The most important quote in the article:<p><pre><code> "It does look like the MakerBot part," says Stuart Offer of 3D-printing firm 3T
RPD in Newbury, UK. "These 3D printed guns seem to have hit the headlines, but
I've no idea why they take off so much," he says. "A little engineer in his
shed with a mill down the bottom of the garden could make a proper metal barrel
capable of firing a high-velocity bullet."
</code></pre>
And that's what I have been discussing with friends. Is printing a 3D gun that much easier than building a proto-gun with metal parts?<p>I think they hit the headlines because the whole "the future is scary" appeals to the masses, or at least, "3D printed guns" sounds like something out of a movie (for instance, "In the Line of Fire").
<i>"Police in the UK this morning claimed to have seized parts of a 3D-printed gun, but it looks as if they may have jumped to the wrong conclusion."</i><p>Really annoyed they didn't use the phrase, <i>"jumped the gun"</i>.<p>It's a Friday and everything...
The egg on the police's face is nothing compared to their opportunity to scare the world with their fear-quote about "organized crime inventing the next generation of weapons with 3-d printers."<p>...As if 3-d printers are the next generation of weapons, and not their own government in cahoots with my own government. I'll quote Company Flow here: "It takes crazy engineering to fuck with anything from quantum physics to thought transmitters."
"...not yet possible to print bullets" - ha! Its not yet possible to print anything but little plastic junk. If you could 'print' bullets, you could just make them anyway; you'd have to have all the raw materials at hand.
In the UK we don't let a thing like "the truth" get in the way of a good story. Some bits of plastic = major news event. Manchester police should be concentrating on the real guns that are circulating in that city. Last time I was there a taxi driver told me that the police let the gangs shoot each other, and only really get involved when they turn on innocent bystanders. Sounds like they have enough to do without making problems where they don't exist.
If someone prints a part from a gun design, and then uses it for some unrelated purpose, would that be a crime under UK law?<p>I think it wouldn't be, in fact, because plenty of things are "weapons" if used in one way and "not weapons" (and therefore legal to carry on the street) when used another way (prime example: not illegal to carry kitchen knives home from the shops, totally illegal to wave it around in the street.)
"<i>...it demonstrates that organised(sic) crime groups are acquiring technology...to produce the next generation of weapons.</i>"<p>Do people really think that some relatively low resolution plastic extrusion will be used to manufacturer high tech weapons?
I'm not a gun supporter, but the anti-gun crowd lost.<p>Trying to control it through violent raids will be as successful as trying to stop people printing their own books on their own printers.<p>Criminals who want to have guns will have them. End of story. The future has arrived.<p>And it's not just guns. Assault rifles, military-grade miniguns, everything will be soon available to anybody.<p>To the people who say "oh, anybody could do with with a few metal pipes and some machinery", it's not even close to pressing a "print" button and waiting a couple of hours.