Tuesday, July 31, 2018

The 3D printed gun debate just isn't practical on many levels

If you are a practical person looking at all this you see the flaws like I do in 3D guns that are printed.

There is really no advantage at all to owning a 3D printed gun made of plastic, especially if it also shoots plastic bullets instead of metal ones.

First of all  plastic doesn't hold up well to the pressures of the explosions of the gunpowder and cap in a bullet. It might be effective with a .22 short round but larger than that of a .22 long rifle round or a .38 or larger caliber round is going to for sure explode the barrel and might harm or blind the shooter too.

So, to me, the only advantage to a gun like this would be for an assassin to get through a metal detector. What a person like this would likely do is to store a weapon of one to 3 shots up his anus to get through a metal detector. But then, the gun and all bullets would have to be plastic. And I'm not sure how effective a plastic round powered by a .22 short charge would be. It likely couldn't even make it through someone's suit coat and tie.

Then if you move to something like a plastic Kalashnikov or something like this you would at the very least need a metal barrel for the thing because that is where all the pressures are going to be. A metal barrel for a Kalashnikov might work even if all the parts except the firing pin and barrel were plastic. But, to make it more than a single shot device you would need springs and things like some metal parts to make it an automatic weapon that didn't just start to melt the barrel or chamber after 1 to 5 shots. Automatic weapons generate an incredible amount of heat from all these bullets going off in the chamber and all the heat and friction of bullets going out the barrel which is going to melt a plastic barrel on any of these within 1 to 5 shots.

So, I sort of see all this as a "Tempest in a teapot" except in regard to up close and personal assassinations where this would have to be a suicide shooter who doesn't expect to survive the assassination.

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