The first 3-D printed gun, christened “The Liberator” by its developer, Defense Distributed, just debuted:
The weapon is crude and can potentially explode, and it’s still a work in progress, Wilson tells Danger Room at a small workshop in Austin, Texas — the inside mostly taken up by a used $8,000 Stratasys Dimension SST 3-D printer, which produced the gun. “The design is based on two to three features that worked first. We had been testing barrels for almost two months, and we used the barrels and ABS that worked,” he says, referring to the type of thermoplastic material used by the machine. “We used 60 to 70 different springs, not all separate designs, but just trial and error. We cannibalized a spring off a toy on Thingiverse, a wind-up car toy.”
Now come the legal questions:
On Sunday, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York became the most prominent lawmaker to call for banning 3-D printed handguns.
“Guns are made out of plastic, so they would not be detectable by a metal detector at any airport or sporting event,” Schumer told reporters on Sunday. “Only metal part of the gun is the little firing pin and that is too small to be detected by metal detectors, for instance, when you go through an airport.”
The senator also proposed updating the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 — which bans guns that can defeat airport security metal detectors — to include printable gun magazines. Defense Distributed has a federal firearms manufacturers license, which Wilson sought after being questioned by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in 2012. That was shortly after a 3-D printer Wilson had rented was seized by its manufacturer over worries he’d violate the Undetectable Firearms Act. The law, which is set to expire this year, exempts licensed manufacturers to produce plastic guns for use as a models and prototypes.
Previous Dish coverage of the printed handgun here and here.
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