
3D printer 'gun parts' found in Manchester raid - jamesmoss
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-24666591
======
adamcooke
The items shown here are just components of the 3D printer itself. I'd say
they would struggle to create a gun from them!

[http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:52838](http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:52838)
&
[http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2013/02/22/replicator-2-extrude...](http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2013/02/22/replicator-2-extruder-
alternative-some-spring-in-your-step/)

------
quarterto
As noted in the comments on The Verge's article[1], these parts actually seem
to be replacement MakerBot parts. This feels like nothing but 3D printer
scaremongering.

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/25/5027282/uk-police-
seize-3...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/25/5027282/uk-police-
seize-3d-printed-gun-components)

~~~
tfinniga
It reminds me of an old joke I heard shortly after 9/11.

Did you hear that they confiscated knitting needles from an old lady before
she was allowed to board her flight? They were afraid she was going to make an
afghan.

------
mcantelon
I went to a protest once that featured, for some reason, a number of toy
weapons used as props: a completely non-functional "crossbow" made with a
bungee cord, etc. The cops seized the "weapons" and their statement in the
media made it sound as if they'd seized an actual crossbow, etc.

This raid story makes me think of this. It could be someone seriously
attempting to fabricate arms or it could just as likely be someone having fun
experimenting. At any rate, I am quite skeptical about the cop's grandiose
announcement that "today will be an important milestone in the fight against
this next generation of homemade weapons".

------
loup-vaillant
I guess the war on general computation has officially begun. I can't wait for
someone to propose a ban on home 3D printers to prevent firearm proliferation.

~~~
Wingman4l7
To put this in some context, Cory Doctorow has done talks / written pieces on
"The Coming War on General Purpose Computation".

------
timje1
Charles Stross's 'Rule 34' features a dark near-future setting with organised
criminals operating illegal, _unlocked_ 3D printers that are used to print
guns and child sized sex dolls. An interesting read for sure.

I assume the authorities will lock down 3D printers before they get good
enough to print functioning weapons. If you've got an IPrinter that only
builds licensed IObjects from the official IStore, this problem goes away for
authorities, and all we lose is our computing freedom.

------
intslack
>In theory, the technology essentially allows offenders to produce their own
guns in the privacy of their own home, which they can then supply to the
criminal gangs who are causing such misery in our communities.

Meanwhile, anyone can create a (subpar) .22 machine gun in their garage.

>If what we have seized is proven to be viable components capable of
constructing a genuine firearm, then it demonstrates that organised crime
groups are acquiring technology that can be bought on the high street to
produce the next generation of weapons.

Just like its namesake the Liberator is clumsy. Criminal intent or not, and
aside from the plastic aspect, people are going to prefer a weapon that's
actually reliable.

~~~
hahainternet
> Meanwhile, anyone can create a (subpar) .22 machine gun in their garage.

Really? This is your argument? That's like saying anyone can construct a nuke
in their basement so all explosives regulations are silly.

~~~
intslack
No, not anyone can just build a nuke in their basement. The Chinese struggled
for years until they liquored Richard Feynman up and he accidentally let an
idea slip that led to them getting the bomb.

Anyone that has a garage and tools can easily, and again I want to emphasize
easily, construct a makeshift shotgun or machine gun.

Your position is essentially the same one that enables the (never ending) war
on drugs. I don't disagree with gun and weapon regulations, but the UK and AU
stance is just laughable. Their violent crime per capita has somehow increased
as well making the UK the most violent nation:

[http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/cfi/101-...](http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/cfi/101-120/cfi115.html)

~~~
hahainternet
You didn't even read the summary:

> Rather than indicating a sharp rise in actual violence, however, this
> increase is largely the direct result of major changes to the way crime data
> are recorded in the England and Wales. First in 1998 and then again in 2002,
> amendments were introduced to include a broader range of offences, to
> promote greater consistency, and to take a more victim-led approach where
> alleged offences were recorded as well as evidence-based ones

Stop pushing an agenda.

~~~
intslack
Sorry, you are right, thought that study took into account the difference in
crime reporting. I'm busy deploying to a server and didn't bother to read the
summary.

>Stop pushing an agenda

Your assumption that I have an agenda is also laughable. I do not own a
firearm.

------
lwhi
Well - I guess we're going to have to licence use of 3D printers and make sure
that DRM is used to restrict what can be printed.

I suppose we'll also have to ensure that corporations have control, so they
can liaise with law enforcement agencies - after all, our safety will be at
stake without affirmative action.

Of course, there'll also be tangential effects: e.g. the technologies for
restriction will be able to be used to ensure that 3D printing IP can be
monitised ..

.. but of course there's absolutely _no way_ in the world that could be
anyone's primary concern. The powers that be are simply worried about our
safety.

------
forktheif
I'll admit I know next to nothing about this subject, but aren't the parts of
a gun which can be machine printed, also fairly easily manufactured using
widely available metal working tools?

Surely the hard parts of manufacturing a gun, would the the ammunition, where
you'd need propellant and percussion caps?

So, 3D printers don't really change things much, since they can only make the
parts that can already be fairly easily made, and can do nothing about
propellant or percussion caps.

~~~
roel_v
"but aren't the parts of a gun which can be machine printed, also fairly
easily manufactured using widely available metal working tools?"

No, it's quite different. A metal work workshop is not something the typical
urban criminal has access to. Yes, I realize there are many people in rural
areas who have such workshops, and shared workshops in urban settings, so
theoretically yadda yadda yadda, but the practical (socio-economic) reality is
that those who want firearms for criminal purposes in the vast majority of
cases do not have access to these tools, and/or lack the knowledge to reverse
engineer and adapt available plans for metal weapons, and manufacture them.
It's quite hard to make a metal gun using a traditional lathe and milling
machine, and even when using a high-end CNC.

3d printing on the other hand requires no more than the average high school
kid's computer knowledge, plus a few files downloaded from the internet. The
barrier to entry is orders of magnitude lower.

The costs are vastly lower, too - you can get started printing a gun (although
I don't think guns made on MakerBots today will actually work) for ~ 1000$.
That is not much more expensive than a weapon on the black markets costs (to
those who have access to such a market). You'd spend an order of magnitude
more on a metal workshop, and that's not even counting the materials and
auxiliary tools.

------
tomp
Assuming that most organized crime groups exist either to facilitate
prostitution, betting, or sell drugs, we don't we just legalize all of that
and "price them out of the market"?

~~~
roel_v
The guns mentioned in this article are not very useful in either one of those
3; at best in the 'peripheral' aspects of the drug business.

Apart from that, the reasons are different for all 3:

\- prostitution: grounds for prohibition are based on 2 'prongs' as it were:
the moral aspect, it's quite clearly a matter of fact that a large amount of
people find prostitution per se morally reprehensible. Secondly there is the
argument that many prostitutes are being forced into their work. Empirical
evidence shows in countries around the world that legalizing prostitution does
not (completely) take away human trafficking and sex slavery. So, the argument
is, if we prohibit prostitution, there will be less of that sort of suffering.

\- betting: this is based on a protect-people-against-themselves theory. Since
betting is addictive to some people, these have been many cases in the past
where people were driven to ruin by it. Furthermore, there are many 2nd degree
victims - the families and children of gambling addicts, society at large for
the damage they do to fund their addiction, etc. So again the reasoning is -
let's prohibit gambling, then these will go away.

\- drugs: well this is actually similar to betting; its effect might also
compromise somebodies' health, but the fundamental reason is protecting people
against themselves from something of which they cannot quite assess the
effects when they start on it, and are unable to detach themselves from when
they get into problems.

Then again, I think you and anybody else with a 'normal' intelligence are/is
perfectly capable of coming to these conclusions yourself, and you were just
deliberately being obtuse; but just to get this pseudo-anarchistic discussion
out of the way before it really gets started, I thought I'd point out the
obvious.

~~~
tomp
> Empirical evidence shows in countries around the world that legalizing
> prostitution does not (completely) take away human trafficking and sex
> slavery. So, the argument is, if we prohibit prostitution, there will be
> less of that sort of suffering.

But does legalizing at least _reduce_ human trafficking and sex slavery? If
so, then the inverse follows: by allowing prostitution, there is less of that
sort of suffering.

Prohibiting gambling: same thing - gambling happens regardless of whether it's
legal or not. If it's legal, the government can at least tax it significantly.

Prohibiting drugs: I don't think that the government is smarter than me; cars
are dangerous, and scalpels are dangerous, but we don't prohibit them, we
simply require people to educate themselves first before they can use them. I
think the same could be done with drugs; in fact, it would be better than the
current situation where noone really knows what effect drugs have.

> you were just deliberately being obtuse

Well, up until this point I thought your comment was very thoughtful, but here
it went from good to terrible; you know, people with "normal" intelligence can
disagree as well. Unfortunately I already up-voted you.

~~~
roel_v
Look, I'm not defending any of those positions, frankly I think most of them
are stupid, so I'm certainly not going to get sucked into a position arguing
for them. But is it really worth it to ask 'hmm, why would prostitution be
illegal?'. There have been 1000's of man-years of work put into that - start
at scholar.google.com, then continue in your local universities' library, and
one could spend every waking hour the next 40 years studying past discourse on
it and still not be done. Those questions have been rehashed and researched
1000's of times deeper than anything we could every write here. Masquerading
the questioning of the obvious as a question does not add to the vast majority
of discussions. But yay, let's reduce every news item to 'hmm, does morality
really exist?', and drown the actual new things about those items in
tangential hemming and hawing, because putting a little bit of effort into
trying to get some basic knowledge about a subject before partaking in a
public discussion is too much work.

Normally I wouldn't even has responded if it weren't for this

"you know, people with "normal" intelligence can disagree as well"

Of course, that's the _whole point_ of my comment, that it doesn't take much
empathy to see why some people would feel it just that society enforces a
prohibition of those 3 things! If even _I_ can understand why some people feel
that way (of course you'd have to know me IRL to get the implications of
stressing that), it shouldn't be hard or even take effort for a 4-9's
proportion of the general population to do so. By using a glib ' _I_ don't
see, within my moral framework, why they should be illegal, therefore it's
stupid that they are' argument, the GP is denying _exactly that_.

Then again I'm just a grumpy misanthrope so what I do know...

------
zimbatm
The article is really a stretched out version of a single piece of
information: all we know is that somebody might be creating a 3D printed gun.
How surprising !

Citing a "police raid" and making links to gangs is just a dramatization that
doesn't bring anything. Where's the evidence that there is a link to a
criminal activity instead of just being a hacker who's curious and got busted
because he order the wrong set of components from Amazon ?

~~~
martey
> _Citing a "police raid" and making links to gangs is just a dramatization
> that doesn't bring anything._

The article notes that the parts were seized as a part of the Greater
Manchester Police's "Operation Challenger", which targeted "drug dealers, loan
sharks, rogue landlords and counterfeit good suppliers." [1] It is likely that
the owner of these parts is was not targeted for creating guns on their 3D
printers, but for other reasons.

> _Where 's the evidence that there is a link to a criminal activity instead
> of just being a hacker who's curious and got busted because he order the
> wrong set of components from Amazon ?_

I think it is extremely doubtful that they just happened to buy plastic
components that could be used as a trigger and magazine from Amazon while
simultaneously owning a 3D printer (that could be used to construct said
components).

[1]: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
manchester-24660056](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-24660056)

~~~
tfinniga
> I think it is extremely doubtful that they just happened to buy plastic
> components that could be used as a trigger and magazine

Agreed. However, those parts aren't able to be used as a trigger or magazine.
One of them hooks onto the back of a 3d printer, holding the spool of plastic.
The other one can be attached to the print head to help feed the plastic into
the nozzle.

In no way can they be used as a trigger or magazine. Coincidentally, I have a
similar spool holder on my desk right now.

~~~
martey
I hope that the GMP's tests mentioned in the original article prove this.
Ideally, the BBC would update their article if this occurred, but I assume
they will not (based on previous articles that they have written that have
turned out to be incorrect).

At the same time, I think assuming that these parts were seized while their
owner was doing nothing wrong may be naive.

------
3838
thought it was easy for some people to get real guns in manchester, unless
those days are gone

~~~
noir_lord
Some people perhaps (career criminals with deep connections in the sphere).

I suspect it's a lot harder for your average man in the street.

~~~
JonnieCache
Even for career criminals it's vastly more difficult and expensive than the
newspapers would have you believe.

Hence:
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rebore](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rebore)

~~~
noir_lord
Oh undoubtably, one of the governments successes over the last decade has been
to get gun control back under control.

Crimes involving a gun are down by half over 10 years (they set up some
special task force to police firearms as well as working in Europe with
partner countries where the guns where coming from).

------
qwerta
When articles like this pops out, it means that soon 3D printers will get
regulated to oblivion.

UK is crazy, even pocketknife or pepper spray is forbidden. And this country
has one of highest violent crime rates in Europe.

~~~
retube
> UK is crazy, even pocketknife or pepper spray is forbidden. And this country
> has one of highest violent crime rates in Europe.

Umm, that entire sentence is total bullshit. UK has no way near the highest
violent crime rates in Europe. Look it up. Plus pepper sprays and pocket
knives are common place. You can buy them anywhere.

~~~
qwerta
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-
violent-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-
country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html)

search "pepper spray self defense":

    
    
        amazon.co.uk: 151 results, mostly books, none of them actually usefull
    
        amazon.com: 1,812 results

~~~
retube
The Daily Mail.... ha ha whatever.

------
veganarchocap
Of course it would be in Manchester wouldn't it... I promise it wasn't me.

------
veganarchocap
Wait... I hope that wasn't my dealer :(

------
TausAmmer
You silly, organized crime have guns, they are not playing with 3D printers...

------
Apocryphon
Begun, the clone wars have.

