Firearms Liberation

"It is illegal to manufacture or possess a firearm without appropriate licences and applicable registration. If law enforcement found an individual in possession of a 3D printer-manufactured firearm or parts of a firearm (e.g. magazines, barrels), without appropriate licences and registration, the firearm could be seized and the individual charged."
Julie Gagnon, RCMP spokesperson, Canada

"This project might change the way we think about gun control and consumption. How do governments behave if they must one day operate on the assumption that any and every citizen has near instant access to a firearm through the Internet? Let's find out."
Defense Distributed website, Texas

It is, of course, too late to say let's not. The cat is out of the bag, the genie out of the bottle, the die is cast, and the plastic gun has been modelled and tested.
 
Cody Wilson is 25, a self-confessed anarchist, a University of Texas law student. He conceived the brilliant idea of contesting government authority in firearms registration. If individuals are enabled through technology to readily manufacture a one-time, disposable firearm at their own discretion, and use it to 'defend' themselves, who is there who will apprehend them from protecting themselves?

He used a hand-me-down Dimension SST printer to prove what he contended, that 3D-produced handguns may be the wave of the future. "When I started talking about the issue of plastic firearms months ago, I was told the idea of a plastic gun is science-fiction." Cody Wilson built his science-fiction plastic gun with a nail for a firing pin, and successfully fired it.

He founded Defense Distributed to further the development of a single-shot handgun anyone could produce with a 3D printer. "Unobservable by institutions and countries and sovereigns", a subversive, private and intriguing act of defiance instantly embraced by those who celebrate the option to act as they will, and damn the consequences.

Agatha Christie might have invented the perfect vanishing-evidence dagger in an icicle, but Dody Wilson went her one better with a disposable plastic firearm.

His agency, if that's what it is, is prepared to share its blueprints online. Anyone with a mind to, can access them. Something like the blueprints for pressure-cooker bombs; available on all manner of sites, including al-Qaeda's Inspire magazine. Mr. Wilson was inspired by his vision of a world where everyone can be armed - strictly for self-protection, not to blow up innocent bystanders - one must understand.

Over 20,000 people have now downloaded the files from his website. Those with the means in a still-early distribution and acquisition of 3D-printer-zeitgeist will be able to produce their very own plastic handgun. Spain had the most people downloading the files, followed by the United States. At your fingertips, discreetly private manufacture of all manner of handy household items, including guns.

"This is software that's being put out there. Use at your own risk. I'm not an arms trader. I'm dealing with a gun file ... It should be understood as software, and not the object", he explains cagily, exonerating himself of all personal responsibility of the potential outcome of this dynamic new type of personal dynamite.

He may consider in the near future funding a new awarding initiative, to grandiosely award merit-recognition awards to those deserving of them, somewhat like the Nobel Prizes for outstanding scientific and human-relations activities.

No doubt the National Rifle Association considers him an exemplary human-rights and gun-ownership ground-breaker.