POSTED BY Yuen Yi Chung
A few days after Defense Distributed successfully fired the world’s first 3D printed gun, the United States Government moved to block its distribution of the gun blueprints. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms subsequently released the results form tests it conducted on another downloadable 3D printed weapon in its November report. The ATP referred to the printed weapon as “dangerous” and found that it often failed to function properly. In the same month, Philadelphia became the first city in the United States to officially ban the unlicensed manufacturing of firearm, or any parts of a firearm by 3D printers.
Were these actions too late? In the two days since the Texas based company uploaded the files, more than 100,000 copies have been downloaded. Defense Distributed raises issues of freedom of the web and continued to host the blueprints on a website based in New Zealand. The files have also been uploaded to the Pirate Bay file-sharing site. A reporter who downloaded the file shared that he was unsuccessful in finding a US company with sufficient 3D printing capability to produce the firearm because they either cited laws against the production of such weapons or asked for prices that were substantially higher than an actual high quality rifle.
Legislators have already foreseen that plastic guns pose two significant types of danger to the public. First, a plastic gun cannot be detected by metal detectors, which are traditionally used as security control in airports, schools and courthouses. Secondly, 3D printing increases the accessibility of firearms, which will inevitably encourage those who initially have no interested in obtaining firearms to try to print firearms.
For many decades, the gun debate in the United States has focused on who should have access to firearms and how they can purchase them. The new element that 3D printing added to the ongoing gun debate, however, is consumer safety. The metal gun that Defense Distributed fired was printed on an extremely expensive industrial-grade printer. But the real danger lies with the 3D printed plastic guns. Experts in ballistics and 3D printing warned that building a gun from 3D printed parts could be lethal to the user. Such physics involved firing a bullet with pressures in the gun chamber of more than 1,000 atmospheres and temperatures of over 200 Celsius, which could potentially put catastrophic stresses on the plastics or thin metal used for construction. Such homemade weapons may even successfully fire a couple of rounds before behaving in a completely unpredictable way.
