What happen to those nonmetal guns.

[SoCalAznGuy]

I remember hearing about guns made with materials that can't be detected. So small that they could beeasily hidden. Airports would have a nearly impossible time screaning for them. The fear was terroristwould use them to hijack a plane.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

They were banned.

 

[Crono]

FBI and DHS alerted

 

[Howard]

They were banned.

haha

 

[tcsenter]

Yah yah, the anti-gun nuts said the same thing and continue to imply the same thing to this very day about polymer guns like Glocks, even after the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, and the FAA definitively proved that polymer frames were moderately radio-opaque and can easily be identified on X-rays.

You could conceivably construct a small caliber gun with extremely limited capacity that would be useful for shooting one or two persons but would not be able to puncture the skin or take-down a commercial airliner. IOW, there are a lot better ways to inflict a lot more damage or produce higher body counts than smuggling a gun onto plane.

Particularly after 9/11, people just aren't going to let anyone hijack a plane anymore, even if it means taking a risk to themselves in order to subdue the person.

 

[Pliablemoose]

If someone is determined, there is no way to keep weapons off airplanes.

 

[0roo0roo]

erm, that was before new scanners right
it hardly matters if it doesn't set off the metal detector if it looks like a freaking gun on the screen
and theres only so many parts you can fit up your colon

 

[LTC8K6]

There never were any such guns. The media freaked out about the polymer framed Glocks, but there's plenty of steel in a Glock, and H & K had made a polymer framed Pistol in 1970...

http://stason.org/TULARC/society/pr...s-which-can-slip-through-metal-detectors.html

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Does carbon fibre show up on XRays? You could construct a carbon fibre knife for a reasonable cost :hmm:

 

[dawp]

Does carbon fibre show up on XRays? You could construct a carbon fibre knife for a reasonable cost :hmm:

why not obsidian, that would be hard to detect, with a wood or bone handle.

 

[0roo0roo]

wouldn't it be easier to get a ceramic knife?
they make those...

chef bling

 

[Lithium381]

you guys are so dumb i have it all figured out......they sell PLASTIC knives at k-mart and you can get PLASTIC guns at walgreens..... let the x-ray figure that out!

 

[Veramocor]

There was a movie (I don't remember the name) where the assassin made a two shot one time use handgun out of all wood.

 

[txrandom]

There was a movie (I don't remember the name) where the assassin made a two shot one time use handgun out of all wood.

See bold.

 

[MDE]

Bullets are still metal.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Yah yah, the anti-gun nuts said the same thing and continue to imply the same thing to this very day about polymer guns like Glocks, even after the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, and the FAA definitively proved that polymer frames were moderately radio-opaque and can easily be identified on X-rays.

You could conceivably construct a small caliber gun with extremely limited capacity that would be useful for shooting one or two persons but would not be able to puncture the skin or take-down a commercial airliner. IOW, there are a lot better ways to inflict a lot more damage or produce higher body counts than smuggling a gun onto plane.

Particularly after 9/11, people just aren't going to let anyone hijack a plane anymore, even if it means taking a risk to themselves in order to subdue the person.

Only part of the Glock is polymer, the slide is metal, the magazine contains metal, as does the ammunition and barrel and would easily be picked up by a metal detector plus the shape is easily recognizable to someone viewing an x-ray machine.

No all-plastic undetectable firearms have ever been manufactured for sale that I'm aware anywhere in the world.

 

[wwswimming]

if i was going to design a non-metallic gun, i would pick from materials like this -

Torlon - an engineering plastic that keeps its qualities at high temps. part of the test for the plastic was constructing a working engine block from it. i've used it for electrical parts; it performed.

Ceramic - e.g. for chambers. ceramic is strong in compression, week in tension, and can be formed into just about any shape you want - including cylindrical.

carbon fiber - in some forms it has outstanding thermal conduction qualities.

epoxy-iron mix - for absorbing radio waves, basically a stealth material.

anyway, i would say it's very doable. most of the materials i mentioned are very expensive though, by the time you get to a precision fabricated part.

as far as bullets - there was the scene in the movie "Line of Duty" where John Malkovich played the bad guy. i think he smuggled his 2 metal bullets in by secreting them in the rabbit's foot attached to his key chain.

of course, bullets don't have to be metallic but that involves more R&D.

is there a job in this ?

 

[tcsenter]

Caseless ammunition has been around for a while. But again, you're not going to be able to smuggle enough to do much damage to the aircraft, and not enough to kill more than a few people. I'm not going to mention what but there are far easier ways to kill a few hundred people with a high chance of success, seriously injure or terrorize several hundred more, by procuring materials that aren't even restricted or regulated except at the commercial/industrial storage and transport level.

 

[Matthiasa]

Eh could probably make the bullet out a hard plastics or ceramics.

 

[pontifex]

Only part of the Glock is polymer, the slide is metal, the magazine contains metal, as does the ammunition and barrel and would easily be picked up by a metal detector plus the shape is easily recognizable to someone viewing an x-ray machine.

No all-plastic undetectable firearms have ever been manufactured for sale that I'm aware anywhere in the world.

I don't know about glocks, but the S&W M&P have polymer frames with steel inserts, so even the frames still have metal in them.

 

[pontifex]

There was a movie (I don't remember the name) where the assassin made a two shot one time use handgun out of all wood.

Wasn't that Existenz or something like that? That might have actually been a gun made of bone though.

 

[tcsenter]

The original polymer material Glock intended to use was mildly radio-opaque but they went ahead and added some substance to the mass produced frames to make it really stand-out on X-ray, just to squelch the hysteria caused by anti-gun nuts.

 

[DayLaPaul]

"That punked pulled a Glock 7 on me. You know what that is? It's a porcelain gun made in Germany. It doesn't show up on your airport x-ray machines and it costs more than you make in a month!"

 

[TridenT]

http://www.slipperybrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/ring-gun5.jpg

?

 

[shortylickens]

Bullets need to be heavy and soft to do the necessary damage, and with our current technology I'm pretty sure that limits them to metals. Though I suppose some heavy gelatin in a tough plastic case could still be lethal like lead.

As for the slide I am sure we already have plastics or carbon mixes that can do the job. They would just be too expensive to mass produce.
And we've had plastic grips for a long time, so thats not an issue.

BUT, as materials technology improves, so will detection methods. I'm sure somebody already has or is at least working on a sensor that detects dense plastics, and I'm not talking about X-ray viewers either.