Good science fiction takes a concern that already exists and explores it with fictional technology that enhances the issue.
What does it mean to be “human” is an age old question philosophers have been thinking about for thousands of years. Combine that with artificial intelligence and you have I, Robot, half the works of Phillip K. Dick, even Data from Star Trek: TNG.
The expansion of communism was terrifying, add space travel and you get Starship Troopers.
The latest hysterics from Shannon Watts about 3-D printed guns is just bad Sci-Fi. It takes a concern they have (guns) and mixes it with a technology they don’t understand (3-D printing). The problem is, 3-D printing is not like warp drive, it exists and rational people understand its limitations.
The @NRA admits they support homemade guns. Starting August 1, Americans can legally print an AR-15 at home. There is no way to track DIY guns and they have already been used by gangs.
The NRA knows the best way to sell more guns is to arm even more dangerous people. https://t.co/OyH1FYS1Qv
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) July 24, 2018
That’s a lot of nonsense.
First:
Does Shannon Watts know that it’s already legal to make a gun at home without an FFL if it is not for sale?
I’m not into it, but there are people who just love to make ARs and AKs out of 80% lowers, either unfinished forgings or flat sheets of sheet metal.
If you’re willing to invest the time and effort into it, you can build an AR out of a 0% receiver – i.e. a slab of billet aluminum.
There is a reason laws like these exist. Inventors. John Moses Browning didn’t have and FFL or SOT. He designed his first gun out of his dad’s blacksmith shop. If an inventor has to get an FFL and all the permits just to tinker with an idea part time after his day job, innovation with be hampered.
Second:
The issue isn’t that people were not allowed to build guns at home, the issue was a designer selling the CAD models that allow someone with a 3-D printer to print a gun. This wasn’t even a 2A case, it was a 1A case with the argument being that the goverment can’t stop someone from publishing blueprints. Freedom of the press.
Third:
Show me one case in which a gang member has used a 3D printed gun to commit a crime.
The above article contains this quote:
Gun control advocates were alarmed. Nick Suplina, managing director of law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, said the settlement was “incredibly dangerous” and called on the state department to continue to block the publication of what he described as “deadly information”.
Oh no, not information. It’s not like I can’t look up all the dimensions of an AR receiver already and put that into Solid Works.
You can’t stop the signal, Mal.
“This settlement would enable convicted felons and domestic abusers to download schematics online and print their own illegal and untraceable guns,” he said.
All those “convicted felons and domestic abusers” with tens of thousands of dollars in 3-D printers and experience in fabrication.
It would actually be easier to build a gun out of pipe and sheet metal like they do in Brazil than to buy and set up a 3-D printer and computer capable of making a gun.
Of course, that is harder than buying a stolen gun from the local drug dealer. I’m pretty sure anybody who has spent any time in prison knows a guy that they can buy an illegal gun off of for less than the cost of a single spool of ABS printer plastic.
Looking through Shannon’s feedback, we see just how many people have bought into this bullshit.
And in the state of Florida, these people can make these guns, initiate a situation, shoot and kill someone, and claim they were in fear for their safety or life… The country is going crazy.
— Blenus M (@cameraman1961) July 24, 2018
No, no they can’t.
I think “don’t use a 3-D printed gun you made yourself” is above “don’t use hand loads” in advice by lawyers how not to go to prison in case of a defensive shoot.
https://twitter.com/HaleGaming/status/1021783030128668672
https://twitter.com/RiDavlo/status/1021783024202129418
Yeah, the NRA and gun companies are done for because anybody can just print whatever gun they want.
Anybody with more than a million dollars in 3-D printers, CNC equipment, heat treat ovens, finishers, etc. Even if you just make a receiver and buy every other component, 3-D printed plastic is not smooth and must be finished to produce a functioning part. That is why 3-D printing will not replace injection molding for production anytime soon.
I swear, these people must think that you can buy a desktop 3-D printer off Amazon for $200, download the CAD model, and 30 minutes later have a fully functioning AR-15 lying on your desk ready to shoot up a school.
This is the new Glock 7, undetectable porcelain gun made in Germany myth.
The reality is that it will take two days to print the components for a single shot pistol that doesn’t always work, out of a $1,300 printer and is about as likely to blow up in your face as not. Also it has no effective rifling so accuracy is null and I can’t imagine the barrel life being more than two or three rounds.
This is less a weapon for criminals as much as a novel though experiment for Libertarians. For the price of a 3-D printer, you can buy three or four guns on the street. If undetectability is your thing, you might as well file off the serial number because if you murder someone with your printed gun, you’re going to prison anyway.
Same with magazines. Sure a guy in California can print some high capacity magazines. But for less than the cost of the 3-D printer, he can drive to Arizona and fill the trunk of his car with Magpul.
Nothing about this is remotely frightening to a thinking person.
To unthinking activists, this make them crap their pants.
“Oh no, not information.”
I read that line, thought of Jessica Rabbit, thought to myself “yeah, yesterday privilege, today information, tomorrow it’ll be ability,” and had a small chuckle.
Then I realized, it’s actually not funny. At all.
Great post!
It’s not all that hard to make an AR-15 lower from scrap metal, especially if you know the gun well and realize which parts can be simplified or omitted and still have a fully functioning rifle.
This story shouldn’t scare anyone with a higher than room temperature IQ.
Thanks
Dirty Bob
I don’t know a screechy woman who has no idea what she is talking about, but knows something scares her, mobilizing an army of idiots who don’t have the IQ to properly qualify as morons is always terrifying to me. It’s up there with getting an emergency alert that there’s tornadoes.
We are addressing the problem of people with room temperature IQ here. IQ is not the sole criteria because the inability of people trained to feelz rather than think is indeed a real problem. The real problem are those who use perverted logic to prevent imagined rather than real problems. Shannon cannot write Sci Fi, I agree, but Shannon cannot reason either and yet her inability to reason does not prevent her ability to get someones knickers in a wad.
There is a kit somewhere on the Internet to build an AR lower from bolted together pieces.
https://www.guns.com/2013/12/06/bolt-together-ar-15-lower-receiver-3d-printer-necessary/
TakeTHAT, Shannon!
Cant help but think that this was leaked out to MOMS to get their panties in a wad
OK, JKB. Nice post. And right on target.
Except….
Did you read the book “Starship Troopers”?
Nothing. Like. The. Movie.
The society in ST was emphatically NOT a communist society. It was a functioning Democracy. The difference that made it unique was that, in order to gain the right to vote, one had to serve the country first. Join up, fight, or whatever the military needs you to do, depending on your talents Fly a spaceship, or be an engineer. When your hitch was up, and you were a civilian again, you were unique, because now you had the franchise, and could vote. So, not any old SOB with warm blood and a very slightly functioning brain could vote, but those who had served, and knew what it was like to serve the country, could have an opinion on who to run for office and who to vote..
Furthermore, you did NOT have to serve. You could go on your merry way and be an architect or a janitor, and not ever worry about being drafted into the Army. You could live your life as you pleased. You just couldn’t vote or run for office. Only those that served and knew what it was like to run the country and defend the country could vote and/or hold elected office.
Now. Do you think Maxine whatshername or any of those other nitwits in Congress would ever volunteer to serve at the pleasure of the Service?
See the difference? Not communism. Not by a long shot.
Thanks for reading. I hope you get a chance to read the book. I read it in 1965, and twice more since then. I hated the movie.
I’ve read the book like a dozen times. I quote it regularly. We do not talk about the movie in my house.
It it quite clear that Robert A. Heinlein’s inspiration for the bugs was the Chinese military in the Korean War. The bugs’ represented the expansion of global communism by waves of human drones. The Federation represented an American like representative democracy.
The movie (you’re gonna make me talk about that abortion) was written by Paul Verhoeven after reading two pages of the book. Verhoeven is very anti war because of his childhood experiences with the Nazis and turned the Federation into a Nazi parallel. That probably made Heinlein roll over in his grave.
You misinterpreted my statement, I didn’t misinterpret the book. Do you grok what I’m saying?
Grokked! Didn’t realize you meant the Enemy in the book.
You are a fan of RAH– well, I knew there was a reason I liked you!
The Bugs were the communists.
The Bugs were the Communists, not the Earthmen.
“The Weapon Shops of Isher” might be informative, or at least entertaining.
You might want to fix the first paragraph – “Combine that with artificial inelegance …”. Other than that. great.
All this crap about ghost guns makes me laugh. Some states you can buy a firearm from civilians and its a PRIVATE sale. No 4473 form. Just like buyin a used washing machine. Ahh freedom, THATS what scares hillary2.0
Oh Jesus. I know Blenus M. A poor put upon black man who loves homely white women and photographs them naked. obama was the greatest thing in the world to this sad person who never had his pathetic standard of living negatively affected by the unqualified black Chicago Jesus’ policies.
“But for less than the cost of the 3-D printer, he can drive to Arizona and fill the trunk of his car with Magpul.”
But that carload of Magpul has to be physically bought, and then brought back across the CA border, and CA is already looking at the kind of border checkpoints to arrest US citizens that it won’t allow to catch illegal immigrant non-citizens.
the 3D printed magazines will be much harder to detect. Frankly, I expect CA to start subpoenaing sales records for milling machines and 3D printers prior to conducting unannounced “inspections”.
John Moses Browning didn’t have and FFL or SOT. He designed his first gun out of his dad’s blacksmith shop.
Heck, “Carbine” Williams invented the M1 (and built the prototype) in a friggin’ prison workshop! Yeah, sure, you’re gonna ban all the guns……. *eyeroll*
A gun should be limited to only the most qualified and trained.
Oh, we definitely shouldn’t let the cops have them, then!
… And Then There Were None. Eric Frank Russell. ‘nuf said.
You want an great example of making a gun?
https://www.northeastshooters.com/xen/threads/diy-shovel-ak-photo-tsunami-warning.179192/
This guy made an AK-47 pattern rifle from an old shovel and some junk parts. It’s hilarious! Also, it was accurate… he posts his first target group with it at the end.
There is a long video of a man who melted down aluminum cans and molded and then milled a perfectly fine lower receiver. Took a while, but it’s a perfect lower.
Love how the antis must stick with their talking points even when they make direct contradictions to those talking points.
The NRA knows the best way to sell more guns is to arm even more dangerous people.
Hmmm… so the NRA sells guns for evil corporate profits by promoting people making their own guns from home?? Huh? Nobody listens to Shannon Watts, so why should she bother listening to herself?
Their fears are centered around losing control. If there is even a remote chance that a couple anarco tech geeks can destroy their view of a controlled utopia, their closely held
religiousviews are challenged.