I'm hardly a stranger to firearms, from automatics to machine guns, but I can't understand this business of 3-D printed plastic pistols. Do they actually work? Or do they explode in the user's hands?
Hello! Look up this. Apparently, they are used "successfully": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9. - And I think there is an, um, "university" out there in the US who gives even courses in making similar guns! Best regards, Mac Juli
It's a challenge for TSA and other security services to detect such weapons. Sales on a black market, no permit or control ? I didn't check what laws exist in such cases. Concealed carry requires a permit.
Plastic can be made to be pretty tough. When I worked in prisons, I once watched a trusty (that's a Southern term for an inmate who has earned a trusted position in the prison--this was in Mississippi) make a shank out of a Hefty garbage bag. He would roll it and heat it, roll it and heat it, each iteration making the plastic more and more dense. On on end he formed it into an extremely sharp tip, while the other sufficed quite nicely as a handle. When he was finished he had a shank that would go right through a person like a stiletto. (Knife, not shoe.) He was demonstrating just how dangerous prison can be, and how even the most innocuous items could be formed into weapons. I have no doubt a 3-D printer could formulate a pistol that could, however briefly, withstand the firing of bullets. We need Printer Control!
Decades ago, I was assigned a weekly rotation duty to supervise and train inmates at a correctional facility with a technical lab. The trusted inmates participated in the repair of basic military telecom equipment, including field phones, headsets, and field switching boards, cables. One strict rule in the facility was the prohibition of giving inmates cigarettes with filters. They would often set the filters on fire, let them melt, and then step on them, turning the melted plastic into a sharp, razor-like blade.
There is the saying that an unarmed intelligent man... won't stay unarmed long. Apparently, not without reason.
