By Susan Duclos
Homemade guns... just click, print and voila, guns.
The technology is called 3D-Printing and Cody R Wilson, a 25 year old University of Texas Law and co-founder of Defense Distributed, has figured out how to create a semi-automatic rifles from his home and has published a nearly 25 minute video explaining the project.
Via TheBlaze:
As 25-year-old Defense Distributed co-founder Cody Wilson expresses in the video — as he has done with TheBlaze in the past — the whole operation is meant to prove a political point.
“Look gun control doesn’t mean what it meant in 1994,” Wilson said to Motherboard. Wilson went on to say that removing gun-related files from some websites too raised censorship issues. Defense Distributed created DEFCAD.org to host all these blueprints for firearms to be produced with 3D printers.
This is a story about the rapid evolution of a technology that has forced the American legal system to play catch up. Cody Wilson, a 25 year old University of Texas Law student, is an advocate for the open source production of firearms using 3D printing technology. This makes him a highly controversial figure on both sides of the gun control issue. MOTHERBOARD sat down with Cody in Austin, Texas to talk about the constitution, the legal system, and to watch him make and test-fire a 3D-printed gun.
Social niceties aside, we were there to watch Wilson build some guns. To be clear, Defense Distributed doesn’t print entire guns--at least not yet. Instead, Wilson’s team focuses on printing AR-15 lower receivers, which house most of the operating parts of that firearm.
It is also the part of the gun that’s considered a gun by the government. Other parts like barrels and stocks, especially those for the highly-modular AR-15 platform, can be purchased online, and often with no age restriction or background check needed.
Wilson is also focused on 3D printing 30-round magazine clips in anticipation of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapon ban bill, which would limit magazine size. To Wilson, the work is partly an effort to expose what he considers the futility of gun regulation.
“[Magazines] prove the point much better than the lower receiver that you can’t ban a box and a spring,” he said.
Printing a lower receiver takes seven hours, but there is something particularly ominous about seeing the ARS plastic begin to take shape as the lower receiver is born.
By 3D-printing portions of a weapon, then buying the other parts online, there will be no limit to the type of guns or the amount of guns a person can make for themselves.
More from TheBlaze:
Defense Distributed recently became a licensed firearm manufacturer through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. .......
Note to Obama, Feinstein and all the other liberal gun grabbers.... gun control is impossible, which is exactly the point Mr. Wilson was making and has now proved.
Related:
Video- 3D Printed Semi-Automatic AR-15 gun can fire off 600 rounds of bullets:
