Photo by MakerBot Industries, via flickr
Aaron Pabon/Staff Writer
Corrections: Republican Senator Steve Israel of New York has been corrected to Democrat Congressman Steve Israel of New York (representing NY’s 3rd district, the North Shore of Long Island and part of Queens.)
I can now print in the third dimension. I can print action figures, prop replicas, thing-a-ma-bobs, and a gun.
That was not a typo, by the way; you can print a firearm through the process of 3D printing.
The concept of 3D has been around since 1998 but has only recently taken off due to the effectiveness of the Internet and through MakerBot Industries, a company that sells various types of cheap and easy-to-build 3D printers.
MakerBot has also been a key player in making the concept and reality of 3D printing open sourced, having started an online community called Thingiverse, where users can post files, upload original designs, and collaborate on open source hardware.
Cody Wilson, CEO and founder of Defense Distributed, saw the possibility of using the innovation to print weapons. He initially began by uploading a printable receiver frame for the ArmaLite Rifle-15 (AR-15) and announced plans for his attempt in trying to design a printable firearm with the hopes of making it open sourced.
According to the Defense Distributed website, “The specific purposes for which this corporation is organized are: To defend the civil liberty of popular access to arms as guaranteed by the United States Constitution and affirmed by the United States Supreme Court, through facilitating global access to, and the collaborative production of, information and knowledge related to the 3D printing of arms; and to publish and distribute, at no cost to the public, such information and knowledge in promotion of the public interest.”
The Defense Distributed website currently has files to print the mentioned AR-15 receiver and magazines for both the AR-15 and Avtomat Kalashnikova-47 (AK-47). These were originally placed on the Thingiverse website, but were taken down after updating their terms of use to have no files relating to semi-operational or operational weaponry.
But none of these are the reasons on why the 3D printing, Cody Wilson, or Defense Distributed, are getting attention.
Recently, Defense Distributed posted files and plans online for the first ever, fully functional, 3D pistol called the Liberator. It takes it’s name after the Flare Projector-45 Liberator pistol (FP-45) made by the U.S. military during the Second World War to be used by resistance fighters in occupied countries.
After two days of being hosted on the Defense Distributed website, they took down the design after receiving an order from the Department of State due to the design possibly violating gun control laws.
The design was downloaded more than 100,000, and Wilson has said to various news agencies that it will forever remain on the web since it was first posted.
Currently, the files to print the Liberator are available on the Pirate Bay torrent website.
People are now concerned that these guns can get on airplanes or other forms of transportation, that criminals or terrorists can get their hands on them, and that gun control is a thing of the past.
“The Undetectable Firearms Act [of 1998] says you cannot manufacture and transport weapons that cannot be picked up by metal detectors,” said Democratic Congressman Steve Israel of New York (representing NY’s 3rd district, the North Shore of Long Island and part of Queens) in an interview on The Lead. Israel went on to say that it is easier to make these weapons and “…we shouldn’t make it easier to make these weapons, or for terrorists and criminals to get these guns onto airplanes.”
For a Congressman that boasts that he is for “common sense,” lets use that and logic in the counter argument.
With advances in x-ray scanners and imaging scanning, plastics show up. If the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) can see a bottle of water in a plastic container with these machines, they will also be able to see a plastic firearm.
There is still metal in the gun as well. The firing pin is still made of metal, as is the most important part of a gun: the ammo. All of which can be picked up by a metal detector.
As for anyone being able to print the gun, that’s a half truth.
Not everyone has a 3D printer, and even if they were to attempt to print it, there are a multitude of problems they’ll come across; for instance, finding the right type of plastic needed to print the gun as well as the right type of printer.
A majority of 3D printers currently print with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polylactic acid (PLA), and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). The Liberator was printed with a specific type of hybrid plastic that was treated for structural integrity.
To print the gun, you would need a printer that would cost anywhere from $1,000 to $9,000, which is typically used for industrial purposes. MakerBot printer and other third party printers cost around $200 and up and do not have the adequate space to print the weapon.
Due to the difficulties of printing a gun as based from above, it won’t stop anyone from going to a gun store and purchasing one. What will stop them at the gun store is the pending background checks and whether they have a criminal history or not.
But if someone really wanted to make a gun, they can simply go on YouTube like I did and learn how to make a shotgun with two pipes and a nail.
The only thing I would be fearful of when it comes to the 3D printer is the unknown future it may have on the economy. But that is a story for another time.
aaron.pabon@fiusm.com
Sources:
1. “About Us,” via Defense Distributed
2. “Americans Can Now Create Guns Using 3D Printers – Government Having A Fit!” via YouTube
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