Deal with it: 3D Printed guns are reality

April 23rd, 2013

Peter Nolan

Cody Wilson, the founder and director of Defense Distributed, speaking at the Inside 3D Printing conference in New York about the current state of the 3D-printed firearms debate.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

NEW YORK–For months, a debate has raged in the media and on Capitol Hill about whether or not society (and the law) should allow 3D printed guns.

But listen to Cody Wilson speak for a few minutes, and you can’t help but come away feeling that the national discussion is moot: 3D printed firearms are inevitable. Deal with it.

Today at the Inside 3D Printing conference here, Wilson, the founder and director of Defense Distributed, argued passionately for an environment in which people can use 3D printers to make their own guns. It’s not that he doesn’t recognize — or care — that there’s some likelihood of increased gun violence in such a world.

Rather, as an anarchist and someone who clearly appreciates that 3D printers are a technology that expressly enable individual creation and freedom, he thinks it’s absurd to try to stop people from using the increasingly popular — and accessible — tech to do whatever they want with it.

To date, Wilson has become one of the most visible poster boys for the 3D printed gun movement. During his talk today, he explained the many steps he and others have gone through in their attempts to create a functioning firearm. And he scoffed at an “expert” having told the conference’s attendees earlier in the day that 3D printed guns aren’t yet “real.” “No, it’s here today,” Wilson said, explaining that he and others had successfully fired 11 rounds through a 3D-printed gun barrel not long ago. And another leader in the space, Michael “Haveblue” Guslick, has said he successfully fired 100 rounds from an AR15 outfitted with what he called a 3D printed lower receiver.

An image of a 3D printed gun that Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed showed at the Inside 3D Printing conference in New York today.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

There’s no denying that Wilson and those who support him are at odds with the establishment. On the 3D printing side of things, he faces resistance from those like Avi Reichental, the CEO of 3D Systems, the world’s-largest maker of 3D printers. Yesterday, in his keynote address to the Inside 3D Printing conference, Reichental acknowledged that the technology could “empower” “the unintended,” such as guns, and added that “legislators have a responsibility to grasp (this), and to make sure the legal and political infrastructure keeps up.”

But perhaps unwittingly, Reichental also made Wilson’s point — that 3D printed weapons probably can’t be avoided — for him, noting that the technology “doesn’t care if it prints the simplest or more complex geometry.” Or, one can extrapolate, a coffee cup or an assault rifle.

Clearly, there’s a huge amount of interest in the topic. Wilson said that to date, files available via Defcad, Defense Distributed’s own digital repository, have been downloaded more than 800,000 times. Whether any significant number of the people who wanted the 3D models that would be used to print gun components have the capability to actually do so seems besides the point. The interest is definitely there, despite efforts to blunt it.

Those efforts, of course, haven’t come solely from outside the 3D printing industry. Defense Distributed originally had a printing agreement with Stratasys, but the manufacturer subsequently canceled it. Then, MakerBot’s Thingiverse hosting service booted all the 3D printed gun files, forcing Wilson to start Defcad.

But despite efforts by politicians like Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), the author of a bill that would ban 3D printed guns under a provision that prohibits any firearm that could defeat an airport security system, there’s little that can be done to keep people — especially those who care deeply about what they feel is their constitutional right to possess a gun — from utilizing this democratizing technology to do just that.

Yet, Wilson doesn’t think there’s really any reason the establishment should worry. “No one’s going to print out a thousand guns and start a revolution,” he said. “I really believe that.”

But he also thinks that 3D printing technology needs to be left alone by regulators so that those who want to can do whatever it is they like. “I think if you can’t print a gun,” Wilson said, “then [the technology is] nothing I’m interested in working with.”

There are those, of course, who couldn’t care less what Wilson is interested in, but that sentiment may not matter. Sooner or later, like it or not, 3D printed guns will be a reality. Will that mean more people have firearms? It’s hard to say. Legislators may find ways to enact restrictions, and the technology itself is still very young — at least from a consumer perspective. But if one thing Wilson said today has to be listened to, it’s that 3D printed guns are a reality. They may still be rudimentary, but they’ll get better. There’s simply no way to stop it.

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