Oh lord the sensationalism in this article. It’s like they’re predicting the end of the world should people get their hands on 3d printers. You can’t stop progress.

Also the prior post has to be one of the most ignorant things I have read in a while then again you tend to get that with liberals. Do some research before spreading BS on the interwebs.

It’s legal for a person in the US to make a firearm as long as they are legally able to own one. It does not need to be “registered”. There is no such thing on the federal level(thankfully). Waiting periods only exist in a few states and make absolutely no sense if a person already owns a gun. Several states also have constitutional carry so there is no requirement for any sort of training. They respect citizens freedom to be able to protect themselves unlike some police states(I’m looking at you NY). Many more states are moving in this direction as well. I have yet to hear where passing such a law has caused blood in the streets like sheeple like to spout.

When the price point makes sense I’ll probably buy a 3d printer and every time I print an AR lower a liberal sh*ts their pants.

In general, plastics aren’t suitable to replace metal gun parts, especially moving parts. Specifically, 3d printed materials are weak against tensile and sheer forces on the Z axis. This is because material is deposited layer by layer. The bond between one layer and the next is weaker than the bond on the X and Y axis of the current layer to itself. Not ideal when you’re talking about the kinds of stresses a modern firearm must withstand.

The bottom line is; until 3d printed materials have performance characteristics similar to the various alloys used in firearms, it simply won’t be possible to swap-in 3d printed parts and expect the gun to actually function. You’d have as much luck whittling the part out of wood.

Oh, and we should hope that all the crazies that use semi-auto rifles convert them to full-auto. Why? Simple really, they won’t be able to carry enough ammo to kill many people. Control is near impossible unless you are a good size AND well trained, and even then the control you have isn’t all that good. Also at 10+ rounds a second they will be reloading every 3-5 seconds(remember they made a big deal about the reload times being so far apart because of the large capacity mags. Well with full-auto they will have tons of chances to disarm the person while he is reloading. There is a reason why the military went to the 3 round burst mode as standard instead of full-auto. Inability to hit your target and the rapid ammo consumption.

But for those that (correctly) mention that many states don’t register guns. Remember this, if you have a background check done through the government you damn well better consider yourself registered. They have your name, address and all other ID info linking you to buying that gun. you can bet the feds registered your ass.

The fact is that the overwhelming majority of firearms in the United States are undocumented and totally legal, since there’s no good reason for most states to implement registration. Firearm registration has proven to be tedious, expensive, and ineffective at deterring, detecting or preventing crime in the states that use it.

Guns in the hands of criminals are a fact of life. No law can change that fact. Guns in the hands of responsible, law-abiding citizens is banned in many of our major cities. A home-printable AR receiver of questionable reliability is the least of our concerns.

This is simply not true. Perhaps modifying a rifle to be an open breech slamfire auto isn’t the most difficult thing in the world, but it will be unreliable and unsafe to operate. True full auto conversion is far from trivial. Go check the tors for auto conversion documents. It is not a matter of filing something down or removing some mythical pin. Modern semi-autos are designed specifically to make full auto conversions difficult. (For the AR-15 there is a little thing called a lightning link that claims to be a drop in full auto conversion but results seem spotty and it requires an SP1 bolt carrier)

Beyond all that, full auto is an almost useless feature of any firearm short of a SAW or similar mounted machine gun used for support and cover. Jamming and feeding become more common at high rates of fire, and aiming becomes spray and pray. Hollywood loves to glorify automatic weapons (someone hailing a storm of bullets is just better cinema than someone carefully aiming and popping off a handful of well placed shots) but the reality is that it’s rarely used by anyone who knows what the hell they’re doing.

making any rifle fully automatic is not as hard as some would believe, all you need is a metal file and the know how. that said, this tech is amazing and should not be restricted just because some people will use it for illicit reasons.