3D printed gun in wild: downloaded over 100,000 times worldwide in 2 days

I still need to be convinced by a third party expert that the plastic is able to withstand the force of the explosion of the bullet.  But if this works, the Genie is definitely out of the bottle.  

Blueprints for the first-ever plastic gun produced on a 3-D printer, that can pass through metal detectors, have been downloaded over 100,000 times since it was posted to the web on Monday. Designs for the 'Liberator' pistol were posted online by Defense Distributed but on Thursday the U.S. State Department ordered the website to take down the blueprints, on the basis that the plans could violate export regulations. The blueprints, that could be produced on 3-D printers costing as little as $1,000, were seen as a breakthrough because no one has previously designed such a weapon that could withstand the pressure of firing modern ammunition.
Surprisingly, most downloads of the plans did not come from inside the U.S. but from Spain.The U.S. is second, ahead of Brazil, Germany, and the U.K., according to Haroon Khalid, a developer working with Defense Distributed, who reported the statistics to Forbes. . . .

The printer itself only costs $8,000.  The files are stored on servers outside the US.

. . . Defense Distributed does not host the files in the US; instead it has uploaded them to the Mega website run by the internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, based in New Zealand, and where user information – including who has logged into the site and downloaded files – is encrypted.
The files have also been uploaded to the Pirate Bay file-sharing site, where they have proved a popular download.
The gun blueprints take the form of computer-aided design files, which have to be read by specialist software which can then be used by industrial 3D printers to build up the hair-thin layers, one by one, to create the finished parts.
On Thursday, a British expert in 3D printing and a ballistics expert separately warned that building a gun from the parts could be lethal to the user, because the physics involved in firing a bullet – with pressures in the gun chamber of more than 1,000 atmospheres, and temperatures of over 200C – could put catastrophic stresses on the plastics used it its construction.
Even so, two British newspapers are understood to have asked 3D printing companies to try to build the gun for them. . . .

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Realistic guns made from Lego?

Ever wondered how to make realistic looking guns out of LEGO?  Well here is your chance (see here).    In some sense, this is like the debate over 3D printed guns.  We regulate toy guns so that they don't look like guns, but people find ways to make guns through other ways.

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"Politics" behind Defense Department threatening legal action against 3D printed gun?

Will these 3D printed guns be used in the commission of crime?  Undoubtedly.  But will they also be used for self-defense?  Equally surely.  If you ban 3D printed guns, how does this change?  With law-abiding citizens obeying the law, only criminals will be the ones who get these relatively inexpensive guns.

Is this a civil liberties issue?  To me this is a way to lower the cost of people obtaining guns -- a big benefit given that it is poor minorities who live in high crime urban areas who benefit the most from owning guns.  Yet, it looks as if the Obama administration is using threats, without a legal basis, to stifle people obtaining these guns.

From Fox News:

. . . Plans for the working handgun were posted online Monday by Cody Wilson, founder of Defense Distributed, potentially allowing anyone with access to a 3D printer to make a firearm from plastic. The plans, which had been in the works for months, caused alarm among gun control advocates but were seen by some Second Amendment advocates as a breakthrough. More than 100,000 copies of the plans were downloaded before the federal government took the files. 

“[Defense Distributed's] files are being removed from public access at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense Trade Controls," read a banner atop the website. "Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.” 

Wilson tells FoxNews.com that he decided to comply to a request by the Pentagon to take down the gun specs from his website while he weighs his legal options. . . . 

Wilson says he has complied to most laws on the books and feels that the D.O.D.'s request may be more politically motivated. 

"If this is an attempt to control the info from getting out there, it's clearly a weak one," he said, adding that the CAD design for the weapon has already spread across the Internet at downloading sites like the Pirate Bay. . . .

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3D printing of ammunition magazines threatens U.S. gun regulation plans

Unlike printing guns, which doesn't work, printing ammunition magazines doesn't face any practical problems.  Of course, people could always make the magazines using simple tools in any machine shop (after all they are just metal boxes with a spring), but my guess is that these 3D printers will capture attention in a way that the old machine shops didn't.  This article is from Metro News:

After the tragedies of Sandy Hook and Aurora, the U.S. government is preparing to introduce stricter guidelines on gun ownership. But supporters of the second amendment could get around them by printing their own firearms at home.
The technology is still developing but 2012 saw the first shots fired from guns with printed parts. ‘Gun hacking’ is a growth community in online forums and has become serious business.
“I have five people now making AK-47 magazines – they’re incredibly easy to reproduce”, Cody Wilson, CEO of the Defense Distributed company in Texas, told Metro. A firm believer in the right to bear arms, Wilson is deliberately producing parts for assault weapons likely to be banned by new controls.
“(U.S. Vice-President) Joe Biden’s group are using the assumption that if you control the channel you control the product – but that is not the case any more”, says Wilson. His company have made open-source code for over 30 gun parts available online, and claims they have been receiving thousands of downloads a day. . . .

As Peter K, the person who sent me the link to this information, noted these printing machines are everywhere: "my brother in law owns a couple of these type of machines for his jewelry business. you can make just about anything with them."

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