
UK police mistakenly believed they found 3D printed gun in raid - kisamoto
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24467-uks-first-3d-printed-gun-is-not-what-it-seems.html#.UmpXVZSxOiI
======
kh_hk
The most important quote in the article:

    
    
        "It does look like the MakerBot part," says Stuart Offer of 3D-printing firm 3T 
        RPD in Newbury, UK. "These 3D printed guns seem to have hit the headlines, but
        I've no idea why they take off so much," he says. "A little engineer in his 
        shed with a mill down the bottom of the garden could make a proper metal barrel
        capable of firing a high-velocity bullet."
    

And that's what I have been discussing with friends. Is printing a 3D gun that
much easier than building a proto-gun with metal parts?

I think they hit the headlines because the whole "the future is scary" appeals
to the masses, or at least, "3D printed guns" sounds like something out of a
movie (for instance, "In the Line of Fire").

~~~
sdfx
I think what's scary to some is the perceived ease of production. Just
download some files and hit print. The engineer in his shed at least has to
know what he's doing.

I'm not saying they are right and I have also no idea how hard it is to build
an actual (metal)weapon from scratch, but the notion of "anyone can do this"
seems to be a big factor in most stories.

~~~
alecsmart1
Have a look at this documentary-

[http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DconsfGsXyA](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DconsfGsXyA)

It's extremely scary. In most countries, the right to owning ammunition is not
allowed. The thought that in the future, my neighbor could make a gun using a
home 3d printer makes me feel very unsafe.

~~~
anExcitedBeast
Your commute to work every day is much more dangerous than an armed neighbor
will ever be.

Source: survived countless armed neighbors and lost plenty of friends to cars.
Also, statistics.

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robmcm
_" Police in the UK this morning claimed to have seized parts of a 3D-printed
gun, but it looks as if they may have jumped to the wrong conclusion."_

Really annoyed they didn't use the phrase, _" jumped the gun"_.

It's a Friday and everything...

~~~
MartinCron
"Jumped the gun" has a different meaning and can't be used interchangeably
with "jumped to the wrong conclusion" without further stilted language.

This is what journalistic restraint looks like.

~~~
vidarh
Since when has the British press _ever_ worried about letting stilted language
get between them and a poor gag.

~~~
MartinCron
That's why I'm admiring their restraint this time!

------
diydsp
The egg on the police's face is nothing compared to their opportunity to scare
the world with their fear-quote about "organized crime inventing the next
generation of weapons with 3-d printers."

...As if 3-d printers are the next generation of weapons, and not their own
government in cahoots with my own government. I'll quote Company Flow here:
"It takes crazy engineering to fuck with anything from quantum physics to
thought transmitters."

------
JoeAltmaier
"...not yet possible to print bullets" \- ha! Its not yet possible to print
anything but little plastic junk. If you could 'print' bullets, you could just
make them anyway; you'd have to have all the raw materials at hand.

~~~
mytrash
I know you are talking about hobby/consumer level printing here but it is
entirely possible to print things other than little plastic junk. Metal SLS
printing is very capable today.[1] Printing materials such as tungsten would
make a very capable (however impractically expensive) bullet.

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zApmGFDA6ow&noredirect=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zApmGFDA6ow&noredirect=1)

------
grumblepeet
In the UK we don't let a thing like "the truth" get in the way of a good
story. Some bits of plastic = major news event. Manchester police should be
concentrating on the real guns that are circulating in that city. Last time I
was there a taxi driver told me that the police let the gangs shoot each
other, and only really get involved when they turn on innocent bystanders.
Sounds like they have enough to do without making problems where they don't
exist.

~~~
talmand
That cannot possibly be true. In the US we are told that the UK is a utopia
with no guns and everyone loves each other. You know, because guns are illegal
there and all.

~~~
DanBC
The UK has one of the lowest gun crime rates in the world.

~~~
talmand
I've also heard that the UK collects such statistics in different ways than as
compared to the US.

For instance, my understanding is that in the UK a death by gunshot is not
reported as a homicide until someone is convicted of said homicide. Even then,
it is reported as a homicide for the year of the conviction, not of the death.
Granted, I don't recall the source for this so I could be completely wrong. On
the other hand, if someone is shot to death in the US and it doesn't appear to
be self-inflicted, it's a homicide. If the person was shot in self-defense,
it's justified homicide. Another granted though, this is a very simplistic
explanation.

Anyway, my point being is that if two countries don't collect and categorize
the data the same way then any type of comparison is pointless.

I've also seen the thought tossed out there that if you remove gang-related
violence from the US statistics then the gun crime rate drops dramatically.
Meaning that in most places in the US the gun crime rate is mostly on par with
the safest places in the world. It's just the gang problems in major cities
are elevating the averages.

~~~
DanBC
> my point being is that if two countries don't collect and categorize the
> data the same way then any type of comparison is pointless.

That's a very good point. I was being lazy and just going by a single line in
a wikipedia article, so maybe I'm totally wrong.

We seem to be doing better with gang gun violence.
[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-winning-
ba...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-winning-battle-
against-inner-city-gun-crime-8463957.html)

Police are not routinely armed, so officer involved shootings are rare.
Although we've had some really awful examples -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_United_Kingdom#Fatal_incidents)

~~~
talmand
Well, I wouldn't necessarily dispute the claim that the UK seems to have a
better handle on gun crimes overall as compared to the US. It's just that the
difficulties in doing so are quite different between the two.

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tehwalrus
If someone prints a part from a gun design, and then uses it for some
unrelated purpose, would that be a crime under UK law?

I think it wouldn't be, in fact, because plenty of things are "weapons" if
used in one way and "not weapons" (and therefore legal to carry on the street)
when used another way (prime example: not illegal to carry kitchen knives home
from the shops, totally illegal to wave it around in the street.)

~~~
DanBC
Some guns and some parts of guns are banned, and this is an absolute offence.
You find a gun in the attic and take it to the police? That's an offence.
Having a part of a gun and suing it for something else would fall under that
law. (I don't think all gun parts are covered).

Knives are covered under a different law.

~~~
tehwalrus
then we clearly need a new law - if the police can't tell the difference
between a 3D printer part and a gun part (or, indeed, a 3D printer part _can_
be used in a gun, which is possible I suppose) then the existing law bans such
3D printers, which was clearly not its intention!

~~~
pjc50
This gets sorted out in court. All that's happened here is the police have
seized some things under PACE as part of an unrelated raid and put out an
excitable press release.

------
Zmetta
" _...it demonstrates that organised(sic) crime groups are acquiring
technology...to produce the next generation of weapons._ "

Do people really think that some relatively low resolution plastic extrusion
will be used to manufacturer high tech weapons?

~~~
leephillips
Two things that might interest you:

(1) "organised" is the most common spelling in the UK and is not incorrect
anywhere;

(2) when you use "sic" inside a quotation, you put it in square brackets, to
show that it's not part of the original quotation but something added. Also,
if the quote is in italics you set the "sic" in upright type, and _vice versa_
, because it is a foreign (Latin) word.

Otherwise, good point.

------
thom
The wise assassin disguises his 3D printed gun parts as 3D printing machine
parts.

------
ye
I'm not a gun supporter, but the anti-gun crowd lost.

Trying to control it through violent raids will be as successful as trying to
stop people printing their own books on their own printers.

Criminals who want to have guns will have them. End of story. The future has
arrived.

And it's not just guns. Assault rifles, military-grade miniguns, everything
will be soon available to anybody.

To the people who say "oh, anybody could do with with a few metal pipes and
some machinery", it's not even close to pressing a "print" button and waiting
a couple of hours.

~~~
growupkids
Isn't that the point of DDs plastic gun project? To point out gun control
can't work in a world with DIY mad easy?

