Australian police issue warning on 3D printed guns

Is anybody surprised? Even the inventor of the gun seems quite hesitant about how many times it can be fired safely. Anyone setting out to show how dangerous it can be can simply keep firing it until failure occurs. Voila!<p>If article made any mention of how many times that gun was fired until it failed, I missed it.

I can understand the worry about 3d printed weapons, but I don't see much of a difference between this an a zipgun besides that a common zipgun uses a metal tube for a barrel so it would show up on a metal detector.<p>I am completely disinterested in any of the fearmongering about this weapon. There is no way to hold back technology to prevent violence, we just need to accept that and deal with not being asshats to each other that causes the violence.

I am not sure why we care about people making plastic guns when they can make full-auto AK47s that are not traceable in the slightest.<p><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/ak-47-semi-automatic-rifle-building-party" rel="nofollow">http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/ak-47-semi-autom...</a>

<p><pre><code> "Police believe that despite this, the files are still circulating." </code></pre> The quality of journalism is pretty awful these days.<p>I can't believe someone would feel qualified to write an article, especially one that came out today, without explicitly knowing that, yes, the files are most assuredly still "circulating" via torrents.

<p><pre><code> "This is now becoming a problem the world over," Scipione said. </code></pre> According to whom? The police forces that are trying to drum up FUD about hobby-manufactured firearms?

They didn't say if they used the acetone vapor process to harden the barrel or the heating process during printing overall to increase the strength. Defense Distributed did this and the .380 test did not explode.<p>It would work in the Australian police's favor to make the gun look as dangerous to the user as possible.<p>I'd still like to know how dangerous the explosion is. It's plastic, so I'm imagining it fracturing and releasing all the pressure quickly.

This is very scared as 3D printers are becoming cheaper soon any one could print out a gun with litte effort. As people said, you can create your own guns but whats different is this takes little work which any one could do. This could be a world problem as soon as 3D printers become mainstream, especially in countries with tight gun regulation.

Is it possible to make a worse gun?<p>I.e., a higher ratio of danger-to-shooter to danger-to-target.

Funny, it looks just like a squirt gun. That can't be good.

Barbra Streisand effect in 3.. 2.. 1..