Can you not imagine any motives that a person could have for printing a gun where they don't care about long term reliability?

Sure, I can imagine any number of motives and Rube Goldberg mechanisms for procuring a firearm to service that motive. My point is that if someone who is desperate to get a firearm has to 3D print one they’re going to pick a simple pistol lower. Not something for a rifle that fires a higher power cartridge. Most rifles that fire 7.62 are not in the AR format.

You don't think someone like Oswald exists in the present day?

They demonstrably do, multiple of them, and none of them used 3D printed weapons.

So there are people who would have a use for a high powered rifle with limited durability.

> What I'm saying is that no one is going to build a lower in this manner for a firearm chambered in 7.62 and do anything useful/important with it. Maybe the cartridge size here is a distraction, idk, but this isn't a specification that I would consider common and/or useful for 3D printing a firearm.

The fact that no one was caught using such a weapon is irrelevant. You stated that there are people out there who would use it, so your statement that "no one" would want to is untrue.

>You stated that there are people out there who would use it, so your statement that "no one" would want to is untrue.

Huh? There is no evidence that anyone is using a 3D printed 7.62 weapon system to do crimes. Of the existing evidence, criminals overwhelmingly use conventional firearms. I'm not understanding your point. The would-be and successful assassins in the news the last couple years used standard rifles, ranging from 5.56 to .03-06 in caliber. I think you are assuming that criminals are less sensitive to equipment reliability than they actually are.

Let me put it this way. If 3D printed firearms were such a game changer, they would already be using them at scale. They are not, and these laws are part of a fundamental misunderstanding about how firearms function and how 3D printing technology works.

You are arguing against a point I am not defending. I am giving a retort against your statement that you can't imagine why anyone would want a high powered rifle that had a limited reliability window. You admitted that there was a use case for it, and I called that out. That's it. I am not defending nor opposing the ability to 3D print firearms.

I don't think I actually did admit that, and I think the confusion lies in your assumption that someone who wants to do a crime is willing to accept the reliability issues. Perhaps it's worth pointing out that these reliability issues aren't simply lower n-cycles before failure. The weapon could explode on you on the first shot. The probability of this happening is lower for the less powerful cartridges (as I implied earlier but perhaps should've been more explicit). This concept of a "reliability window" is not the right way to think about this. In other words, if someone handed me a 3D printed 7.62 weapon system I would refuse to fire it, and call the person who made it an idiot.

Look up the WW2 FP-45 Liberator. A bad gun you could use to get a better gun. Theoretically you only need to use it once.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator

I highly doubt that anyone who 3d prints a lower does so to “use” it (I.e. shoot someone) in order to procure a better firearm.

I would think they just print multiple guns and switch if one breaks.

The FGC-9 was used extensively in Myanmar for that exact purpose. The rebels would set up ambushes with FGC-9's and recover better firearms for future use

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9#Users_and_use

I mention 7.62 specifically because most folks not familiar with 3D printed firearms are unaware that such a thing is even possible.

9mm 3DP guns have hit the news cycle repeatedly, less so for higher power cartridges. IIRC, there's a .50 BMG project well underway.

You call these project[s], which I think is very accurate for the higher power cartridges. You sound like you've seen a lot of the videos of 3D printed firearms, and from what I can tell they cluster around 9mm and 5.56. There's probably multiple reasons for that, one of which is that those round sizes are more widely available and cheaper, while another is that it is going to be easier to do than something with higher power. So to maybe simplify my point, the technical challenges and inherent safety issues on 7.62 are higher. Thus, projects they shall remain.

At this point with a 5,000 round endurance for a plastic AK receiver, I think it's fair to say the 'project' has reached maturity. Especially when this is all completed on entry level printers

5k rounds is impressive, I will concede the point if that's true. I would like to look at the design of this. Do you have a link to the CAD files, or whatever you have that explains how they deal with pressure issues.