New York Sen. Charles Schumer says the ability for making an untraceable and undetectable gun with a 3D printer is “stomach-churning.”
The senator on Sunday displayed a photo of a plastic gun made by a Texas company using the 3D printer technology.
He said the guns are capable of firing real bullets and pass unnoticed through metal detectors.
Schumer said the technology means anyone “can open a gun factory in their garage.”
He said the company, Defense Distributed, last week announced it had successfully made the plastic gun using a 3D printer. The senator said the company plans to post blueprints for the weapon online this week.
A spokesman for the company couldn’t be reached for comment.
(AP)
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7 Responses
Again an ignorant democrat. In no way can a gun with a plastic lower receiver pass through a metal detector simply because all the other parts are metal springs hammer barrel etc…. Plastic guns are around for the last 30 years and anyone with half brain knows they can’t pass through metal detectors
Ahh Eric55 key word you mentioned is a brain something Schumer isn’t blessed with.
Actually, eric55, if you read up more on this you would learn that only the firing pin is metal. The whole rest of the gun is completely ABS plastic. The firing pin is small enough to pass through a metal detector, and could even be replaced with a hard, non-magnetic material. At one point, Defense Distributed was producing only a lower receiver for an AR-15 style rifle, but has now moved on to produce a printable handgun made completely of plastic. I happen to disagree with Sen. Schumer, but let’s get our facts straight.
and the bullets-are they plastic too?
If “lawmakers” could, they would repeal the Law of Gravity. It’s a law, after all, isn’t it? Lawmakers have supreme control over law.
We should probably make nuclear weapons illegal to. That would certainly prevent North Korea and Iran from abusing them. Oh, wait…
Sorry, Charlie, the genie is out of the bottle. Live with it.
Don’t you love it? The whole country has been roiling in the gun control controversy for months. Who can buy, what weapon can he buy…millions of dollars and hours have been spent. Then some guy shows how ANYONE can make a handgun (and the assault-style weapons are coming, guaranteed) in his basement. The whole discussion is moot. How can the government regulate it? Hevel havalim, hakol hevel!
In fact anyone with the basic knowledge of metal tooling can make a gun. There are today, tens of thousands of basement/cottage gun makers all over the world. There are dozens of Websites that will walk someone through the process and hundreds of books. The same thing is true of bullets. They are not that difficult to make. That is true even of the gun powder. The final product of all this DIY will not be as perfect or reliable as a professionally produced product but they will still do the job.
The point to all of this is that the criminal elements will always be armed. The paranoid fantasizer will always be armed. The political tyrants will always be armed. But what about the weak and vulnerable? They will have to rely on the State to protect them. Anyone can see what kind of a job the State has done so far.