Arlo (and Marcus)... you are correct that plastic gun barrels are not a great idea, but more sophisticated 3-D printers could eventually overcome that. At any rate, it is awfully hard to regulate the sale of smooth steel tubes....
A mostly 3-D printed gun can get off several rounds before failure. It is not a practical long term weapon, but it gets the job done well enough to render gun regulations silly amongst people with the resources. Certainly it is obvious that people can 3-D print the soon-to-be illegal large magazines and other such gun parts. A lot of these stories only hit recently. See, for example: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/145664-3d-printed-30-round-ar-magazine-brings-us-ever-closer-to-a-fully-3d-printed-gun http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/12/weaponeers/ http://www.webpronews.com/gunsmith-uses-3d-printer-to-make-a-rifle-2012-07 -------- Eric Charles Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State, Altoona ----- Original Message ----- From: "Arlo Barnes" <arlo.bar...@gmail.com> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <friam@redfish.com> Cc: "arg irk" <arg....@gmail.com> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2013 3:11:35 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] here we go One of the downsides of email's serial format rather than hypermedia's tree format is that I cannot make this message just a child of an earlier message, but instead the whole threas. Old (drafted days ago):To focus on a different aspect: Clips are one thing, but it does not seem 3-D printed parts would be appropriate for most parts of a gun. Barrels, for example, have to withstand both high heat and pressure, and be smooth so that the bullet can exit easily. I would doubt ABS/PLA plastics could perform as needed, but then again I have read that Glock was also regarded suspiciously as a 'plastic gun', but then grew to be favored. Then again, it is a special plastic. New: Is this the selfsame Axiom of Choice that enables Banach-Tarski if used? -Arlo James Barnes ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
