A while ago the news went ape-shit over a the first 3D printed gun. They were talking about how now anyone could simply make their own gun. Then the buzz died down rather quickly. The facts came to light about it. It's plastic, it explodes after one or two uses. It's a single shot pistol.
But the fact is that the 3D printed guns should actually be a cause for concern. It's not the guns we have right now that are what we need to worry about. We need to worry about how the combination of 3D printing advances and the lowering cost of 3D printing combined with how easily plans can be gotten through the internet and the low cost of materials.
So to explain why this is scary let's talk about how far 3D printing has advanced. The first 3D printer was invented in 1981 in Japan. It was primitive and couldn't really do much; however, it paved the way.
Then we found out ways to 3D print metal in the later parts of the 1980s, again not useful and very expensive but it again was a start.
So lets look at today.
So now we can 3D print metal and they are a whole lot more common to the point where private citizens actually own 3D printers.
These aren't that hard to find and acquire
You can buy a 3D printer right now on Amazon.com.
Right at this very moment you can go onto Amazon and buy a 3D printer that is capable of printing metal parts. Now are they expensive? Yeah but they are about as expensive as a first car. That used piece of junk you got for a couple of grand you saved up from a year of working a minimum wage job.
Now I guarantee that the price will go down. The same thing happened with the first home computers.
Take the Apple II for example.
It was 1298 dollars for the most basic model that came with 4kb or ram when it came out.
The most advanced model cost US$2638 48 kB of RAM.
That's a fuckload of money this came out in 1977 so lets see what it looks like when the price is cost adjusted to today which comes to $4,816 for the basic model. Yeah, thats more than it currently costs to get a 3D printer.
This is how technology works, when it first comes out, its not very useful and very expensive then eventually it becomes fairly useful and within price of the average person.
Right now I'm typing this on a gaming capable laptop that plays Mafia III, which came out five days ago. It has 8gb of Ram. I got it on sale and it costs me a little over 500 dollars. The moon lander had 4kb of Ram, my computer literally has TWO MILLION TIMES THE RAM of the moon lander.
The fact is that the 3D printer is going to do the same thing. It will go WAY DOWN and get A LOT BETTER. To the point where your average person in the first world will be able to get something that will be able to 3D print a gun.
Now take a look at this.
That is a Sten MK II Submachine gun. It uses regular nine millimeter rounds. Now why this gun is particularly relevant are the circumstances and design of it.
After the retreat from Dunkirk during the Second World War, the British had left the majority of their Submachine guns behind and adding to that problem was the fact they they were the American Thompson M1A1
And Thompson was very expensive to make and it uses the .45 ACP round which was now in short supply in the U.K. The British needed a LOT of Submachine guns and they need them fast and cheap. Now what the British did have was a lot of captured nine millimeter ammo from the African Campaign where they were kicking the utter shit out of the Italian Fascists.
So they made the Sten, the requirements for the new submachine gun design were that it had to be able to be produced in a village workshop. It had to use the same ammo and magazines as the Germans and Italians submachine guns and it had to be cheap. The Sten did all that and was an effective (If not particularly comfortable to fire) SMG. So it can be produced in a village workshop back in the 1940s and it is cheap. How cheap was it, they cost a total of TEN DOLLARS to make. Now cost adjusted and you get $167.75 today. Oh, and the blueprints are easily found online. So this is a gun that in within two decades will probably be able to be 3D printed EASILY. Now a lot of people are going to say, well where are you going to get the ammo. Here is the thing, if a criminal organization can make drugs, they can produce 9x19 parabellum rounds.
So a Submachine gun that costs so little to make that it could be afforded on a minimum wage and easy ammo. Now adding all this up, and the conclusion is both simply and absolutely terrifying, The Black market is going to explode, specifically, gun runners are going to go gangbusters. Sure they'll have to sell it at a profitable price but chances are it'll be just a few hundred bucks so all over the world criminals will be able to fairly easily acquire un-register Submachine guns A.K.K military grade firepower AND THAT SHOULD FREAKING SCARE YOU.
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