This was on Bill Maher last night, and I honestly felt ashamed for the liberals present.
One lady went on explaining "who'd want that? Who'd want a
gun printer?" and so on and so forth.
I think the idea of guns being "easy" to make is bad, really, but it's also not quite as bad as many make it out, and such reactions are a quite nice summary. People see a "gun printer". They don't see a socket-wrench printer, they don't see a frying pan printer, they don't see a hip-replacement printer. No, they see a gun printer. This technology is getting the gun stigma attached to it. Ensuring people don't run around making as many guns as they want is important, yes, but when you must either get a government license to use this technology or submit your blueprints for review before you can get it made, it's fucked up. This could eventually become a significant equalizer in the world of manufacturing. If your factory can make one item a thousand times on monday, and a hundred other items ten times each on tuesday, that would surely give your factory a competitive edge over the other guy who can only make the same stuff every day. When, eventually, it's not a lot less cost effective to make something in some 3D printing factory than it is to have molds and patterns made and then have it injection molded a million times in China, manufacturing in the west might become slightly more competitive again. Especially when the long tail is getting served, which mass production in China isn't quite as good at (what with a container ship still taking weeks to make the trip). But with the gun stigma, all the incremental steps that go in between for this technology would be hobbled. Fucking heck.
As regards that Bill Maher show, they didn't mention specifics, but Zachary Quinto mentioned it hat "one titanium part". Couldn't find much about it on the google just now, except that the barrel in the CAD file appears to be a smoothbore, and at least one mention that it actually appears to be plastic, too.
If it is, in fact, plastic, that term "single shot pistol" would probably be over-appropriate, wouldn't it? As for the mention of titanium... probably not the barrel.
At least I don't see it in the pictures:
While I was in rehab after my hip surgery, I had a conversation about titanium and metal detectors with another patient. He was a sports-shooter, so he knew guns. He made his living as an engineer for a company that makes wheel-nuts and bolts for BMW and some major truck manufacturers. In particular, he oversees the heat-treatment of the raw metal. So he knows metals. He also had had ample chance to test out the reaction of metal detectors to his own titanium bits, and they don't notice them. I wondered whether the authorities weren't concerned with titanium guns getting smuggled aboard airplanes. Nope, they wouldn't be, because the first bullet fired through a titanium barrel would rip that barrel apart. Titanium isn't nearly ductile enough to survive the pressure and that bullet getting pressed through there, it's downright brittle. Even if the barrel was made from some ductile non-ferrous material and only lined with titanium, for the rifling, that wouldn't survive the first bullet, either. I don't know enough about guns to judge this myself, and we never studied titanium much when I was at university (engineering is steel, you only use other stuff when you have absolutely no way of using steel), all I recall is that it's modulus of elasticity was, like it's density, about halfway between aluminum and steel, but it's ridiculously hard, so brittleness does make sense. And yet, they insist on using a cordless electric screwdriver for putting the titanium screws into bone, rather than a torque wrench. That engineer and I had a good round of dumping on the quacks on that account, broken screws in bones weren't new to him, either.
If there were absolutely anything to be afraid of, don't you think I would have worn pants?
I said I have a big stick.
