What is illegal?

[TobyCWood]

So thanks to Mark Cohen being a total idiot... we now have to move yet again to another place. Thats OK... I'll be sure to tell my podcast audience where to go and Mark? He knows where he can go as far as I am concerned.

So what IS illegal?

Is it illegal to 3D Print a gun? NO! It is NOT ILLEGAL for a private U.S. citizen to produce a weapon on their own. 

Is it illegal to have files that will print a gun? NO! It is NOT illegal for a U.S. citizen to have files in the U.S. that will produce a gun.

Is it illegal to own a 3D Printed gun? No! It is not illegal for a U.S. citizen to own a 3D printed gun so long as they meet the rules, regulations and laws of their local jurisdiction.

Is it legal to discuss making 3D Printed guns? WTF??? We can say whatever we want in a free society!!! FIRST AMENDMENT!

So what IS illegal?

IT IS ILLEGAL TO BROADCAST BLUEPRINTS OR DESIGN RELATED DOCUMENTS WHICH WILL AID IN THE PRODUCTION OF GUNS. "Broadcast" as in allowing the material to LEAVE THE U.S. 

So... internet file sharing of stl files of guns is NOT legal.

However,  it is LEGAL to go to a friends house with a thumb drive and copy the files. It IS legal to email the files from one U.S. citizen to another U.S. citizen.

The above is NOT my opinion. In my opinion there SHOULD be some controls over the amount and degree of deadly weapons that a free society can get their hands on. But the gun itself? Forget that. They are out there and they are staying out there and nothing can be done about it outside of major armed combat.

What CAN be done to control who has major deadly force at their fingertips? I say... control the bullets. Use chemical fingerprints in the powder, formulate the powder so it only stays active for a limited time. Only allow sales in limited amounts and require the buyer to provide fingerprinted ID and proof of financial responsibility... as in INSURANCE against accidents or illegal use. but that's just my opinion.

[Michael Davidson]

I sent him a private message explaining that making a firearm for your personal use was not illegal under federal law.  His response was to point out a story of a fellow in New York getting arrested for printing a gun.  I honestly sat in my chair and laughed.  If we are going to use New York City as the standard, then the soda I had last night when I had dinner with Kurt (we met up on his way through Utah) was also illegal!  Oh well.  Some folks can not separate their opinion from reality.

Heck!  There are a lot of things you and I would disagree on.  Doesn't mean we can't talk about them!

Thanks for letting me join the group.  Hopefully more folks wander in as well.

[TobyCWood]

Here's the story:

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/24/651158206/lion-king-puppet-technician-arrested-after-allegedly-printing-3d-gun-at-theater

The guy was printing something personal on what I assume was his employer's 3D Printer. Without explicit permission that could be grounds for dismissal in and of itself. Having him arrested? That's kind of crazy.  Note at the end the NPR writer states the actual laws involved none of which supported the arrest. No doubt the case will be thrown out and if it were me I'd sue for false arrest. It's not a gun until it is completely assembled. My bet... the guy was told not to do it and he ignored what he was told, so they called the police.

[TobyCWood]

...and I'd say that this is the end of Cody Wilson's story!

https://gizmodo.com/3d-printed-gun-activist-cody-wilson-resigns-from-defens-1829317373

[Michael Davidson]

Wow.  That is a pretty good example of what not to do. 

[Michael Davidson]

On a different note, how did the Alloy 910 work out?

[Steven Butterfield]

I haven't been following this story and I don't know much about this guy but it does seem awfully convenient timing to charge him with sexual assault. And who would create a croud funding sure called hatereon? Smells fishy if you ask me.

[TobyCWood]

Yeah, it looks kinda dicey to me too.  It would not be that hard to bait him with an underaged hooker while in a foreign country and then use it to discredit him... However, if he did the deed then, well...

[TobyCWood]

Using 910 for printing the Liberator worked quite well, although I have yet to test what I produced. I will need to add the requisite metal and somehow add a serial number before I attempt to get it licensed... which is part of this exercise... then a test at a range. But based on my experience with ordinance (My resume is mostly DoD contracting) it will do the job, repeatedly. Accuracy? Probably pretty low given the barrel design, but still deadly none the less at close range.

My opinion... controlling the dissemination of the files is a good thing and I agree with it, but it won't stop someone determined to get a weapon and do harm. Heck all they have to do is go rent a truck and they have a way to hurt a lot of people.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Toby, he slept with a teenage girl in a hotel in Texas for $500 cash. There's chatlogs/emails, video of them entering and leaving the hotel, etc. Then apparently he fled to Taiwan when the girl's parents told the police? 

Sometimes, crappy people are just crappy people. Gun debate aside, Cody sure looks like a super shitty person from where I'm sitting. 

[Steven Butterfield]

I had only scanned the gizmodo article which made me think there is no way this guy could be that stupid and made me wonder if this could be a way to stop him from distributing stl files for 3d printed guns. From the sounds of it he really was that stupid.

[TobyCWood]

Yeah... pretty crappy. I thought it happened in Taiwan. Screw him.

[TobyCWood]

A kind of related story about a maker that makes his own ammunition:

http://santarosapressdemocrat.ca.newsmemory.com/?publink=036c8dc67

I note that there is nothing stated about the powder he uses. Seems like he does not and cannot produce the powder on his own. A cable TV show challenged the Star Trek episode "Arena" where Capt Kirk makes his own gunpowder. It can't be done all that easily.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Gunpowder can be made, but what you make in your kitchen probably won't work all that well. You can make something functional enough to shoot a musket ball or whatever using readily-available chemicals and materials, but you won't get the mixing consistency and grain size distribution and all that quite right. 

[Sean C]

Finally, a discussion I can at least marginally contribute to! (I'm one of those hangers-on referenced in another thread - too new to 3dp to be very useful around here at the moment). I'd put home brew pistol powder in the same category as printed guns: possible, but not a great idea if you want any sort of reliability/accuracy.

Ryan is absolutely correct that home made black powder (not smokeless, which is used in most modern firearms - that requires a little more advanced chemistry) is doable. In fact, it's a relatively common practice in hobbyist pyrotechnics. The source of the charcoal has a big impact on performance, though, so you'd have a tough time producing a consistent product. 20% variability in your muzzle velocity isn't the end of the world for a firework, but it'll string shots all over the place in a firearm (and potentially endanger your hand, if you happen to mix a batch way hotter than average). BP also tends to burn slower than smokeless, so you may run into problems trying to build enough pressure/velocity in a pistol-length barrel.

[Sean Cutshall]

(Apologies if I strayed too far from the purpose of this group - I've been desperately looking for a way to contribute, and may have gotten a little overly excited to talk about something within my wheelhouse)

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 2:33 PM Sean C <sean.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

Finally, a discussion I can at least marginally contribute to! (I'm one of those hangers-on referenced in another thread - too new to 3dp to be very useful around here at the moment). I'd put home brew pistol powder in the same category as printed guns: possible, but not a great idea if you want any sort of reliability/accuracy.

Ryan is absolutely correct that home made black powder (not smokeless, which is used in most modern firearms - that requires a little more advanced chemistry) is doable. In fact, it's a relatively common practice in hobbyist pyrotechnics. The source of the charcoal has a big impact on performance, though, so you'd have a tough time producing a consistent product. 20% variability in your muzzle velocity isn't the end of the world for a firework, but it'll string shots all over the place in a firearm (and potentially endanger your hand, if you happen to mix a batch way hotter than average). BP also tends to burn slower than smokeless, so you may run into problems trying to build enough pressure/velocity in a pistol-length barrel.

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[Kurt at VR-FX]

Sean - what the HELL?!?!? No need to apologize - not at all! Your comments were perfectly inline with those of Ryan. And, of course, Ryan is a bit of a "Big Wig" around these parts. Hell - he wrote the book on 3D Printing. Well, OK - he wrote A book. I can't wait to get my hands on it. Rumor is - there may be a Pic if some dude's Big Ass Dragon project in there! Oh wait - that's MY Dragon...

;-)

-K-

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[TobyCWood]

No problem!

On Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 11:59:39 AM UTC-7, Sean C wrote:

(Apologies if I strayed too far from the purpose of this group - I've been desperately looking for a way to contribute, and may have gotten a little overly excited to talk about something within my wheelhouse)

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 2:33 PM Sean C <sean.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

Finally, a discussion I can at least marginally contribute to! (I'm one of those hangers-on referenced in another thread - too new to 3dp to be very useful around here at the moment). I'd put home brew pistol powder in the same category as printed guns: possible, but not a great idea if you want any sort of reliability/accuracy.

Ryan is absolutely correct that home made black powder (not smokeless, which is used in most modern firearms - that requires a little more advanced chemistry) is doable. In fact, it's a relatively common practice in hobbyist pyrotechnics. The source of the charcoal has a big impact on performance, though, so you'd have a tough time producing a consistent product. 20% variability in your muzzle velocity isn't the end of the world for a firework, but it'll string shots all over the place in a firearm (and potentially endanger your hand, if you happen to mix a batch way hotter than average). BP also tends to burn slower than smokeless, so you may run into problems trying to build enough pressure/velocity in a pistol-length barrel.

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[John Borlaug]

That is too Rich! ( the full story) Thanks for my 'rejoin' and I've been playing too much Radio Control bird stuff to 'play' my other favorite hobby ( I'm from the Civil War ya know! :D) Now I need to relink with Toby and your podcasting! Heckn's what a winter- I just turned on my Itunes 2 days ago for the first time since last fall! :(  I was getting lots of saturation of infos of 3DP, so I had 'backed off' a bit! :D tormentyalater! 

[James Murphy]

I'm late to the party, I know... just a couple thoughts.

You can make very high-quality black powder. I learned it in middle school (middle 80s) from an incredibly popular paper-bound equivalent of today's "dark web." You can't just mix three ingredients.. it involves careful college-level chemistry lab practices, you need to purify your ingredients, and it is a little too dangerous to do in your kitchen or basement... but when done right it works just as well as store-bought, sometimes better. My parents let me run a toaster oven on a really long extension cord in the middle of the driveway... they were awesome. :)

Also, true black powder is very destructive to barrels. I use Pyrodex.

And as an aside to the ITAR thing.. you can email an ITAR-rated document, but I wouldn't.. because you are still on the hook for an illegal export if somehow that email gets accessed by a foreign national. It's also a no-no to provide a FORNAT with an ITAR-rated document that's freely available online, like on Wikileaks or a torrent tracker. I was given this tidbit by the security chief at my defense-contractor employer when we gave our customers some military documents I'd dug up with google. The documents I provided were OK, but I was advised not to share the link because other files on the same site were not exportable. In general, be super paranoid when dealing with ITAR and you'll usually be OK.

[Peter]

On Wednesday, April 10, 2019 at 7:40:33 AM UTC-5, James Murphy wrote:

And as an aside to the ITAR thing.. you can email an ITAR-rated document, but I wouldn't.. because you are still on the hook for an illegal export if somehow that email gets accessed by a foreign national. It's also a no-no to provide a FORNAT with an ITAR-rated document that's freely available online, like on Wikileaks or a torrent tracker. I was given this tidbit by the security chief at my defense-contractor employer when we gave our customers some military documents I'd dug up with google. The documents I provided were OK, but I was advised not to share the link because other files on the same site were not exportable. In general, be super paranoid when dealing with ITAR and you'll usually be OK.

Now I'm curious. My recollection was that the crypto wars ended a lot of the ITAR restrictions, at least as applied to pure speech, on first amendment grounds.

From some quick Google research, it looks like the government lost an important case in the appeals court and loosened ITAR restrictions on cryptographic software before the case could be appealed to the Supreme Court. It's likely that there's no definitive ruling on the question of whether the government actually can punish a civilian who doesn't have a security clearance for talking about a "restricted" topic to a foreign national.

(Also worth noting: in another appeals court case, again not reviewed by the Supreme Court, the court ruled that software source code is protected speech under the first amendment.)

[TobyCWood]

Interesting. Although I think it supports my argument that any controls would work better on ammo than on the guns themselves. Perhaps one CAN make their own ammo. It's just not easy and not anyone can do it Vs walking into a Walmart and walking out with a box of cartridges.

[James Murphy]

I'll bet you're right. I don't know how easy it is to get off that hook once on it, and I'd never want to be anywhere near it, so I tend to interpret the rules as conservatively as possible.  Besides, knowing what I know about guns and 3D printers, I would never advocate making it "easy" for the public to manufacture firearms. You still need to verify the parts meet mechanical specs; you can't just pop them off the build plate and start loading the magazine. When people ask me about the technology I say it's fine for making things like sights, stocks (solid ones, that is), flashlight mounts, stuff like that. Anything in the fire control system should be left to professionals who know what they're doing and have the right tools.

It's only super-easy to build an AR because of the millions of hours of engineering and manufacturing expertise that have gone into the design over the past what, five decades? You really don't want to shortcut that process, for everyone's safety... and that's assuming you'd be using it responsibly.

The issue is really kind of fascinating. It reminds me of when color copiers and laser printers went mainstream and people discovered they could make passable counterfeit currency with them.

[Nick Hall]

As I know how much we all love talking about 3D printing guns and its legalities, i thought i would leave this here...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/newsbeat-48695173

It was only going to be a matter of time and will need to remember to see what sentance he recieves in August!

[TobyCWood]

Wow. Note the "gun" needed a metal tube before it was fireable. Never seen that design before.

[Kurt Wendt]

Nice article dude! In fact, DAMN - this guy's gun looks MUCH Better than Coby's Liberator! Maybe Coby should have taken some design suggestions from this guy in the article!!!

I bet Mr RanchRifle guy will like this article. Although - NOT the potential conviction. Still...

-K-

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[Nick Hall]

Yeah, can only imagine he must have gone through a few designs and tests before realising that a metal tube (presumably with some rifling) was superior.
Just read the short preceding article from when they first arrested him, which says he had printed two different designs! I shall keep my eyes peeled over the coming months for any further info!

[Jason B]

He didn't design the Patrick revolver, just downloaded it along with the Liberator.  That gun was designed by someone in the FOSSCAD IRC channel IIRC.  And being in a nation that bans guns and drugs, printing one while distributing the other was probably not a wise move.  Unless he had a felony conviction or some other court order preventing him from owning firearms the gun would have been perfectly legal to produce here in the US, assuming you also follow state law.

[Joseph Larson]

On Wednesday, June 19, 2019 at 4:41:24 PM UTC-6, TobyCWood wrote:

Wow. Note the "gun" needed a metal tube before it was fireable. Never seen that design before.

It's called the Washbear. What disappoints me about it is it trades the 3D printed spring for a rubber band. I'm not saying that's a bad idea, but if I'm a gangster wanna be and I show up with a gun I made myself and it's got a rubber band on it... I don't know. I don't see the bad-ass-ness of that configuration. I mean it's a plastic gun to begin with, so, bad-ass is already pretty un-achievable. But a rubber band just makes it a little too... nerf for me. You know what I mean?

And, yeah, they use metal tubes to reduce wear on the barrel of the gun. So really it's just a fancy zip gun. Which, technically all gun are just fancy zip guns. It's really all about the bullets, and near as I know, no one is 3D printing gun powder.

[Nick Hall]

The first person in the UK has been convicted and jailed for manufacture of a 3D printed gun!
Had to do a bit of digging and contacted the newspaper local to the court where he was sentanced and they wrote a short article on it (see below).
He's been done on two seperate counts and looks to have been trying to perfect his design somewhat! Although it is amusing what crooks will do to try and lie their way out prison!

https://www.southwarknews.co.uk/news/london-south-bank-university-student-first-to-be-jailed-for-using-3-d-printer-to-make-gun/

[TobyCWood]

Note the charge was owning an unlicensed firearm, not making a 3d printed gun. No doubt if someone in the us were to get into making 3d printed guns, made a bunch but never licensed them, then was raided for another elicit activity I would bet the prints would be used for additional charges.

[Monster Mechanic]

They would definitely be initial add on charges. They like to make sure to pile on as much as they can so that they can use it all as bargaining items during the plea deal.
One forum I read regularly likes to track what was charged vs. what stuck. Quite shocking and eye opening.

Tim

> On Oct 14, 2019, at 11:45 AM, TobyCWood <andyc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Note the charge was owning an unlicensed firearm, not making a 3d printed gun. No doubt if someone in the us were to get into making 3d printed guns, made a bunch but never licensed them, then was raided for another elicit activity I would bet the prints would be used for additional charges.

>
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[Kurt The 3D Printer GUY!!]

Wow - I can't believe this thread had 645 views! 

So, Andy - I'm curious - I'm guessing this was one of the VERY First Threads in this Forum. Am I right?

Funny to see the 2nd reply have my name in it - since, yeah - I did meet up with Mr. Davidson when I was in Utah - as The Bot-Guy went across America in Sept of 2018! It was a WILD Journey, where I not only met Michael in person, but, also Joe the 3D Printing Professor. 

So, yeah - thanks Andy for pinning this to the top. What a Blast from the Past - yeah - Pun Intended!!!

I think even my Doppleganger will find this a tad interesting...

...especially as it's the Backstory to the existence of this Forum!!!

-K the Bot-Guy

[3D Printing Tips and Tricks]

I can't recall if this was the first thread. 

[Kurt The 3D Printer GUY!!]

Understood. Thanks for the reply here!

-K