Yes, some jurisdictions aside you can make one AR15 lower receiver on your own without any paperwork, fees, checks, or permission. Understanding is that nobody going thru that much effort is going to waste it by doing something stupid (if there's criminal intent there are many far easier ways to acquire one).
The issue here is: where's the line on making one? You can make one yourself legally, but if you hire someone else to knowingly make it they'll need an expensive big-hassle manufacturer's license. The key is "knowingly", as up until recently it was pretty obvious to the machinist what he was being asked to do. Now, with "printing", you just upload the pattern for what is otherwise just another odd-shaped chunk of metal, a computer & machine crank one out, and the result gets sent back to you with a minimum of comprehension by any humans involved - are _you_ "making" it? or is the printing house "making" it and, in effect, selling it to you? The legal line has been blurred.
If the legal fiction is that the lower receiver of that gun is the gun, then legally that didn't change so the method of manufacturing it is not relevant.
Hiring someone to produce it while obfuscating the intent is not gray, it puts you in the docket. The printing house is acting on your explicit instruction, and if they don't review the orders (hard to do, after all, you can't know each and every prohibited item) then you are still on the hook.
Trained machinist or 3D printer operator the change is only in the material of the produced item.
As for not being able to whittle that part from wood, there are many kinds of wood that are much stronger than the ABS wire that a 3D printer uses.
And if it can't be made out of those kinds of wood then it certainly can't be made out of plastic printed ABS (if you expect the gun to function).
Given this environment of legal uncertainty, it's not at all clear that BATFE would not pursue the 3D printer operator who produced the receiver. In this case, charges against the 3D printer operator would likely be unlawful manufacture of a firearm, possibly in addition to charges related to interstate transfer of a firearm. Given the creativity of some US attorneys, perhaps a conspiracy case would be made alleging the buyer of the printed part 'conspired' with the printer operator.
I would also suggest a lower receiver could probably be made from materials weaker than you might imagine. The lower receiver does not bear any gas pressures from the firing of the cartridge, though the holes for the roll pins which hold the hammer and trigger in place would probably start to 'egg' after a round or two. In any case, the legal question has nothing to do with how reliable the resulting firearm is; only whether it meets certain vague and broadly-interpreted legal definitions.
[1] http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2010/01/25/shoestring-machi...
And I doubt they will declare the manufacturer of the lower receiver is manufacturing a weapon, if it's done in such an automated way. They will just change their rulings so it's a crime to order such a part. If they can't do that, they will work with whatever federal agency regulates telecommunications, and it will suddenly become a serious crime to order certain gun parts from a 3D printer.
Laws don't always change faster than technology, but they change pretty quickly when there's the right kind of pressure.
The line is blurred, that is tautological considering the complexification of the issue. The argument would be that the blurring is enough to warrant a different interpretation of the law.
> If the legal fiction is that the lower receiver of that gun is the gun, then legally that didn't change so the method of manufacturing it is not relevant.
Likely so.
> if they don't review the orders (hard to do, after all, you can't know each and every prohibited item) then [they] are still on the hook.
In the past making a custom part required a skilled machinist familiar with common machined parts. They would more than likely recognize an unlabelled but common part.
Now a part can be made without a single human involved, or if there were they could be lesser-skilled cleaning technicians only.
In the past they'd notice what you were doing by default, unless it was severely obfuscated. Now they'd have to hire machinists to spy on customer jobs and try to guess your intent to ban 'bad' items. One is trivial, the other invasive and ultimately impossible.
It's a bit moot. They can't effectively pass a law putting the genie back in the bottle without banning 3d printing and rapid-turnaround prototyping - something which would drive the last of our development businesses away.
A sufficiently large quantitative change is a qualitative change. Also the debate is ultimately not about this one thing today, but about a future in which one can download and print an open-source AK-47-equivalent with only slightly more difficulty than printing a picture.
I'd contend this isn't "printing" or the definition of "making it yourself" that you'd consider here in 2011; it's a new semantic category that very few people are prepared to grapple with, least of all the law. I'd contend the law is yet to catch up with what computer programs permit people to do, it really isn't ready for how computer programs will increasingly freely impinge upon the real world. There is simply no legal category to handle this question, and many conventional ethical ones can't handle it very well either.
The only solution is to go back to first principles, but most people can't really reason on first principles.
True, but I submit this is not a sufficiently large quantitative change.
> Also the debate is ultimately not about this one thing today, but about a future in which one can download and print an open-source AK-47-equivalent with only slightly more difficulty than printing a picture.
I humbly suggest there is more to it than that, and will still be more to it than that in a future in which 3D printers can print composite materials strong enough to survive the extreme pressures of a 7.62x39mm cartridge firing a bullet down a long rifled barrel. Even if that were possible, the result of the AK-47 print job would be a whole mess of parts, including tiny pins, springs, etc. With the exception of the lower receiver, all of these parts can be bought (in the US at least) online with no government oversight or regulation. Once the parts are obtained, they must be assembled, which is not difficult for the mechanically inclined, but is considerably more difficult than printing a picture.
So, before this quantitative change:
* Obtain AK-47 spec and assembly instructions * Obtain necessary tools for assembly * Order AK-47 parts kit online * Buy AK-47 lower receiver from firearms dealer, or assemble yourself from sheet metal * Assemble AK-47
After this quantitative change:
* Obtain AK-47 spec and assembly instructions * Obtain AK-47 3D printer files * Obtain assembly tools printer files * Print AK-47 parts * Print AK-47 lower receiver * Assemble AK-47
Hardly a revolutionary shift.
Legally I don't see any sticky issue here, and if there's an ethical dilema I don't see it. Having said that, I agree with the general proposition that the law has not kept pace with technological innovation, and that there are areas in which this lag has serious consequences.
In fact, quantitative changes that become qualitative changes by being large enough are the entire reason we're having this discussion in the first place! It's perfectly possible to kill a person with just your hands. "All" a gun does is make it easier... but trying to dismiss all of the legal and moral questions around guns by claiming that it's only a difference of degree, not kind, isn't going to convince very many people. A big enough quantitative change is a qualitative change.
Making this part out of wood or plastic is a days work or less for a person that is moderately handy with tools, it would be probably a run of an hour for a 3D printer with some serious post processing required, say 2 hours altogether.
And that's with an investment in a 3D printer in one case and an old drillpress and some milling bits in the other, which at the moment is the lower bar to entry.
That's less than an order of magnitude.
If you could print a fully loaded ready to use weapon in a few minutes then yes, that would be a game changer. As it stands this isn't, but it may evolve in to one.
This is the interesting discussion to have, and the one I am having. And even if the weapon itself is not ready in minutes, it's easy to imagine a world in which printing the open source AK-47 is as easy as: Visit website, search for AK-47, click print on first result, eventually refill relevant cartridges. It may only pop out hours later, but it'll still be a different world than the one we live in.
I completely disagree with anelson's characterization of the difficulty; I could make "printing a web page" look as difficult if I spelled out all the steps ("purchase paper for printer, insert paper into printer..."), but that's not reflective of the real difficulty.
Remember, Thingiverse is not version 7.2.3-final. It's 0.0.1-pre-alpha. We are not at the endgame of this technology, we are at the very, very, very beginning, and even this discussion about guns is merely one high-profile example of the sorts of questions we're going to have to grapple with when the full power of software is unleashed into the physical world.
It's the kind of book that opens your eyes to the kind of change that you are talking about. I think that you are basically talking about a post-singularity society, that's how much change that would cause. As a result of that we can speculate about the changes but we will never ever be remotely ready for the real thing, if and when it hits.
The 0.0.1-pre-alpha of the cornucopia machine is not even close to the real thing in terms of effect, the one is a neat little machine that you can use to experiment with additive manufacturing rather than the usual subtractive methods, the other will change the world in ways we probably can not even predict.
I think this is pretty clear: making something by hand is very different from having a magic button to do it for you. "You could have whittled it out of wood!" completely misses the point.
Unless you also think the creation of high level programming languages was not a qualitative change over the days of punch cards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcKwOo7dmM
Mechanics is easy.
There is one guy who got arrested in Brazil because he protected his house with improvised guns made with mousetraps.
But it (kind of) is, specifically with regards to US law. I mean, that's the point. There is a huge market for AR-15 upgrade parts, and everything else can be acquired easily with no regulation.
And yes, this could be made at home with old technology, but it requires a fair amount of dedication and skill. Downloading a file and clicking 'print' is a significantly different process.
To specifically address that point, you could use a 5 axis machining center and a standardized control sequence ('G-codes') to do the exact same thing.
I think the bigger difference is the amount of funds that needs to be put on the table for the machine itself.
Once you have the rig set up for a part the major operations are mounting the blank, hitting 'start' and removing the finished part (assuming it can be made in one pass).
That's extremely expensive equipment that you're not going to have at home without a lot of dedication and investment.
You could always send something off to eMachineShop.com, but that's still not really comparable to the not-so-distant future where we'll all have easy access to local 3D printers.
You can stamp AK receivers with little more than a hydraulic shop press and a simple jig, followed by either riveting or welding things in place. That's totally within the realm of many home workshops, and people have been doing so for years.
Even if 3D printing reaches the ubiquity of everyone having the equipment at home, 3D printers will not be capable of producing full, functional firearms.
I still don't really agree with that. A stamping machine isn't particularly easier to come by than a good boring machine, in my opinion. The whole process of creating a rifle isn't terribly high-tech, as demonstrated by the vast number of cheap AK-variants flooding the world. It is still, however, beyond the skill and motivation of most people.
Even if 3D printing reaches the ubiquity of everyone having the equipment at home, 3D printers will not be capable of producing full, functional firearms.
I completely disagree with that. Given sufficient time, it seems inevitable that we will have 3D printer medium capable of containing the high pressure of even a rifle.
Materials science doesn't magically provide you with new materials and and structural side effects just because you give it enough time.
The physical properties of 3D printed stuff, be it full metal parts or plastics are typically a notch below that of the same substance when used in a reductive setup (ie, milling, turning, drilling etc).
The reason for that is that depositing the material layer by layer from a grain or a wire (or a fluid) means that you have to fuse all those layers. Essentially a solid, defect free chunk of a hardwood tree is about as good as it gets when you are composing from parts (molecules in that case).
And the hardest of hardwoods can just about compete with the softest of the metals used for structural elements (but are still a notch above most plastics).
Cast metal (also an additive process) still requires some re-work, and 3D printed parts that have to be made to a certain precision require (skilled) re-work as well.
It is possible that you are right but at the moment that is pure speculation and I don't think it seems inevitable at all.
The one exception I would like to make to all this is a single-shot, single-use firearm. That might be possible, something that would just need one round, and which you'd dispose of after firing. The accuracy would be horrible (no way to sight it in) and it would be a pretty bulky thing compared to its efficiency but I think that might be possible, even with todays printers. Extrapolating from that to future materials you might get more accuracy but I doubt you'd ever go over that single shot unless the gun is to be as much a risk to the user as it is to the target.
On another note, a fake gun is sometimes just as effective as a real one, and printing fake guns is definitely a possibility.
A basic shop press which is sufficient to stamp AK receivers can be had for under $200. That's not even in the same league as basic CNC equipment, and hardly out of reach for anyone that decided they wanted to homebrew a receiver.
>I completely disagree with that.
As 0x12 also notes, you're being hugely optimistic about the material sciences involved. Even when using steel, barrels are either milled or hammer-forged, not cast, to achieve sufficient strength.
Even when you're talking about small parts, like extractors, MIM[1] parts are absolutely notorious for being prone to breakage or being out-of-spec.
Color me highly skeptical that plastic-based additive printing is going to catch up to or surpass what we know about metalworking any time soon.
Yes, building a 3D printer is an investment now. But cheap, common 3D printers are going to become a reality, and soon.
You could always make a gun, all you needed was a lathe, some tooling, a hacksaw a file, some steel stock and a bunch of patience.
Printing a gun is just another way to get to the goal, possibly an easier one but one with its own unique challenges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm
The differentiating factor for a gun from printed ABS is not that you've made it at home, but that it is very hard to detect the gun itself (you'd have a hard time not using metal at all, especially for the parts mentioned above and then there is the ammo).
You can bet that if you get caught with one trying to board an airplane that there will be very serious repercussions, you won't be able to say you left it in your carry-on luggage by accident. Well, you can say that but good luck to get anybody to believe you.
So, printing a gun is not the same as buying a gun, it is the same as making a fire-arm at home through conventional means.
On another note, the design of a working firearm, especially from unproven materials, is not something you muck around with unless you know your materials science. A gun that explodes when fired could have some pretty nasty effects on you and bystanders.