Wednesday, April 17, 2013
3D Printed GUN soon to be Available to the MASSES as 3D Printing goes MAINSTREAM
Meet the 'Crypto Anarchist' Who Wants Everyone to Print Their Own Guns
A fascinating documentary looks at how the Internet and 3D printing complicate the gun control debate.
But guns, after all, aren't just political statements, an exercise in freedom. Eventually -- law of large numbers again -- somebody out there is going to take one of these computer files and print something that they use to end somebody's life. What, I want to know, does Wilson think about that? Either those quotes lie on Motherboard's digital equivalent of a cutting-room floor, or that's just not something Wilson has thought very much about.
"3D Printed Guns" was produce by Erin Lee Carr for Motherboard. For more videos, visit http://motherboard.vice.com/.
3D printing revolution smells of gunpowder and more
Home manufacturing may well be the next technological revolution, changing our life as much as computers, mobile phones and the internet have. But the world may not be prepared when some of the consequences, such as printable weapons, arrive.
The promise of 3D printing technology was hailed by Barack Obama in his latest State of the Union speech in February.
"A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything," the US president said, pledging to make sure that this revolution happens in America first.
In every house in a decade?
3D printers are devices that use digital models of objects to produce their real copies, printing them layer by thin layer over minutes, hours or sometimes days. Every year the technology is being refined, allowing better materials and more detail in the items produced.
The technology is becoming cheaper too. MakerBot, a major producer of 3D printers and at the forefront of the expected revolution, is selling its latest Replicator 2 desktop printer at a relatively accessible US$2,200, roughly the equivalent of a desktop computer. And it is overflowed with orders.
"The demand is much greater than our supply right now. We are actually ramping up and expanding rapidly to meet that demand," the company's PR Director Jenifer Howard told RT.
Soon a new device is to give a considerable boost. In March, MakerBot announced a prototype of a 3D scanner, which would be able to digitalize a real-life object and make it into a printable file. If that proves successful, entry to 3D printing will become much easier, with little requirement to learn computer-assisted design to get what you want. The already big database of models is likely to explode.
But among those models you will likely find more notorious things than plates and card holders. Thingiverse.com, the popular repository of 3D blueprints, contains questionable items like bongs for smoking pot. What it does not contain is printable weapons, but not because they don't exist. "3d printed gun" "defense distributed" opensource
Cody Wilson, a 25-year-old law student at The University of Texas School of Law in Austin is the person whose name comes to mind when 3D printed guns come up. For years the goal of the self-described crypto-anarchist and his followers was to create a fully printable firearm and make it available for everybody on the net.
Just like the printers, Wilson's creations are getting better over time. The latest achievement of his Defense Distributed project demonstrated in March was a printed plastic lower receiver for an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle that can fire more than 600 rounds.
This part of the gun is essentially what makes a firearm a firearm. Everything else, including ammunition, is much less regulated and can be easily bought in the US. Other items he wants to make available to everyone are high-capacity magazines, which the White House seeks to ban.
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