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I see two problems with the article:

1. For the foreseeable future there will be no 3D printer which can print explosives. Therefore it seems hard to actually print ammunition.

2. Guns have rather many parts which are under high mechanical stress. Therefore 3D printable gun designs will be rather crappy for quite some time.

Both of these points render the problem of 3D printable weapons rather smaller than the control of carbines.



The hard part of all of this is primers. Virtually everything else is straightforward (propellant is hard, but not as hard as primers. Reloading from infinite primers and powder is essentially something a one-armed blind person can do with a reloading press.

Most of the parts of guns are not under much mechanical stress, and the parts which are, tend to not be the regulated items. A convicted felon could buy commercially made barrels all day long (they're not firearms or in any way controlled), which are probably the firearm part with the greatest difficulty of manufacture, along with springs.


Of course, one can manufacture a gun from a 3D printer plus some additional stuff. But there is a qualitative difference between 'click print' and you get everything you need and a project to get everything you need to build a gun, which utilizes a 3D printer ( and some chemistry and some additional metalwork). After all, it is today possible to manufacture a (completely unregistered) gun yourself utilizing a CNC cutter and some craftsmanship.


3d printed flintlock.


Reloading ammunition is really easy.


Yeah, you'd have to go to metal shop for some of this. "Download, click, print" model won't work for guns for a bit, but you could get there with some pre-manufactured metal parts, or just manufacture them yourself.




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