Glock 3d Printer - St. AUGUSTINE, Florida - The "Scorpion" fully automatic submachine gun can burn through a 30-round 9mm magazine in seconds with one steady pull of the trigger. It looks, feels and shoots like a factory gun—except that part of the gun came off a 3D printer. According to Scorpion's creators, the material used to 3D print the frame (the heart of the gun where the metal barrel and other parts meet) is actually "equal to or stronger" than its finished counterpart. I've never fired a fully automatic weapon before - let alone a semi-plastic one - and when I took aim and squeezed the trigger, the Scorpion fired a wild series of rounds that missed my target and hit a pile of dirt behind me. firing range.
The Scorpion was one of many stunning guns on display in late June at an event in Florida dubbed the "Gun Makers' Match", the first shooting competition exclusively for home firearms. Except for machine guns, which require a special federal license, they are a kind of "ghost gun," meaning there is no serial number and therefore no easy way for authorities to track down the owner or manufacturer. The shooting competition was organized by a non-profit organization called Guns For Every National, with the help of the digital gun collective, Are We Cool Yet? or AWCY, which pushes the boundaries of what's possible with 3D printed sleeves.
Glock 3d Printer
To meet this gun maker and find out what 3D printed guns can be used for today, I decided to enter a shooting competition in Florida - and build my own ghost gun. While the technology has advanced dramatically in recent years, the most famous 3D printed gun is still the Liberator, the first of which was made in 2013. A snub-nosed single-shot pistol, the Liberator is like a postmodern special weapon, something as likely to blow your hand off as it is will shoot real bullets. Now, in addition to the Scorpion, AWCY has created and released blueprints for a 3D printed "battle rifle" and an underbarrel flare gun that is just a few millimeters from the 3D printed "RAMBO" grenade launcher military model.
D Printed Glock G17l Frame
The most popular and controversial ghost guns cost several hundred dollars online and come "80 percent" ready in the box with all the necessary tools. The sudden proliferation of these inexpensive mail-order ghost guns has raised concerns among law enforcement agencies across the country. Nearly 24,000 "private firearms" were recovered from crime scenes between 2016 and 2020, according to a recently released Justice Department report, and the number of cases in which criminals and other "outlaws" were found with such weapons doubled in one year. Ghost guns have also appeared in the hands of white supremacists and right-wing extremists. Boogaloo Boi pleaded guilty last month to possessing 3D printed machine gun parts and homemade silencers. The Justice Department report, published June 22 and reviewed by The Trace, warned of people with "violent racial or ethnically motivated extremist ideologies" sharing 3D-printed machine gun files.
To meet this gun maker and find out what 3D printed guns can be used for today, I decided to enter a shooting competition in Florida - and build my own ghost gun. Only ten states plus Washington have local laws that attempt to regulate ghost guns. They are virtually unregulated at the federal level, but the Biden administration has proposed new rules that would require serial numbers on some unfinished parts and limit mail-order kits, as the president indicated in an April White House speech. "Buyers don't have to go through a background check to buy a gun-making kit," President Joe Biden said. "As a result, anyone from a criminal to a terrorist can buy this kit and assemble a gun in just 30 minutes." But building a 3D printed gun from scratch, I found, took more than half an hour. And while there is evidence that extremists and criminals are trying to exploit the secrets of phantom guns, there is also a group of nerdy designers and liars who claim to obey gun laws and enjoy a "very powerful" hobby.
Since I never had a 3D printer or a gun, I started as a blank slate. Rob Pincus, a personal defense instructor and gun rights advocate, agreed to lend his expertise and 3D printer. He warned that the printing and construction process would take at least two days, which he said contradicts the notion that it is easy for people who want to misuse weapons to 3D print them. "You have to want to do it that way," Pincus said. "I don't know who people are who fall into that weird zone where they don't want to buy a gun, they can't buy one, but they really want a gun and that's the path of least resistance compared to finding someone to buy them a gun or illegally buying a gun from someone else's luggage."
My initial goal was to build an AWCY Scorpion that was legally 3D printable and semi-automatic (one round per trigger pull) mounted in most places. But Pincus thwarted my Scorpion dreams. First off, 3D printing takes days to create, and that's time I didn't have before the game. Parts for the ghost rifle are also disappearing online, in part due to recent large-scale purchases as part of the Biden administration's efforts to tighten the law. Without metal parts, the Scorpion will not work. While 3D printed plastic is strong enough to serve as a gun frame, it won't hold the barrel or bolt. It's also illegal because federal law requires the weapon to have at least one metal component.
D Printable Practice Glock 22 By Matthew Kent
3D printed original Glock 19 9mm pistol with "Ghost Gun" lettering on the grip. (Photo: Keegan Hamilton/News)
"You need metal parts," Pincus told me. “Technically, can you build one out of all plastic? yes. Is it reliable and great? Probably not." I ended up choosing a Glock 19 because the basic parts were available online. The barrel, bolt, trigger assembly, and other metal components cost about $320, shipped directly to the Florida shooting range where the game was being played, along with a PLA+ spool for $23. That plus a standard 3D printer and a few boxes of 9mm ammo is all I need.
The Glock design, along with plans for hundreds of other handguns, can be found on a website called DEFCAD. It is run by a company called Defense Distributed, which is headed by Cody Wilson, the creator of the first 3D printed weapon. The files are available elsewhere on the Internet, but Wilson's website makes it easy to browse the repository in a store-like user interface, and users must pay a $50 annual membership for access. For years, the U.S. government has tried to limit the sharing of 3D-printed weapons blueprints through the State Department's international arms export authority. Wilson fought under the First Amendment, and in April the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that lifted the ban on the publication of 3D-printed weapon plans indefinitely.
When I asked Wilson if US authorities could completely block online file sharing, he replied: "The government should have created a time machine and killed me seven years ago. Now it's too late. Equipment - 3D printing, it's very cheap. You can do anything. You can design anything." For years, the U.S. government has tried to limit the sharing of 3D-printed weapons blueprints through the State Department's international arms export authority. Wilson is a polarizing figure in the gun world. In 2018, he was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl he met through SugarDaddyMeet.com. He pleaded guilty to injury to a child, a third-degree felony, and received seven years' probation. In addition to stocking 3D gun files, Wilson also sells a machine called The Ghost Gunner that helps turn unfinished parts into AR-15s and other weapons. "Those files are literally everywhere in a perfect liquid explosion on the Internet," Wilson said. "It shouldn't be legal, yet we found a way to make it legal."
Glock Stamp 3d Printed Leather Embossing Arbor Press Only.
To download the files from the Wilson site, I had to verify my identity and sign up for a membership, bringing my total gun budget to nearly $400, still cheaper than a brand new Glock. But when my frames came out of the printer (a 16 hour process), there were some noticeable differences. First, I don't have the serial number; instead, it has "Ghost Gun" literally printed on the handle. It's also rough around the edges, not yet ready to be inserted into the metal parts.
Sanding the plastic with a metal filing tool, a drill and a Dremel electric sander took another four hours and one shift. Pincus patiently walked me through the entire process, which was more difficult than it looked in the tutorial videos I saw on YouTube. The finished product is white at the bottom (frame with "Ghost Gun" theme)
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