Comment by throwaway290
10 hours ago
> they don't stop weapons (lots of airports outside the US have simple metal detectors for that.)
There are 3D printed guns.
10 hours ago
> they don't stop weapons (lots of airports outside the US have simple metal detectors for that.)
There are 3D printed guns.
Those tend to have extremely limited usefulness. Good enough to assassinate a single person at point blank range before they catastrophically fail but (unless something has changed) not much else. Plastic just isn't cut out for the job.
You still need metal parts, notably a gun barrel capable of holding extreme pressures until the bullet gets up to speed. That isn’t plastic. The grip and frame might be plastic, but not the barrel.
This is either incorrect or only technically correct. In the context of smuggling a weapon through a metal detector at a checkpoint there are nonferrous and even entirely plastic variants. Possessing them is generally illegal because essentially the only purpose is for assassinations.
the handle on roll type luggage. not the actual handle but that is where you would hide a long piece of thick wall tube. not that a long piece of would be nessacery. a short one would do, the point being the metal detectors do not stop you from bringing metal into the airport.
Of course. Lots of metal goes through the detectors. The point is that the detectors “see” it and that’s then your chance to catch it. Whether you actually do or not is another question. But 3d printing a gun doesn’t give you a “plastic gun.” Btw, this is the same reason why the “Glocks are plastic guns that go through metal detectors unseen” stuff in the 1980s was always a myth. Glocks have a polymer frame but they always have a metal barrel.
You are better off using a lathe to make a gun.
Don't you still need metal bullets for the 3d printed gun?
Those don't generally have any ferrous components.
yes but the spring in the magazine does.
also the rails on the lower, the barrel, etc.
2 replies →
No idea. I only replied to the guy saying that "metal detectors stop weapons". Which is false.
The evidence is in US law. Because they would be undetectable, 3d printed guns are required to have some metal inserted into it to be legal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D-printed_firearm#United_Stat...). I think a guy who can 3d print a gun and wants to bring it onto a plane could probably skip that step;)
"I only replied to the guy saying that "metal detectors stop weapons". Which is false."
Taken in a strict boolean sense, yes, but real-world policy is rarely boolean, and mostly about tradeoffs and how many nines of reliability you want to spend on.
Metal detectors will catch the vast, vast majority of guns ever produced, which is their whole point of existence.