Printing Up Outrage

SCENE: Mitch BERG is shopping for guitar strings at a local music store. Engrossed in thought, he doesn’t notice as Mylussa SILBERMAN, National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau correspondent – walks up behind him

SILBERMAN: Mr. Berg.

BERG: (startled, a little disappointed) Oh, hi, mijzz…

SILBERMAN: Criminals are going to start printing 3D guns. And the NRA seems to think it’s a wonderful thing.

BERG: Let me get this straight. You believe a criminal – a moron who thinks it’s better to rob someone than to earn the money – is going to run over to a pal’s house who has a very high-end 3D printer – costing several thousand dollars, by the way – and leave you with a gun that fires one, count it, one single shot, with an effective accurate range of about the inside of a phone booth, that is about the size of a cordless drill:

…that might have a service life of 10 rounds, and is loaded by removing the entire barrel to reload a single bullet It’s actually slower to shoot that an flintlock musket; I’d think that’d make you happy.

SILBERMAN: But the plans can be downloaded! For free!

BERG: Sure. And for an overall cost greater than going to the store and buying 2-6 high-quality pistols or even rifles loaded from magazines, with service lives of tens of thousands of rounds. Or several such guns purchased from the illegal black market. Not to mention infinitely higher than stealing a functional, quality gun.

SILBERMAN: The NRA supports anyone being able to print a gun!

BERG: Wait – I thought they were lobbyists for the big bad gun industry? Wouldn’t this undercut them?

SILBERMAN: Moving right along – this means people can print AR15s!

BERG: You can print the lower receiver – which is sort of the like the frame of a car, the part that all the other parts get attached to. And they’re already available for well under $100, in a form that’ll actually function for years without meltinig and wearing out.

SILBERMAN: Well, we can’t use that.

BERG: Of that I have no doubt. I didn’t know you played guitar.

SILBERMAN: I don’t. I’m here doing an article on cultural appropriation in music.

BERG: Naturally.

And SCENE

Posted

July 30, 2018

Geekery, Victim Disarmament

Mitch Berg

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Comments

10 responses to “Printing Up Outrage”

Mammuthus Primigenius

July 30, 2018

People who are not familiar with firearms believe that they are created using magical spells and arcane procedures that only work when the government gives a person permission.
If you want to know what spree killers would do if they couldn’t get their hands on a firearm, look at what they use for back up mayhem (even if they never get a chance to use it). Usually it is explosives.
Pig Bodine

July 30, 2018

“look at what they use for back up mayhem”
when I was living on Blaisdale Ave a disgruntled customer (with a long rap sheet) was ejected one night from a bar a block away. He walked over to a gas station filled up a 1 gallon plastic gas can, took it back to the bar, stuffed a handkerchief into the spout, lit it and threw it in the back door of the bar. In addition to a fatality a number of people were badly burned or had their lungs injured from the fireball.
Joe Doakes

July 30, 2018

You don’t need a fancy 3-D printer to make a gun. I read an article about making an AR-15 Ghost Gun – completely untraceable! Any criminal could make one! At home! Practically free!

All you need is an 80% Lower ($75), a router ($100), vice ($20), drill ($50), trigger/spring group ($50), upper receiver with barrel ($200), bolt, carrier, firing pin, charging handle ($100) . . . well, not exactly free. Or easy.
Pig Bodine

July 30, 2018

Joe
if you are a criminal who wants an AR-15 that is relatively untraceable to you all you need is:
A 42″ wrecking bar ($25)
3/16″ x 50′ Proof Coil Chain ($45) for pulling out anchored gun safes
4×4 pickup (stolen)
thats what the criminals in my neck of the woods use.
Which is why whenever anyone sees me with a gun I tell them I borrowed it from a friend.
Joe Doakes

July 30, 2018

Well, geez, PigD, those people should pass a law making it illegal to steal guns. That’d solve the problem, right there.
Night Writer

July 30, 2018

Pig, The EPA has pretty much eliminated gas cans from being usable as bombs – or anything, for that matter, including being a gas can. The regulations they’ve imposed make it almost impossible to get gasoline out in any volume, except for the leaking.

I did see, however, that someone is now offering a program for printing drinking straws from 3D printers….
Mammuthus Primigenius

July 30, 2018

The AG of Washington state has joined with 20 other states in suing the feds over their settlement with Defense Distributed. The Washington AG’s speech announcing this was typical Left wing hysterical hyperbole: “After almost 18 months I was skeptical that there was anything else that this administration would do that would truly shock me, but they have. Frankly, it is terrifying… We think that it is important to put a stop to this right away and make it as difficult as humanly possible to access this information.”
Read that again while you watch Mitch’s embedded video of the 3D printed Doom Machine.
On what basis are the anti-gun lefty lunatics suing the feds? The tenth amendment. That’s right, the tenth. It was just a few years ago that lefties came with a derogatory name for the right-wing lunatics who believed the tenth amendment actually gave states any power over the feds: “tenthers.” See? Rhymes with “birthers”?
Pig Bodine

July 30, 2018

NW
the incident was pre-2k, but I know what you mean about the non-gas cans – I used to scour the spring and fall yard sales for pre-(EPA/CA) gas cans and particularly for 20+ year old metal gooseneck spouts. I recently discovered that you can get gas spout plans for 3D printers online and print your own non-compliant gas can spouts – as Swiftee would say “Gaia weeps!”.
In The Mailbox: 07.30.18 : The Other McCain

July 30, 2018

[…] Only Just Begun Shark Tank: Senator Rubio Backs Javier Manjarres For Congress Shot In The Dark: Printing Up Outrage STUMP: Mornings With Meep – The March Of Folly, also, Memory Monday – Third & […]
Night Writer

July 31, 2018

Pig – I’ve also discovered that you can buy replacement kits for your “old” gas cans that essentially converts them to the functional, pre-EPA, models. You get a new spout and a vent plug; you drill a small hole, insert the plug, and suddenly you don’t need 3 hands to fill your lawnmower with gas. (I’ve avoided all the fuss by using my old gas can for 20-some years; I only recently came in contact with the “new” model when a tenant left one in the garage.)