Another gun bust here

[3D Printing Tips and Tricks]

For the third time within two years the local paper did a story about someone who was printing lower receivers. What is interesting in this last one though is they mentioned how they were caught. It seems the police were monitoring incoming packages from China!

So somehow the police can figure out that a package from China has the essential metal parts needed for making these weapons. That gave them the reason to get the search warrant. X-ray at customs? Hmmmm.

[Jody Harris]

I wonder why the cops were spying on this person. Without more information, there's no way to tell if this was an innocent person, or a known gang arms dealer.

Think carefully

On Thursday, May 30th, 2024 at 8:56 AM, 3D Printing Tips and Tricks <3d-printing-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

For the third time within two years the local paper did a story about someone who was printing lower receivers. What is interesting in this last one though is they mentioned how they were caught. It seems the police were monitoring incoming packages from China!

So somehow the police can figure out that a package from China has the essential metal parts needed for making these weapons. That gave them the reason to get the search warrant. X-ray at customs? Hmmmm.

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[3D Printing Tips and Tricks]

I'm thinking that customs runs all packages past an X-ray machine and it can pattern match for the parts needed. A scanner on the belt path. As such customs would be scanning ALL packages. Hey, I'm OK with that.

[Chris Albertson]

If that were the case then customs would be finding every such package.   You have to figure that the Chinese company has to sell many thousands of packages to stay in business.  Customs finds only 1 out of the thousands that are shipped.

[TobyCWood]

“to stay in business”
An incorrect assumption. China is a Communist country ruled unilaterally.

Chinese companies are not in business as we understand business. A business is denoted as a human endeavor meant to incur profit. That’s not the purpose or goal of Chinese companies. Chinese companies do not primarily serve their investors, they serve the state which can also be the actual investor. When individuals invest and build profitable enterprises in China ( like Jack Ma did with Alibaba), the state eventually steps in on them. The goal of a Chinese company is to exist and function for the state and when it serves the state they operate at a loss in order to put all competition out of biz. So they will make parts in the thousands regardless of demand and dump them. We in the West make the mistake repeatedly by thinking that Chinese companies work the way capitalist country based countries work. They don’t. Not at all.

[3D Printing Tips and Tricks]

Well, they found three coming here in the past six months or so.

My guess is that there are branches along the paths through customs and customs can when needed monitor all packages as needed along a specific path. Now if I lived in the L.A. basin I could see that the throughput my be too excessive to check all packages, but here the population is  quite a bit smaller.

On Saturday, June 1, 2024 at 11:19:37 AM UTC-7 alberts...@gmail.com wrote:

[Kamesh M Sundaram]

Customs 3d scans bags nowadays and can check composition and volume of anything. Big airports are now adopting this technology. 

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[Chris Albertson]

Have you ever been to China, or delt? with the companies there?      The government absolutely does not give a hoot what these small companies do on Aliexppress.    

In fact, a very common insult used by Chinese citizens against the Chinese government is “They are Communist in name only”.  This is very true.   A better description of China is “The Wild West”.  It is more like a country ruled by the most extremist American conservatives who want to abolish all “regulations” so they can just make more money. ("What do you mean I can’t dump my pig manure in the river?”)  That is modern China.

OK it is slightly different with the larger mega-corporations as they are big enough to have some visibility. There, labor laws get enforced, sometimes if there is massive abuse.  But the people on Aliexppress are literally mom and pop working from home or small offices.   Most go bust but more spring up to take their place.  I can absolutely say that no one in the government bothers to give a hoot and tax evasion runs rampant and is not enforced.  As said “The Wild West.”

You forget the vast size of China. It is four times the population of the US but their government  spends only 60% of what the US government spends.  It is a MUCH, much smaller government per person then we have here.  And contrary to what you might think wages or not so low.    Minimum wage for factory work is about $1,200 per month.  The average family of four makes about $40K.  Why?  The most common university degree is engineering.  Most don’t work in those factories.  Yes they buy cars, and computers just like we do.

The government there has far less resources to spend so they look at what they feel matters, the big guys, and ignore most of everything else.

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[Petr Ptacek]

Chris, thank you. That is a very accurate depiction of China today.

Toby, you could not be further away from the truth.

I would also like to add that they do give a shit a hoot (borrowed from Chris) about whether they are breaking laws shipping to other countries.

They will sell you anything you are willing to pay for and declare it as anything you or they want to get through the customers.

Commonly, even reputable biggish companies will offer you the option to lie on the manifest or waybill to make it easier for you/them to get it through the customs free and undisturbed.

It is as wild commerce as it gets.

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[3D Printing Tips and Tricks]

The sellers of these parts are not breaking any laws. There are no laws that states these parts can’t be imported. None. The scans are used to get search warrants since they indicate multiple weapons manufacturing which is breaking the law… but not fir the seller it’s the buyer who is busted for making and selling ghost guns.

[markni...@gmail.com]

Andy is correct, the only regulated component on a firearm is the reciever, which is required to contain the serial number.

All other components are classified as "parts" with no restrictions.

Note that some individual States are starting to regulate some parts, like high capacity magazines and some states prohbit partially completed receivers, whether or not they contain serial numbers.

[3D Printing Tips and Tricks]

FYI...

3d-printing-tips and TobyCwood... are both me.

I switch from one to the other because for reasons I can't figure when I post as 3d-printing-... it bounces as spam.

[3D Printing Tips and Tricks]

Regardless... per the comments made by Chris and Petr...
I actually do not disagree with what was written... it's just that it's incomplete. Yes it comes off as lawless or rule-less to us at the buyer and individual Ali seller, but after more than ten years of working with dozens of sellers to run my biz (which I've since closed) I was given insights as to how they work. Many of them I've gotten to know... many of them I don't want to know. Yes there ARE rules, but these rules are rules which don't exist in our society only theirs. Alternatively its the same the other way around we have rules here that they don't. Their society has grown more and more repressive during the past 10 years or so to the point now that they use cameras everywhere with facial recognition and use what they deem as inappropriate behavior to dole out the privilege to travel, do biz, etc. The party bosses dictate what is what and they fall in line with the state.

Seller businesses over there come and go real quick. They make a buck dumping stuff they've gotten from the big vertical engine they have there. It's that vertical supply engine which will keep them very competitive as the individual earnings there increase.