Three months ago, the gunsmiths behind the group known as Defense Distributed announced their intention to create a working, lethal gun anyone can download and 3D-print at home. Now their experiments with actual 3D-printed firearm components and live ammunition have started. And they’re documenting their progress on video.
Over the weekend the project’s founder Cody Wilson posted a YouTube clip of the group testing an AR-15 semi-automatic weapon Defense Distributed assembled with a 3D-printed lower receiver, the highly-regulated component that serves as the body of the gun onto which the barrel, stock, magazine and other elements are attached...
...The result of Defense Distributed’s experiment: Their home-printed AR-15 piece cracked and fell apart after firing just six rounds. But Wilson still considers their first test of a partially-downloadable weapon a successful learning experience...
...A lower receiver has special significance to gun enthusiasts: It’s the central part of the weapon that’s regulated by gun control laws and trackable by serial number. Print your own lower-receiver at home, and in many states all the other parts can be obtained without background checks or even identification.
Writing at TechCrunch, Devin Coldewey observes that rapidly evolving technologies render any attempts to ban guns moot:
If we as a country, and indeed we as a global community, are going to seriously address the question of gun control, we need to address the issue of fabricated weapons and weapon plans, or else the discussion will be moot. This is because the proliferation of 3D printed weaponry changes both the definition of “gun” and of what it means to “control” it......In World War II, the U.S. manufactured one million FP-45 Liberator handguns. These crude, single-shot pistols were designed to be dropped from the air by the thousand over occupied territory, to give the resistance there the advantage of a firearm, be it only for one shot. The fundamental difference was not between six shots and a hundred shots, but between zero shots and any shots at all.
A 3D-printed gun, were it only to fire one shot before melting or failing, is still a gun. After that, the difference is only in what kind of gun it is.
Of course printed guns don’t and won’t constitute the major part of the ideas in such a major and divisive debate as gun control. But that does not obviate the fact that we can print guns. We can do so today, and the ability to do so is only improving. It is very important to note that one need not take a side in the debate to acknowledge this. And it is very important that we acknowledge this now, so that we are not forced to acknowledge it later, when it will be too late to take either side...
Part of the discussion has to be that, government or otherwise, there can be no more control over printed guns than there can be over printed spoons. Regulation or banning of firearms, whether you think the idea is good or bad, will soon be impossible.
What this means is that criminals will soon have easy access to firearms no matter what politicians and governments decide.
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