OK, so somebody made a gun with a 3D printer out of plastic. It won’t show up on the metal detectors that are now everywhere. But it didn’t work very well. It blew up on it’s third shot, and it was a single-shot that took forever to load, anyway.
I’ve got some nice surgical stainless steel in my leg, which I keep getting told “no, that won’t set it off”, yet I beep anyway. That steel has sufficient tensile strength to make a decent gun barrel out of, or they wouldn’t have put it in my goddamn leg in the first fucking place. If that doesn’t set off your alarms, why is anyone worrying about a single-use plastic barrel, when they (terrorists) could use the surgical stainless steel my doctor used in my leg, and it’ll be so much better than the plastic the 3D printer will ever produce? Seriously? I could cut off my leg, and forge that shit into a gun barrel. But you can’t detect it in my leg? Are you really serious about that? And we’re trusting you fools for our security? But I beep anyway, and you wave me through, because of my brass belt buckle? EVERY FUCKING TIME I COME IN FROM HAVING A FUCKING SMOKE?
What are you ‘Security Theater’ morons even there for? How does your presence protect us? And what are you protecting us from?
I’m not really concerned about the plastic gun prototype. I’m slightly concerned about what the technology that can make a plastic gun might make possible ten years from now.
Give me a chunk of that steel, and I can machine it into a gun barrel. With tools that shitloads of people have. In their garage. Like me. And it could have been done 100 years ago.
The question is, if my metal leg won’t show up on your ‘metal detector’ (or at least, you can’t tell the difference between a metal leg, and a gun, and wave me off when you see my brass belt buckle), why are you bothering me? Why am I being bothered by such utterly useless ‘security’? What purpose does it serve?
This is really a rant about idiotic and useless Security Theater. Oh, yeah. Just like the thread title.
It ain’t my fault the subject of 3D printing is inherently more interesting than yet another rant about security theater. Yeah, yeah, yeah, bureaucratic bullshit, etc.
Can I ask, OP, what the fuck are you talking about? You work somewhere where there’s a metal detector. Got it. It sets off the metal detector. Got it.
What does that have to do with plastic guns or forging your leg into a gun? Do you work in a metal shop that’s protected by magnetometers and X-ray machines? Are the security people frisking you for plastic guns?
I don’t know if me being “slightly concerned” crosses the line into agita, but I can picture 3D printing (or the 2023 version thereof) being used to make components that now require some skill, i.e. the timer mechanisms for improvised explosive devices or mailbombs. The number of people killed will still be trivial compared to the casualties from drunk driving or straight-up domestic murder.
As an example, the devices used by Ted Kaczynski showed gradual technical refinement as well as individual quirks that might have identified him (if his bother had not). I picture someone who simply downloads and prints components, getting a generic bomb that is lethal from the start.
Not likely, I admit. It’s more of a technical curiosity to me than a serious concern, I guess.
Anyway, security guards are bugging the OP. Rawr! Fazzbazzle!
Another “tomorrow” was that anyone with a color printer or copier would be able to turn out his/her own money.
I don’t see 3D print tech getting to the point where anyone can make anything better than a zip gun, and we aren’t exactly hiding in our homes because of junk-built guns now.
In theory, you’re right. In practice… thanks for the laugh.
At about the level of zip guns. There is no electronic print technology that produces truly convincing bills - ones that would pass unnoticed by a reasonably experienced teller or even a suspicious convenience store clerk.
Back in the day, I found some of the best counterfeit bills being circulated (engraved plate work) by touch alone, counting stacks. It’s not hard and while there are a few exotic papers available that closely resemble bill stock, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. The best printers today can do no better, they just don’t require an engraving expert to get to “almost good enough.”
I have no expectation that “printed guns” will ever be different.
They won’t be. As with a photocopied or laser-printed fake banknote, the scale will be small, somebody printing off a $20 and buying cigarettes with them, or something, not a large-scale effort to undermine the nation’s currency or even to support organized crime. Printed guns will be similarly one-off, made for single uses and not to equip a freemen militia or anything similarly grandiose.
I figure sooner or later, somebody will kill somebody with a home-printed gun while under the impression that the weapon is untraceable and overlooking banal evidence like witnesses and fingerprints. There won’t be a subsequent crime wave with printed weapons, but there will be an awful lot of scare-mongering about it.
Nope. Took my mother to the ER. They had ‘security’ which required you to take everything out of your pockets, get your Driver’s License scanned, wear this sticker, go through the metal detector, sign over your first-born child, etc. etc. I told them I would beep because of my metal leg. They said ‘No, that stuff doesn’t set it off’. Yes, yes it did. It’s been setting metal detectors off for the past year and a half since it was planted in my leg. But if they’re right, IF they’re right, then why can’t terrorists make their guns out of that kind of steel? Why is plastic, made with 3D printers such a security threat, when any gun barrel you make out of it will only be Coke can sized, and still only be good for .22LR, but if they’re right about the surgical stainless steel alloy that wound up in my leg isn’t a problem? Seriously. Give me a 2 cm diameter chunk of that stuff and two weeks (it can be done faster, but I’m a lazy sonofabitch) and I can make you a gun barrel with chamber for .45 ACP or .44 mag. And it won’t blow up after the third shot.
The ‘security’ is ridiculous, even on it’s face. It’s even more ridiculous when the ‘security’ people are telling me that my steel leg doesn’t matter, and waving me through, just because I told them about it. Why are they even bothering us over shit they can do nothing at all about? It’s the ‘security theater’ that pisses me off.
Nope, doesn’t require a machine shop. I don’t have one, but if you want a gun, I can make you one. Not that I will, but, hey, whatever…
Not really, no. And the ‘Security Theater’ we are being subjected to doesn’t protect us from even that non-existent threat, since it doesn’t really exist.
ISTM that you’re conflating lax hospital security that seems more for show than anything else, with the possibility that someday soon plastic guns might actually be effective, and be smuggle-able even into places where they take security quite seriously, and rightly so.