> announced he would be introducing legislation to renew a ban on firearms and magazines that can't be picked up by standard metal detectors. The current ban on plastic firearms expires this year.
In other words, the only thing this has to do with printed magazines is that printed magazines are being used as a talking point to promote the bill.
Printed magazines, when printed with plastic, would still be picked up by a metal detector since they need a large metal spring (yes, there are printed plastic springs. they suck). Printed magazines printed with metal would obviously be unaffected by this law.
The concept of a "plastic gun" is (currently at least) largely an urban legend anyway. Glocks set off metal detectors just fine.
According to the Glock company's official story, that's correct.
The Glock 7 is a fictional weapon, it doesn't cost as much as John McClane said, and a gun barrel is still made of metal to deal with the explosive pressure of rapidly expanding gases.
It didn't originate in the Die Hard movie. There was a media fueled rumor about the Glock 17 containing so little metal that it wouldn't show up on metal detectors, and Die Hard 2 merely perpetuated that idea. However, none of it was ever true.
In the mid '80s there was a rumor about a Soviet all-plastic 3-shot gun, and there was a guy who patented the idea of an all-plastic gun, and then the media picked up on Glock making guns using plastic frames (but still more than 80% metal by weight). Then someone wrote a breathless story about how Libya was trying to buy Glocks, and this rapidly snowballed into a media fueled freakout about plastic guns and the Glock became a "terrorist special" and so forth.
If I were making a "non detectable by x-ray gun", I'd probably go with ceramic instead of plastic for some parts, or with using more metal, not less, to disrupt the shape (which is illegal under current law, too)
There are printable ceramics as well, though I don't know how strong they are. The usual method is to print a powder and binder, then fire and glaze the piece.
Honestly, I don't understand the hysteria over 3-D printers when it comes to guns. For less than ten grand you can buy a 3-axis CNC machine and mill yourself a heavy machine gun in your garage. This has been possible for decades now. Hell, you can see youtube videos of CNC projects where someone takes a manual lathe and puts together his own computer control for a grand total of $600.
>For less than ten grand you can buy a 3-axis CNC machine and mill yourself a heavy machine gun in your garage.
I think CNC machines probably fall into the same category as 3D printers when it comes to things like this.
The issue isn't that someone with a little money can manufacture a firearm. This has been the case since firearms were invented. The issue is that it's becoming easier and cheaper to do it, and as time passes it seems plausible that object fabrication equipment will become a staple home appliance. Which will make attempts to ban anything that such machines can produce about as effective as trying to stop people downloading pirated movies.
The funny thing is that they think passing a law against it is going to do anything. The whole issue is that the widespread availability of the devices would make such laws unenforceable in practice.
>The whole issue is that the widespread availability of the devices would make such laws unenforceable in practice.
Gun and explosive laws are already unenforceable. Explosives are easy to make - you can get recipes off the internet. And guns are easy to make, too, as I pointed out above. It's not clear to me that 3D printers will be any cheaper or more ubiquitous than milling machines, but in any case milling machines are already ubiquitous.
What keeps people from making machine guns and bombs is the severe penalties associated with doing so. That won't change with the advent of cheap 3D printers, even assuming a printer that could make a gun is ever cheap.
No law can ever prevent crime, but we don't just give up on the idea of the rule of law.
Banning certain classes of firearm won't make them disappear completely, but it gives law enforcement the opportunity to reduce their availability substantially.
Here's the story from the UK. We banned handguns altogether in 1997, after a school shooting that left seventeen dead. We had been slowly restricting gun ownership over the previous decade, but this time we really bloody meant it - there was a major programme of amnesties, ultimately leading to a minimum 5 year sentence for possession of a handgun. Initially it didn't have a huge impact on criminal use of firearms, partly because of the number of guns already in circulation, partly because the IRA were still fairly active and had extensive gun-running apparatus. Bit by bit, the police started to turn the tide.
The headline statistic is 58 firearm fatalities in 2010/11 (<0.1 per 100,000), but that doesn't really tell the story. The great success of British firearm legislation is revealed when serious organised criminals are arrested. More often than not, illegal handguns in the UK are in fact converted replicas and blankfirers - crude and unreliable homemade weapons. Illegal firearms are often seized with half-empty magazines, not because the weapon had recently been used but because the owner couldn't procure enough ammunition to fill it. That's an astonishing success that massively undermines the usefulness of firearms to criminals.
You can't fully control guns, but you can get damned close if you've got an electorate that wills it.
There's a big difference in controlling guns on an island and controlling guns in a country the size of the US.
Also, handguns have nothing to do with this. Some areas (Washington, D.C.) already ban handguns. This is about assault rifles.
The problem is, these are all overreactions to a horrible event. In 2010 or 2011, "long guns" (shotguns, rifles, etc.) only accounted for something like 300 homicides in the US. 300 out of about 300,000,000 people.
Way too much effort for the benfit of cutting that by MAYBE 10-20 percent.
I agree with you, but this should not be the #1 comment on HN.
There's a lot of interesting things going on here. But, specifically, I want to comment on the disconnect between legislators and reality caused by isolation from various aspects of everyday life due to the nature of specialization.
A lot of folks complain about lobbyist, but this a critically important role they play. They don't buy their votes as many suspect, they instead educate the congressmen they work with into believing what they believe. Or, a slightly more realistic phrasing is that they provide congressmen with the ideological ammunition they use on the floor and in the press to push their agenda.
In this case it's rather trivial, because currently 3d printed all plastic guns and magazines are mostly non-viable which explains why there are no lobbyist to help correct congress when they go astray. But the next time you call lobbying bad, just remember that lobbying is an important part of having informed legislatures.
I agree with you, but this should not be the #1 comment on HN.
HN comments are sorted by age as well as number of votes (and supposedly the reputation of the poster, in some cases), so being in the top spot may not mean that it's the highest voted comment, and may be temporary.
But the next time you call lobbying bad, just remember that lobbying is an important part of having informed legislatures.
Surely there's a better way, like maybe the Congressional Research Service? Or legislators actually -- and I know, this is a radical suggestion -- learning on their own about the topics on which they legislate?
You're right on the first point. However, as a first approximation the top comment is likely the highest upvoted comment, particularly when the name isn't one of the top 10 posters on HN.
The CRS and CBO do provide a useful service. But, it would be impossible for each congress person to research the effects of a tariff, increasing pre-k funding to the states, chimpanzee sanctuary funding needs at the NIH as well as the changing feelings related to technology, copyright, gun control and how it effects their various constituents who all have their own interests. It's much easier and more practical for lobbyist just to hand them a "fact sheet" that says: "This bill will save 240 lives this year in your district." or "This bill will provide 430 jobs in and increase the tax base 2 million dollars in your district"
Of course, maybe you meant "hand all this off to an LA" which they already do to some extent.
The obvious problem with relying on lobbyists is that they represent the interests of their employers, which often conflict with the interests of the people.
If legislators have too many domains to deal with to understand any of them, maybe we could go further than the committee system and have separate legislatures for separate domains.
> This will have about as much protective effect against the criminally-motivated as putting up "gun-free school zone" signs.
Even if what you're saying is true, one could argue that means "some protective effect."
Yes, it's probably true that someone who intends to ignore the law and most moral codes and commit a crime with a firearm will almost certainly ignore a sign and the associated additional legal penalties.
"Gun-free" school zones are not really meant to address that problem. They're an attempt to address the problem of crimes/accidents committed with firearms brought into a zone without intent to commit a crime, but that end up being used criminally anyway in a confrontation or when they end up out of original hands, etc. Given that these things happen, restricting access to firearms in a place like a school probably has some marginal positive effect (you can credibly argue there may be a negative effect too -- not having anyone armed in a school represents a targeting opportunity -- but the intelligent response to this is probably to figure out what reasonable exceptions might be rather than throwing up your hands and letting any student or visitor carry).
Similarly, I think it's possible that making attempts to restrict the legal manufacture of high-capacity clips will have some positive impact -- probably a greater one, since the larger scope makes leaks through neighboring less-restricted zones less likely. It will remain true that where "criminally-motivated" means someone with resources and strong resolve, they will be able to acquire not only high-capacity clips but probably just about any form of contraband they'd like. It's also true that by placing restrictions on the process of making of high-capacity clips, the bar for sufficient resources and resolve will be at least somewhat higher: there will be fewer made, fewer people making/distributing 3D printable designs, introducing scarcity, making it harder to do.
Would this be an absolute deterrent? No. Some people will still do that. Is the lock on a door an absolute deterrent? No. It raises the bar: you need to be more determined and you face additional risk of being conspicuous while breaking in. Seat belts don't protect you from many risks of driving. Sometimes, making improvements in the margins is how you get things better.
Now, that's not to say that there might not be other problems with any given measure. Personally, I think if you're going to ban manufacture of something, focusing on the method is probably a bad choice. There's also the question of tradeoffs -- what does it mean to "ban" 3D printing something? Does it mean every 3D printer gets a regulator or a monitor? That might be too big a cost for the benefit.
The effort to print a magazine is much higher than just buying one, even on the black market, at least for the next few years. (You also need to find a magazine spring, and maybe some other strengthening components).
This is just grandstanding and fear-mongering; irresponsible nonsense that won't have any effect.
This is just plain silliness. There are millions, literally hundreds of millions, of full capacity magazines out there in the world right now. If a criminal can manage to get their hands on an illegal gun they can certainly manage to get their hands on a full capacity magazine just as easily and for far less money. They are too easy to make, too easy to store, too easy to transport for it to be otherwise.
That was true even during the period of time when the national "assault weapons" ban was in place.
Also, when you call a magazine a "clip" you immediately make yourself look like someone who knows very little about firearms. A magazine is a spring loaded device that holds bullets in a gun, and may or may not be detachable. A "clip" is a device which is sometimes used to store bullets for quickly loading into a magazine.
> Also, when you call a magazine a "clip" you immediately make yourself look like someone who knows very little about firearms.
Assuming this is neither pedantry nor an ad hominem attack, I appreciate knowing what terminology communicates to people.
> There are millions, literally hundreds of millions, of full capacity magazines out there in the world right now.
And billions of people. The argument isn't that we can wave a magic policy wand and make anything disappear, or impossible to make or get. The argument is that it may be possible to make it harder for any one of those billions to get their hands on some of the millions of things.
Here's what I'd expect to happen if we were to legally restrict the manufacture and general possession of some magazines (or anything else, for that matter):
1) Owners would split into 3-4 different categories: (a) some who would decide any legal risk isn't worth it, and get rid of theirs through approved channels, (b) some who would keep what they have but stop buying, (c) some would sell or buy on the black market. Overall, though, unless you assume that (a) is completely negligible, we're talking about a reduction in existing general circulation.
2) Regarding additions to general circulation, I'd expect manufacturers would split into different categories as well. Some would (a) comply with regulations and would no longer make or ship through general market channels, some would (b) continue to manufacture and supply the black market. Some (c) new manufacturers would spring up to fill any demand gap left by (a), but remember, some people in (1a) have dropped out of the market, so demand has probably shrunk, and risk is higher, so it's a pretty big presumption to claim supplies to general circulation from b+c are going to be equal or greater than a+b under no restrictions. Overall, we're talking about a reduction in supply coming into the pipe.
3) So at this point, if my assumptions hold up, the bar's up at least three or four notches:
* perhaps we still have many banned magazines in general circulation (US estimates I've heard thrown around are closer in order of magnitude to the tens of millions rather than hundreds, though), but there's nevertheless a reduction in number vs the baseline of no restriction, so that's increased scarcity.
* anyone wishing to buy/sell will need to have contacts willing to run the risk (your average postal worker or 19 year old suffering from socialization problems may or may not meet this bar)
* greater risk to buying/selling means some people will prefer to hold on to what they have and not sell at any price, except perhaps with highly trusted acquaintances. This effect in how magazines circulate would be more powerful the higher their concentration in a small number of hands is.
* cost would go up do to increased scarcity and risk associated with buying/selling, meaning any given individual would need to be prepared to pay more
4) That's not all, though. Remember what I said about door locks raising the bar in terms of conspicuousness? In a world with no door locks, the act of walking up to any door, opening it, and walking through is easy and unsuspicious to most given observers. In our world, you're going to need to batter the door down or spend time fiddling with tools -- both activities that are somewhat likely to draw attention. There are ways to allay the resulting suspicion, but that's another bar to meet. Similarly, someone incidentally observed with contraband is now under scrutiny; secondhand evidence it's possessed/traded at all in the neighborhood may even draw law enforcement on the trail.
> This is just plain silliness.
Based on your username, it looks like you would know. ;)
So... what part of what I've laid out above do you expect would not happen if magazines over a certain capacity were banned, and why?
"Assuming this is neither pedantry nor an ad hominem attack..."
The Associated Press (AP) finally updated their style book to make this important distinction, and I've noticed their writers are actually following it, so it's not pedantry.
I always thought school zone laws existed not for deterrence but to provide for stronger punishments, and that the signs are there to help law-abiding citizens carrying weapons from unintentionally breaking the law.
That's really weird reasoning. If we applied that reasoning to highway construction areas, you'd see "vehicle-free zones" for fear of somebody speeding.
But we don't, so instead, we just have "traffic fines double in construction zones." Which makes sense, and presumably people drive more carefully in construction zones.
If you want to double the murder punishment in school zones, there is your deterrence. Preventing law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves & others in the statistically most-likely place for a mass-murder makes no sense whatsoever.
Well, there are a lot of crimes that people engage in other than murder, and many of them involve weapons. It's a much different thing to be caught selling drugs, soliciting sex, etc. in a school zone from a punishment standpoint.
All that aside, I don't trust other parents with handguns around my children, and am perfectly okay with laws preventing people from carrying around my kids. Most of the people I know who are deep enough in their fantasies about their handguns are, and this is just my belief, just as likely to accidentally shoot a child as they are to do any good with a weapon.
You might disagree, but it isn't true that prohibiting weapons around a school has absolutely no sense about it.
just as likely to accidentally shoot a child as they are to do any good with a weapon
You know, this isn't the first time I've heard this sentiment, and -- without meaning offense -- I think it reflects a simple ignorance of the practical realities of handling firearms. I don't know whether you're referring to someone trying to shoot an assailant and missing, or simple failure to follow safe handling, but . . .
I think maybe an analogy will help. From my perspective, it's as if someone said, "I don't want strangers driving cars near schools, because I think there's a significant risk they'll run over children accidentally." From my perspective, I know how much control a driver has over a car, how well they pay attention, the rules pedestrians follow and how well drivers respect them . . . and I'm not really worried about it. Every morning, I see bazillions of children walking to school, passed by bazillions of strangers driving cars right next to them, and I just don't give it a second thought.
The person I'm talking to does, though. He seems to think cars drive up on the sidewalk all on their own, all the time.
Sure, a malicious person could run over a child. Sure, a crazy or drunk or just irresponsible person could get a hold of a car and do a lot of damage. But those are both rare problems and not really specific to cars (or helped by laws). A normal person, in a normal traffic situation, will spend their whole lives driving and absolutely never be danger of accidentally shooting a child.
I hate it when people say, "Your opinion on a topic isn't valid if you haven't done X," but I'm going to say something really similar. Not as a way to invalidate your opinion, but . . . I really do think that folks who claim to have a serious opinion on gun issues should at least spend an afternoon at a range once. Spend $50, take a class, rent a gun, and work through a box of ammo. It's fun, and you'll learn what guns are, how they're safely handled, how dangerous they are (and aren't) when handled responsibly, and . . . well, for lack of a better way to say it, learn how much control even first-time shooters have over them.
I know that comes off as a snarky, "I know more than you" post, and it's not intended that way, really. It's just that I really do think a lot of the fear of guns is fear of the unknown. I honestly wish a firearms safety course was routine, like driver's ed, and then maybe we'd all at least understand the object we're talking about.
While I don't know exactly what the poster you were responding to meant, it's possible that rather than meaning:
"I think it's possible someone carrying may choose to intentionally shoot a child at any moment."
he meant:
"I think that (a) accidents happen in general and (b) should a specific crisis situation emerge and someone carrying uses their gun to respond, they are likely enough to shoot an innocent bystander accidentally vs successfully using it to stop an assailant."
As someone who has spent a few afternoons at the range and even in the hills shooting junk, I certainly don't think someone is a threat just because they've got a gun. But I'm less sanguine when I think about the increased accident/incident rate, and I'm not sure how well most people would do with a gun in a confrontation vs recreational situation.
Yeah, that's what I thought he probably meant, too -- that someone trying to shoot at a threat would miss and hit a child. That's what triggered me saying, "you must not know much about guns." You're welcome to your own judgement call on that, of course, but to me that's really unrealistic.
One of the places I went shooting was a weekly practical skills tournament. Everything we shot at moved or popped up or had something you weren't supposed to shoot next to it; sometimes all three. Most of it was pop-can sized, too! And while a lot of the guys there were pros, they had a deal where first-time shooters were free, so a lot of folks brought friends, and I got to see a lot of amateurs try to handle those situations.
And you know, they did pretty well. Even if you've only been shooting for a week or two, even if you have to run up to where you're shooting from and peek out from cover, even if you're under time pressure and all the targets are in motion . . . most people can hit one paper-plate sized target and not another one at ten yards or so, most of the time. And that's kind of a worst-case scenario!
So now you put a man-sized target in a classroom, probably less than 10 yards away, where he's probably holding still or at most walking, where everyone else is frozen or running away from him (and at any rate, isn't IN FRONT of him), and so on. I'm sure it's emotionally stressful, but . . . that's not a difficult shot.
I'm not trying to pick on the GP in particular -- he just stepped on a pet peeve of mine. I've heard people opine that in that situation, the odds of missing and hitting a kid are something like 50%. I think that's crazy. I think, based on experience, that the odds are close enough to zero as makes no difference. And I don't mean just me, either; I mean anybody could make that shot.
But more than that, think about what the cutoff should be, from a game theoretic perspective. These school shootings generally result in what, ten people dead? More? Wouldn't that mean the shot is a win even if the odds of hitting the wrong person were up around 90%?
Anecdotally, I'm personally amazed as how well un- or barely trained US civilians responsibly use their guns in self-defense. There's about 2.25 million Defensive Gun Uses (DGU) per year, although of course only a very small fraction involve a shot being fired. Still, with numbers that large, if there were a lot of "pain-in-the-ass innocent bystanders" getting shot or killed we know the US media would be hyping those cases.
They do happen, last I can remember was a worst case where an armed citizen tried to slip out of a pizza joint during a robbery only to find the robbers had locked the door behind them. They noticed and started shooting at him, and one or more of the staff were behind them in line with the citizen. Bad situation, but then again, for all we know he saved the lives of everyone in the joint, based on the criminals' actions.
>Most of the people I know who are deep enough in their fantasies about their handguns are, and this is just my belief, just as likely to accidentally shoot a child as they are to do any good with a weapon.
Really? I've never met a firearm owner like that, and I've been around guns my entire adult life.
I am a gun owner and have many gun-owning friends, and I would have to disagree with you.
There are many people out there who think that guns are cool toys and don't follow safety procedures. I've encountered more than a few of them. Not checking downrange before firing, pointing a gun at people with no intention to fire, not checking the chamber after removing a magazine.
I know people like that, too, but that's not the same thing as saying someone like that is more likely to shoot a child because of being "deep enough in their fantasies".
If you ban plastic, someone will figure out a way to do it with metal. Besides, the only way a plastic magazine would be undetectable is if it were empty, which make it effectively useless anyhow.
It does bring up an interesting ethical scenario with respect to 3D printing. You can ban the sale of high-capacity magazines all you want, but if it's simple to just make one with a 3D printer the point of the law is completely moot. Since the law won't ban making these magazines (to not conflict with US manufacturers exporting these) and the law won't outlaw the existing magazines, this is a huge loophole.
And magazines aren't anything special, definitely something that is perfect for 3D printing. Simple designs punctuated by slight one-offs - depending on cartridge size, cartridge count, and weapon fit.
When that happens, I'm immediately printing off several high-capacity mags out of principle, and I don't even own a firearm (thought about it, but I don't have time to go to a range so the liability isn't worth it for me).
While I understand the intent of the law, it's a totally impractical way to solve the problem. It sounds like the majority of weapons used in violent crimes are obtained illegally so it will do little to deter criminal activities; meanwhile, it increases the liability around owning a 3d printer.
I believe that the majority of weapons used in non-gang-related mass shootings were purchased legally.
Why are you not immediately distilling a few bottles of moonshine on principle? My feeling is gun-freedom supporters view gun ownership as a proxy for freedom. Why not view alcohol distillation as your symbolic meter-stick instead? Just like illegally produced spirits, owning a gun won't stop the TSA from violating your rights. Nor will it stop the FBI from raiding your home.
Ironically, I'd be much more likely to harm someone with moonshine than with an XL magazine.
In any case, the stand I'd be taking is about the absurdity of trying to ban 3d printing of specific devices, not about gun rights. I can't think of a reasonable excuse for a private citizen to own high-capacity weapons of death, and the theoretical argument about defending ourselves from the government went out the window long ago in my eyes. The second amendment was written well before the days of SWAT teams (on the low end of potential government firepower) and anyone crazy enough to think that stockpiling high-powered weaponry will be sufficient to take on highly-trained professionals is, well, crazy.
You're failing to exercise your imagination; perhaps look at the recent difficulties the US military has had in the Middle East with adversaries who had no interest in playing by the former's rules.
Let's see: Everyone who does screening. Everyone who poses a natural target (judges, DAs, federal officers, etc) whose protection depends on screening. Everyone who works in a federal building where they are not allowed to carry guns, and therefore relies on a metal detector to keep gun carrying people out. Everyone who flies. One could go on.
You're conflating magazines and guns. A magazine can't fire bullets. It can't hurt people. So who the hell cares if they get picked up on metal detectors? You want to catch the gun, not the magazine.
Plastic 308 rounds. Those are real projectiles, not dummy rounds.
I do not know if the entire cartridge is plastic, though. That primer definitely looks like metal. And I'm going to assume steel for the cartridge body (wow, it was hard to think of another word than 'brass').
Thus are military training rounds. The bullet are plastic, but the cartridge is brass. They are generally not deadly, and are sometimes used to fire at people with (as a form of paintball, but that is ill advised).
They are meant for training with outdoors. They are cheaper then normal bullets, less pollution then lead and don't goes so fare (a normal 7.62mm bullets can be deadly for upwards to 3.5 kilometers, making random shouting in a simulated setting outside unsafe).
The IDF uses rubber bullets extensively as a non-lethal form of ammunition. I think during the Nth intifada there was a story about plastic bullets being used, with them being actually worse than metal since they wouldn't show up on x-ray, although they would shed energy and momentum really fast compared to metal.
Huh, very interesting. Those would definitely be deadly (considering that even "blanks" can be). I think the cartridge body might be plastic too, if I am reading that page correctly (probably not too odd, that is how shotgun shells are often made I think).
Of course those rounds don't have enough recoil to cycle a semi-automatic rifle so I'm not sure how much of an advantage having a high-capacity magazine for those would really give anybody.
I think the cartridge is mostly plastic too, since it says "plastic case cartridge... steel base...." And if it were steel why would they bother painting the cartridge blue? The primer is definitely steel, however.
In any event, the barrel at least has to be metal, so this seems similar to the risk of someone bringing gunpowder into a secure area.
Never head of those before. Very odd. Looks like the whole base is metal, which you would expect, as I'm not sure plastic would be durable/stiff enough for extracting the spent cases reliably.
Still trying to figure out what on earth these things are used for. Seems too dangerous to be used off a proper firing range. What good are they?
That really has nothing to do with plastic magazines anymore does it? I'm sure they don't allow spear guns, slingshots, and potato cannons (not metallic!) in court houses already.
Things that can be picked up by metal detectors easily: bullets, ammunition casings, gun barrels, gun slides, recoil springs, magazine springs.
Polymer cased ammunition exists but is very rare and not general purpose (e.g. flechette rounds), but even those rounds would show up quite easily on a magnetometer based metal detector due to the steel content in the flechettes. The idea of a "plastic gun" is a myth that has been advanced due to the extreme ignorance of the media inducing a moral panic in the 1980s after the introduction of the Glock 17, which merely had a plastic frame and still contained over a pound of metal in it.
In other words, the only thing this has to do with printed magazines is that printed magazines are being used as a talking point to promote the bill.
Printed magazines, when printed with plastic, would still be picked up by a metal detector since they need a large metal spring (yes, there are printed plastic springs. they suck). Printed magazines printed with metal would obviously be unaffected by this law.
The concept of a "plastic gun" is (currently at least) largely an urban legend anyway. Glocks set off metal detectors just fine.