Not surprisingly, people are freaking out about the 3D Printed Gun design that was released a few days ago. The US State Department sent a cease and desist letter to the person who posted the plans online, demanding that they be removed. He complied (though has hired a lawyer to fight this), but to even make such a request shows incredible ignorance of the information age we live in. The plans were downloaded around one million times and are available elsewhere online. Governments cannot suppress information…to attempt to do so is futile. Lawmakers in California and other areas of the country are trying to ban 3D printed gun technology. Meanwhile, efforts to implement mandatory background checks for gun purchases have failed in Congress. So, you can’t print your own single-shot gun that might explode in your hands when you try to use it and at has horrible accuracy, but it’s OK to go buy an AR-15 with high capacity magazine, armor piecing rounds, and body armor. Does anyone else see the lunacy in this?
3D printed gun
With all the advances in 3D printing, it was inevitable that someone, someday, would create a 3D printed gun…and that day is here. The only non-plastic parts are the firing pin, and the bullet. Everything else is plastic, printed on a Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer in ABS…a step above the hobbyist grade 3D printers like the Cube.
As far as firearms go, this one is pretty crude – it’s a single shot device which must be manually loaded, and a test with a larger caliber bullet resulted in destruction of the gun (the successful test used a .380 caliber round).
So, this is very much an immature product, but represents a huge milestone for the technology. There are those who believe that our species can create amazing technology and regulate it to the point where it is safe for society, but the reality is that technology can be used for both good and bad, and attempts to regulate that are eventually futile.
If you want to download the models yourself, head to DefCAD. I wouldn’t recommend it though…this is a marginal design and really more of a proof of concept…be careful. Note that in the test firings, a string was used to actuate the trigger.
Read more at ExtremeTech.
Fingerprint-controlled guns
Reality is finally catching up with Hollywood; Safe Gun Technology is close to beginning production of guns that use fingerprint recognition to restrict functionality of the weapon to only those users who have been given access. Considering that each weapon can store up to 20,000 fingerprints, potential applications are not limited to just homeowners; this technology could be of interest to military and police forces worldwide. Read more at Smartplanet.