Gun-Ban Work Around: 3D Printing High Capacity Magazines
January 17, 2013 | Filed Under 2nd Amendment, Constitution, Guns, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off
-By Warner Todd Huston
One of the most popular targets for gun-banners in this post Sandy Hook environment is the talk of banning high capacity ammunition magazines. But a group of gun enthusiasts have devised a way of getting around such bans by using three dimensional printing devices right in their own homes to create plastic versions of the magazines.
During the weekend of January 11, a group calling itself Defense Distributed “printed” a 30-round magazine out of plastic and successfully fired at least 86 rounds through it.
Last year this same group used a 3D printing device to fashion the lower receiver of an AR-15 rifle to which they attached parts of a real rifle to form a complete and working piece. The homemade gun part actually fired several rounds before falling apart from the shock of the explosions of the bullets.
Defense Distributed put out a rather triumphant video announcing its success at printing a 30-round magazine.
3D printing technology is not quite up to the task of creating an entire gun. Many parts of a firearm are made of high strength metals and 3D printing devices cannot produce parts of that sort as of yet. Further, even the parts that Defense Distributed have printed experience high failure rates. But as technology progresses, solutions to these limitations seem likely.
Through its website (defcad.org), Defense Distributed plans to continue to offer blueprints and electronic files for 3D printers to print gun parts but have held off on exploring any effort to print an entire gun until they get licensed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) as a legal gun manufacturing business.
The success of Defense Distributed has made it a target for the attention of anti-gun activists and lawmakers alike but so far no legal sanctions have been leveled against the group nor have any laws limiting their actions been proposed.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
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