After raising thousands of dollars to develop a free, 3-D-printable handgun, a group calling itself Defense Distributed has had to put its plans on hold, after the company providing their printing hardware refused to do business with them. It's an early episode in what is likely to be a long controversy.
Defense Distributed is a loosely organized group that intends to explore the possibility of creating weapons entirely using 3-D printed parts — and providing the files to do so freely online. They are unrelated to another recent project that partially built an assault rifle that way, but the concept is similar.
The group originally tried to raise money to develop the Wiki Weapon, as they call it, on the crowd-funding website IndieGoGo. The site pulled the plug, however, before the $20,000 the group was hoping to collect was pledged. Undeterred, Defense Distributed solicited donations in the Bitcoin virtual currency, and soon achieved their funding goal.
With the money, they leased a powerful 3-D printer from a company called Stratasys. But before they even had a chance to take the device out of its box, Stratasys caught wind of what its hardware was going to be used for and canceled the contract, sending someone to pick up the printer immediately.
Defense Distributed's Cody Wilson had expected some controversy, but the cancellation by Stratasys caught him by surprise. Speaking to Wired's Danger Room blog, he emphasized that what the group is doing is legal, since manufacture of weapons is not prohibited as long as they are not for sale or trade. This permits enthusiasts and artisans to create such things freely, but for anything more than personal use a license is required — a license Wilson doesn't have.
Stratasys may have erred on the side of caution (it commented to Wired that the company would not "knowingly allow its printers to be used for illegal purposes"), but it may also have been motivated by the equally understandable desire not to be associated with a potentially controversial project.
But as Wilson points out, the cat is out of the bag: The design and testing of a 3-D printed gun is inevitable given that the cost of doing it has dropped, and there is almost certainly a market for such devices. Defense Distributed is doing it openly and, they believe, legitimately — but others could easily do the same without bothering about the red tape. In the meantime, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is investigating, though they told Wilson they consider printed weapons a grey area at present.
The question of creating weapons at home, especially sophisticated and deadly ones like an automatic handgun, is bound to be a controversial one. The ability to bypass firearms regulations, not to mention the social and civil implications of cheap, ubiquitous and anonymous guns, will be a serious issue in the coming years, and Defense Distributed intends to be at the center of it.
One doesn't really bypass a regulation, you violate it.
That said, in this country, with some limitations, its legal for you to build a firearm for your own personal use. They are acting like they are some billy-bad-ass breaking the law, when they really are not, just because they want to 'print' it.
And they act like plastic lower receivers is magic, it is not.
Bunch of kids 'look at me', if you ask me.
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06:01 PM
Boondawg Member
Posts: 38235 From: Displaced Alaskan Registered: Jun 2003
So, will it be illegal to possess the .3d file to create such things?
Is it illegal to posses I3omb-making plans? Or atomic plans? Or lockpicking book? Or stealing identities book? Or certain pron? Or The Anarchist Cookbook? Or The Turner Diaries?
Is it illegal to posses I3omb-making plans? Or atomic plans? Or lockpicking book? Or stealing identities book? Or certain pron? Or The Anarchist Cookbook? Or The Turner Diaries?
Thanks for this boonie, had never seen it written that way. I am now the owner of i3omb.com
Me either. I just wanted a way to write "I3omb-making" without triggering "Deep Blue" or whatever named computer program is sniffing out "target" words on the webs.
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 10-02-2012).]
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08:21 PM
carnut122 Member
Posts: 9122 From: Waleska, GA, USA Registered: Jan 2004
Me either. I just wanted a way to write "I3omb-making" without triggering "Deep Blue" or whatever named computer program is sniffing out "target" words on the webs.
ATF grants Defense Distributed license for 3-D printing of guns
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The U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has issued a license to a group that wants to manufacture a 3-D printed gun.
Defense Distributed, a loosely organized group that wants to create weapons mostly using 3-D printed parts — and provide the files for anyone else to to do so online — shared the news on its Facebook and Tumblr pages over the weekend, exclaiming, "Look who has a license to manufacture firearms."
Creating a printable gun is the project of Defense Distributed, an effort headed by Cody Wilson, who on his public Facebook page is described as an "American crypto-anarchist," a law student at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin and founder and director of Defense Distributed. (He pretty much IS the group.) The organization, he says, "develops and publishes open source gun designs, so-called "Wiki Weapons," suitable for 3-D printing."
3-D printing is still in its infancy, and some of its more notable efforts so far have been for medical, space and scientific projects, including helping repair broken bones and building spacecraft parts, as well as commercial efforts including athletic shoes.
In its FAQ, in answer to the question "Why guns?" Defense Distributed says on its site:
If we truly believe information should be free, that the Internet is the last bastion of freedom and knowledge, and that societies that share are superior to societies that censor and withhold, then why not guns?
Freedom of information has material, decentralizing consequences. And this is a good thing.
... Every judicially protected civil liberty can be abused. That protection, that abuse, has real social cost. But is degree of social cost the calculus for protecting civil rights? That is absurd. When we say universal access to the firearm, we mean it.
Among Defense Distributed's creations are a 3-D printed magazine for an AK-47 assault rifle, with the magazine named for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a leading advocate for a ban on assault weapons.
ATF spokeswoman Donna Sellers told NBC News Monday that Defense Distributed received a "Type 7" license that allows the manufacturing of firearms, a decision made after the bureau "collaborated with law enforcement and the firearms industry."
However, she said, the license "does not include manufacturing of automatic firearms," and if Defense Distributed wants to make an automatic weapon, it will need to apply for another license to the ATF. Wilson told Ars Technica over the weekend he has applied for that license.
