“Alright. One…two…”
Before “three” arrives, a shot reverberates across the overcast central Texas landscape. A tall, sandy blond engineer named John has just pulled a twenty-foot length of yellow string tied to a trigger, which has successfully fired the world’s first entirely 3D-printed gun for the very first time, rocketing a .380 caliber bullet into a berm of dirt and prairie brush.
“Fuckin’ A!” yells John, who has asked me not to publish his full name. He hurries over to examine the firearm bolted to an aluminum frame. But the first to get there is Cody Wilson, a square-jawed and stubbled 25 year-old in a polo shirt and baseball cap. John may have pulled the trigger, but the gun is Wilson’s brainchild. He’s spent more than a year dreaming of its creation, and dubbed it “the Liberator” in an homage to the cheap, one-shot pistols designed to be air-dropped by the Allies over France during its Nazi occupation in World War II.
Unlike the original, steel Liberator, though, Wilson’s weapon is almost entirely plastic: Fifteen of its 16 pieces have been created inside an $8,000 second-hand Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer, a machine that lays down threads of melted polymer that add up to precisely-shaped solid objects just as easily as a traditional printer lays ink on a page. The only non-printed piece is a common hardware store nail used as its firing pin.
Wilson crouches over the gun and pulls out the barrel, which was printed over the course of four hours earlier the same morning. Despite the explosion that just occurred inside of it, both the barrel and the body of the gun seem entirely unscathed.
Wilson scrutinizes his creation for a few more seconds, then stands up again. “I think we did it,” he says, a little incredulous.
Last August, Wilson, a law student at the University of Texas and a radical libertarian and anarchist, announced the creation of an Austin-based non-profit group called Defense Distributed, with the intention of creating a firearm anyone could fabricate using only a 3D printer. The digital blueprints for that so-called Wiki Weapon, as Wilson imagined it, could be uploaded to the Web and downloaded by anyone, anywhere in the world, hamstringing attempts at gun control and blurring the line between firearm regulation and information censorship. “You can print a lethal device. It’s kind of scary, but that’s what we’re aiming to show,” Wilson told me at the time. “Anywhere there’s a computer and an Internet connection, there would be the promise of a gun.”
The Latest Bing News on:
3D-Printed Gun
- Representative Linsky Files Gun Legislationon January 19, 2021 at 6:12 pm
One of your neighbors posted in Politics & Government. Click through to read what they have to say. (The views expressed in this post are the author’s own.) ...
- Songbird, A Mostly 3D Printed Pistol That Appears To Actually Workon January 18, 2021 at 4:00 pm
[Guy in a garage] has made a 3D printed gun that not only appears to fire in the direction pointed, it can also do it multiple times. Which, by the standard of 3D printed guns, is an astounding feat.
- Liberty Defense's radar can detect undetectable ghost gunson January 16, 2021 at 4:00 pm
Hexwave can detect guns and other dangerous items on people in real time and at a walking pace. (Image source: Liberty Defense) On the day of his 16th birthday, Nathaniel Berhow, a student at Saugus ...
- 3D-printed Thomas Jefferson statue arrives at The Valentineon January 14, 2021 at 12:52 pm
(WRIC) — A 3D-printed sculpture of Thomas Jefferson was ... What about the city's gun ban? Dozens of armed Second Amendment supporters and other groups, including the Proud Boys, the Original ...
- Florida Senator pushing for stricter regulations of 3D-printed ‘ghost guns’on January 13, 2021 at 4:45 pm
3D-printed guns are the types of weapons that State Sen. Linda Stewart wants to target. However, she’s not confident she’ll get support, as any amount of gun control rarely does in Tallahassee.
- DRDO develops Asmi, India’s first homegrown Uzi-style personal defence weaponon January 13, 2021 at 8:47 am
Now, the Defence Research and Development Organisation has developed India’s first indigenously-made machine pistol, the Asmi—meaning price, self-respect and hard-work. A 9mm 3D-printed PDW, it packs ...
- States Say Federal Rules Allow Proliferation of Ghost Gunson January 11, 2021 at 7:16 pm
Twenty-one states claim new federal rules governing 3D-printed guns will allow unchecked sharing of computer ... “As the agency’s specific findings in the record show, the proliferation of 3D gun ...
- Legislation to Be Introduced to Regulate 3D Printed Firearmson January 11, 2021 at 3:31 pm
Senator Linda Stewart is hoping to pass legislation which would regulate 3D printed firearms. As technology continues to get better over time, so has the recent developments of 3D printers. Fused ...
- Thankfully, Singapore Just Made It Harder to Own 3D-Printed Gunson January 8, 2021 at 4:10 am
By outlawing unauthorised ownership of the blueprints, Singapore isn’t necessarily making 3D-printed gun ownership illegal, but it’s doing the next best thing. Licensing for the guns sounds ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
3D-Printed Gun
The Latest Bing News on:
3D-printed firearms
- Representative Linsky Files Gun Legislationon January 19, 2021 at 6:12 pm
One of your neighbors posted in Politics & Government. Click through to read what they have to say. (The views expressed in this post are the author’s own.) ...
- Songbird, A Mostly 3D Printed Pistol That Appears To Actually Workon January 18, 2021 at 4:00 pm
[Guy in a garage] has made a 3D printed gun that not only appears to fire in the direction pointed, it can also do it multiple times. Which, by the standard of 3D printed guns, is an astounding feat.
- Cuomo proposal to prevent those with active warrants from purchasing gunson January 15, 2021 at 4:50 pm
Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday announced his proposal to prevent individuals with active warrants for a felony or serious misdemeanor offense from purchasing guns as part of the 2021 State of the State ...
- 3D-printed Thomas Jefferson statue arrives at The Valentineon January 14, 2021 at 12:52 pm
(WRIC) — A 3D-printed sculpture of Thomas Jefferson was ... The Richmond Police Deparment issued a summonses for possession of a concealed firearm without a concealed carry permit near the ...
- Florida Senator pushing for stricter regulations of 3D-printed ‘ghost guns’on January 13, 2021 at 3:19 pm
Investigates the latest push to regulate so-called ‘ghost guns’ at the state level. It’s been three years since Channel 9 investigative reporter Karla Ray first exposed the process of buying and ...
- States Argue Against Federal Rules on 3D-Printed Gunson January 12, 2021 at 6:56 am
A coalition of states claims there are a few factors the government didn’t consider before issuing new rules regulating 3D-printed guns. Among them: world peace, national security and foreign ...
- States Say Federal Rules Allow Proliferation of Ghost Gunson January 11, 2021 at 7:02 pm
Twenty-one states claim new federal rules governing 3D-printed guns will allow unchecked sharing of computer files that let users easily create untraceable plastic weapons.
- Legislation to Be Introduced to Regulate 3D Printed Firearmson January 11, 2021 at 3:31 pm
Senator Linda Stewart is hoping to pass legislation which would regulate 3D printed firearms. As technology continues to get better over time, so has the recent developments of 3D printers. Fused ...
- Thankfully, Singapore Just Made It Harder to Own 3D-Printed Gunson January 7, 2021 at 5:14 pm
By outlawing unauthorized ownership of the blueprints, Singapore isn’t necessarily making 3D-printed gun ownership illegal, but it’s doing the next best thing. Licensing for the guns sounds ...