting a cent.

Right now, people use this stuff for simple things. They create parts for their HO railroad, model airplanes, Legos, etc. In the near future it may be stuff like a part for your car, a tennis racket or even a gun.

Guns were banned in all these places. Mass killers may be crazy, but they’re not stupid.

http://news.yahoo.com/know-stop-school-shootings-003203357.html

In the meantime, Rep. Steven Israel’s bill is an exercise in legislative stupidity. You need some metal in the gun anyway to make it work, so it’s no more invisible to X-ray than a Glock.

But if, somehow, technology advanced to where you could print a working, practical plastic gun, the law won’t make any difference to criminals anyway. The “Undetectable Firearms Act” only made sense when you could impose it on firearms manufacturers, which could be easily found and regulated. If you could make such a gun on a 3D printer, the criminal would just make one in private with no traceable marks or materials, use it in his crime, then throw it away. The law would make even less sense than our “gun-free zones” do today.

But I guess if you’re a politician you have to believe in the tooth fairy and the power of words on paper to control reality.

Code Pinkers are safer at NRA press conferences than our kids are in their schools.

Galt2009 on December 21, 2012 at 5:39 PM

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get something past ol’ Andy.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/12/yglesias–1.html

I’m holding out for the printable gold bars.

peski on December 21, 2012 at 5:40 PM

Try gold plating tungsten!

A sad announcement
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=46120

I know I probably shouldn’t have done it — especially because yesterday was a snowy day with the temperature here in Colorado dipping well below freezing — but on a whim I took all my guns and ammunition out in a small skiff on one of the nearby lakes and, sad to say, the boat capsized when I stupidly tried to prove to myself that I could do it Gangnam style, even in an inherently unbalanced situation, while also tending to a fishing pole.

All my firearms and my ammo stockpile is now, as a consequence, sleeping with the fishes.

Just so you know. All you who are reading here. And no, I have no plans to replace them at this point. Because children.

While Awaiting the Cryin’ Mayan Day of Doom
http://primordialslack.com/?p=2662

There we all were, camped on the banks of the Edisto river, our guns, rifles and ammo at the ready. We were swapping stories of music and parties and places we’d been with the predictable amounts of exaggeration and hoots of incredulity when there was a loud commotion, the kind that preceeds the sort of movement in tandem by every human limb and torso that immediately pings your central alarm system. We were on our feet, up and around, hands outstretched toward our stockpiles only to discover that wild boars had overrun us!

So, y’know. Merry Christmas you pigs. Sad to say, we no longer possess any guns, weapons or ammo. And we have no money to replace them. But somewhere in the mouldy swamps of the Lowcountry the damn wild boars are armed. And dangerous.

Galt2009 on December 21, 2012 at 5:31 PM

Thanks.